Harnessing Data Science, VR, & AR to Deliver New & Dynamic Designs
“We're doing strategic research and studies for our clients to help them understand how various aspects of say, transportation or housing, impact their businesses and we use mapping technology and geospatial analysis to understand and illustrate those impacts.”
Transcription:
Nathan Gobes 00:22
Welcome back to Radio Entrepreneurs I'm Nathan Gobes filling in for Jeffrey Davis this morning. I want to start by thanking FEI Financial Executives International the Boston chapter is one of our newest partners and sponsors. They're a professional organization of over 500 financial executives from throughout the Boston area. I want to thank our next guest as well. Tyler Shannon Associate and Data Scientist at Arrowstreet welcome Tyler.
Tyler Shannon 00:46
Thanks for having me.
Nathan Gobes 00:47
So Tyler, we were chatting for a few moments before the mics gone on about your role at Arrowstreet and the, I don't want to say changes but the new sector that you're adding to Arrowstreet, why don't you introduce yourself introduce Arrowstreet a little bit tell us about the firm and then we can get into the data science.
Tyler Shannon 01:06
Yeah, great. I'll start with a little bit of background about Arrowstreet where the 90 person architecture and design firm right in downtown Boston, and we have practice areas in mixed use development multifamily housing retail and education spaces, interior design and planning, and in supporting those practices we have branches in design visualization so think augmented reality virtual reality and data science and research.
Nathan Gobes 01:40
So when you say augmented reality and virtual reality for our listeners and viewers what do you, what does that mean, how are you using those
Tyler Shannon 01:47
Yeah, it's a new newish technology that that is really allowing our design staff and our clients, and the community members to visualize, our design product.
Nathan Gobes 02:00
Wow,
Tyler Shannon 02:01
buildings, basically with virtual reality you can put a headset on.
Nathan Gobes 02:04
Yeah, I was gonna say I'm putting headsets on your clients.
Tyler Shannon 02:07
We are. Yeah, it is interesting and it's it's always fun to watch. And most of them do a really good job of having a good attitude about about putting them on because sometimes it can be a little disorienting. When you first start getting used to having headset looking around a virtual space,
Nathan Gobes 02:25
but it sounds like you can get a much better view of the plan
Tyler Shannon 02:29
For sure. Yeah, and it also allows our design teams to really get into the spaces during the design process to look at various components of what we're proposing and learn about the space and make it better.
Nathan Gobes 02:43
And so this is where the data science converges with architecture here, right,
Tyler Shannon 02:47
For sure. Yeah, and I think supporting in in sort of like overlapping with the data, the design visualization work that we're doing. We're also aimed at in my work predominantly is focused on getting our design teams and our clients access to better information to support the design, and ultimately impact our clients businesses for the better, delivering better products more relevant products that that meet their goals.
Nathan Gobes 03:17
Interesting. And so you're building out the data science team at Arrowstreet,
Tyler Shannon 03:22
I am Yeah, yep.
Nathan Gobes 03:23
You see this is where the future of Architecture and Planning is going ?
Tyler Shannon 03:27
Yeah I think it's really interesting we were always hearing things about smart cities and smart buildings, the technology, excuse me, the technology that's going into our buildings is becoming smarter and smarter. And it's producing data every second. Right. And so, you know, our role as professionals is to harness that data and provide insights to our design teams so that they can act on it, and make decisions based on evidence, rather than gut which is traditionally how the industry has has done it.
Nathan Gobes 04:01
Interesting. And so what's using the science what benefits can that provide your team and ultimately the renter owner etc have the space at the end.
Tyler Shannon 04:14
Yeah, well, um, I think I'll answer that question, sort of, by saying my work, sort of, I like to think about it in, in three buckets. The first is supporting project teams, themselves, and that's working with them throughout the process, as they're asking questions about the design. How do we expect people to move through a building? How do we expect them to respond to different types of programming in a building? And we can use data to support those decisions. We're also doing some strategic research and and studies for clients to help them understand how various aspects of say transportation or housing impact their businesses and and using mapping technology and geospatial analysis to understand those impacts.
Nathan Gobes 05:11
Interesting. And so does that come through, you guys placing like smart sensors and things like that, you were talking about people moving through buildings, so that I assume there's a huge amount of technology involved with that is Arrowstreet actually deploying any of that or you guys just leveraging the science and the data comes out of other,
Tyler Shannon 05:29
There's a couple ways that we're approaching it, I think a lot of the systems that are in buildings now can produce data that will allow us to have a general understanding of how people are moving through spaces, it's just up to us to figure out how to extract that information. We're actually piloting a project in our office right now where we do have 18 sensors around our office that allow us to understand things like temperature and lighting and how they relate to space usage. And that allows us to make and understand how to make decisions around what types of spaces our staff is using. So we have that going on in our office right now. We're also partnering with other companies that are doing this at a larger scale, so you know there's a couple different scales of operation around extracting data from our spaces,
Nathan Gobes 06:17
Very interesting. I'd love to get to jump back a little bit into the background of Arrowstreet to fill our listeners in who are not familiar, you guys are based in Boston.
Tyler Shannon 06:28
We're based in Boston right and post office square,
Nathan Gobes 06:30
great, and about what sizes the organization and how old, some of them.
Tyler Shannon 06:33
Yep, it's 90 people, and it ranges from architects interior designers, we do have an environmental graphics team. And then, supporting my work as data science and then we have a couple augmented virtual reality specialists on the team. We've been around for 60 years. So we have six decades of working in in this space of planning mixed use development multifamily housing and. And something that we've, we've really established over those six decades of work is has been delivering dynamic design and development opportunities for our clients.
Nathan Gobes 07:14
It's great. And how long have you been part of the team. I've been a part of the team for coming up on four years. What was your background before that?
Tyler Shannon 07:24
So I'm a licensed architect in the State of Massachusetts, and I have experience practicing architecture in predominantly multifamily and single family residential work. But I would say before I came to Arrowstreet, I was really curious to understand how we make better decisions about our spaces. And that led me down the road of of learning more about data science and and computer science and how we can use those to support the practice. And it just so happened to line up with the vision that leadership team at Arrowstreet, had they they recognize that data was going to be a part of the conversation. And so, as I was looking to make this shift in my career, they were looking to also build out a practice that supported that and so it aligned with, you know, mutual interests and joined forces.
Nathan Gobes 08:19
That's great. And so it does seem like that's where the industry is heading. Do you want to talk about what you feel like the landscape will look like, you know, maybe even 5, 10 years from now, potentially, what kind of data will be will be accessible for teams like yours and you know ultimately what kind of, again, you know, thinking, what kind of benefits can a business owner looking to move into a space that has, you know, that is leveraging your technology and your data or somebody is looking to maybe a homebuyer or a renter who's looking to move into a mixed use or family use space that you guys have set up.
Tyler Shannon 08:58
Yeah, I think that the data, think that the data processing strategies will likely continue to develop. And we'll become more sophisticated at harnessing and analyzing them. And our buildings will become smarter and sort of more tech integrated. And I think that you. We're hearing a lot of conversation in, in our circles around smart cities around autonomous vehicles that indicate a more connected, urban environment. And so I think that's going to start to produce more robust datasets that indicate how we can make decisions about where to put a building, how to program a building, what people are actually using in a space. Something we find often is that when someone responds to a survey about how they use a space. Sometimes they're telling us what they think they want to hear, right, compared to, you know what they actually feel. And so we're working to find ways to support that qualitative information with some some quantitative data,
Nathan Gobes 10:14
interesting, is the data science aspect, something that you guys are now or considering selling separately from Arrowstreet or is it you know if you if you want to be able to take benefit of the data, you know, you got to purchase or move into an era street design building.
Tyler Shannon 10:33
Yeah, well so right now we're not in the business of selling data, really, I think what's unique about Arrowstreet is that as we continue to grow this practice. We're really thinking about it as being integrated into our existing services. And I, I work directly with design teams to get them that information and it's it's really about supporting the design decisions they're making for their clients. And it's, it's, it's, that's sort of the core of it is that we're integrated and I think that's, that's a unique feature.
Nathan Gobes 11:04
Yeah, let's put your clients first as well want to remind everyone we've been speaking with Tyler Shannon associate and data scientist at Arrowstreet. Tyler if people wanted to reach you, or get in touch with Arrowstreet for anything. How could they do so.
Tyler Shannon 11:19
I think the first stop is our website, it's www dot arrowstreet dot com Arrowstreet is A R R O W S T R E E T one word. I'm also on LinkedIn, or you can send me an email at Shannon at arrowstreet dot com.
Nathan Gobes 11:35
Great. Yeah, we'd love to have you come back. Talk about Arrowstreet's progress and of course as the industry progresses because I think this is a very interesting topic that you know like we were saying we're going to see more connectivity. Things advanced as time
Tyler Shannon 11:49
it'll continue to develop yeah yeah
Nathan Gobes 11:51
so we'd love to have you come back and give us updates as the industry,
Tyler Shannon 11:54
I love that time. Yeah,
Nathan Gobes 11:55
I want to thank everyone for listening. This has been radio entrepreneurs. If you could follow us on LinkedIn YouTube, Facebook, we're all over the place and all our listeners and viewers, always hope. This has been Nathan Gobes will be back after these messages.
