Digital tools and applications (apps) hold great promise for making data and resources available to a wide range of stakeholders and communities. Two IHDSC affiliate teams recently designed and launched apps that tackle wide-reaching challenges.
AgriShare NYC
Dr. Angela Trude, Assistant Professor and Director of the Nutrition PhD program, Food Studies doctoral candidate Ran Mei, Research Assistant Anne-Laure White, and Zoya N. Rehman (BS, Nutrition Food Studies), in partnership with a volunteer-led organization that supports urban growers, Share Shed NYC, launched a new digital platform called AgriShare NYC for urban food producers.
AgriShare NYC is a data-sharing platform that allows growers to spotlight their farm’s production and impact, exchange resources with individuals at other farms and gardens, connect with and contribute to a network and constituency of other urban agriculturists, and identify and highlight resource gaps that they are facing in the NYC urban agricultural landscape.
While previous iterations of the app focused on researcher and policymaker perspectives, AgriShareNYC was iterated and redesigned using a participatory design approach, which centered the user experience, input, and needs of stakeholders often overlooked: growers and urban food producers. The team employed a four-phase participatory design methodology, working with urban food producers to design, pilot, and evaluate the app.
To learn more about the inception and design of the app, check out the team’s paper in Foods entitled “Participatory Design Process of a Supportive Digital Platform to Enhance Local Urban Food Systems.”
You can download the AgriShare NYC phone app for free on the Apple App Store.
Braiding Data
In a collaboration between IHDSC’s ARCADIA lab and NYU Tandon’s Integrated Design and Media faculty, Drs. Catalina Cañizares, Graham Dove, Pamela Morris-Perez, and R. Luke DuBois demoed their Braiding Data app at the Youth Suicide Research Consortium 2026 Conference, where the team brought together administrative data at county and district levels to understand the place-based factors that contribute to suicide risk and policy levers for altering them.
The app is designed to support the work of a wide range of stakeholders, including policy leaders, researchers, and community members. Agency leaders can model solutions in comparable jurisdictions, guiding wiser investments for youth suicide; researchers can determine not only how suicide rates differ across youth of different identities, but whether they differ because of the conditions, policies, and services in schools and communities; and community members are empowered to engage creatively with their own data so that stories about youth suicide speak of how we make places safe for young people.
In a collaborative design workshop, over 100 attendees got a first look at the prototype and shared creative ideas, paving the way for new youth suicide solutions. While the team’s initial design focused on data in California as a proof of concept, given the high quality of data that can link youth responses about suicidality to place, they aim to expand the app for free, national use.
To learn more about the Braiding Data app, watch the demo, or share your ideas with the team visit: https://www.arcadiasuicideprevention.com/projects-braiding-data
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ARCADIA
ARCADIA for Suicide Prevention takes a developmentally-informed, population-health approach to adolescent suicide. With the prediction of adolescent suicide barely better than chance, researchers focus on the places where adolescents already are (schools, primary care) and leverage trusted sources of support (peers, parents, trusted adults).