Mercedes-Benz EQ Fellows: Tara Pham

Monitoring streets in order to help city planners succeed

Presented in partnership with Mercedes-Benz EQ

With experience in art, design, publishing, tech and urban design, Tara Pham is currently working to give cities a better understanding of their data, and ultimately their streets. As co-founder and CEO of Numina, Pham works with her team to attach sensors to light poles to monitor traffic—both foot and automotive—and to document the results of street-level design experiments. As a Mercedes-Benz EQ Fellow at …

Design-Driven Charging Stations by Leon’s Electric Trout

Offering a little charm, character and warmth to a functional tech product

As our phones get slimmer, sleeker and more stylish, there are a few brands working on docking stations that keep up. Like many companies, Leon’s Electric Trout was born out of a simple, everyday dissatisfaction. David Stychno (who is design director at a software company during traditional work hours) explains, “My girlfriend and I were always fighting over charging cables at night. It was a mess. One of us was …

Link About It: This Week’s Picks

Endangered insects, ending robocalls, women who pioneered auto design and more

Efforts Underway to Stop Robocalls With estimated robocalls at 167.3 million per day in the US, many Americans simply ignore unknown numbers or “Scam Likely” calls. This doesn’t assuage the anxiety of missing something important or the sense of violation. Two programs—STIR (Secure Telephone Identity Revisited) and SHAKEN (Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs)—aim to verify callers. Right now, they’re only deploying on T-Mobile but …