Christopher Taylor Edwards, Rest in Peace | A grassroots leader in design thinking

Later he grew a huge beard but this is how I remember him.

I just heard that a past colleague, Christopher Taylor Edwards, died from cancer.  

Open-casket visitation Sunday, August 3, 3pm (service begins 4pm) at Colvin House, 5940 N. Sheridan Rd., Chicago, IL 60660. Reception 5-7pm. Parking is limited. Guests are encouraged to take public transportation or rideshare.

(I like the nod to public transportation.)

He moved around a lot and since I am not a big Facebook user we lost touch, but my partner kept following him, from his getting another design degree in NYC and being the first design fellow in a Knight Foundation program at Parsons, to Chicago.  Before that he lived in Oakland and DC among other places. 

In the early 2000s when blogs were the supreme social media (having long since been superseded by other media like Twitter/X, Instagram, TikTok, etc.), there was a small blogging community in DC devoted to the city and its urban issues and that's how I met him.

-- Christopher's old blog

As part of my activism then I used to lead walking tours of "Florida" Market (now renamed Union Market, which was the original name, also see "Revitalization of the wholesale food Union Market in DC to a consumer focus," [2025]) to increase awareness and to ford off the attempt at urban renewal-ing a cool food business district, mostly oriented to wholesale customers, but a number of businesses also sold to the consumer.

I was also interested in the visitor/tourist/guest experience, these days the profession is often oriented to computers using the shorthand of UX--user experience.  But the principles last.

In the tours besides going to businesses that sold to retail customers, we talked about missing amenities,  like directories, trash cans, etc., which were used as reasons for urban renewal.  My response was, yes it's dirty, why doesn't the city have trash cans?  Yes, it's hard to find things, why isn't there a directory?  Etc.

I knew Christopher as a "graphic" designer, but he was also into museum exhibiting and urban design, and he offered to help develop a "proof of concept" in wayfinding signage for the market.  

The city already had a wayfinding system, but I discerned gaps, and the concept of a district area directory map was one.  I also thought the "Discover DC" headers were more oriented to tourists, rather than both residents and tourists, so we developed a "Discover DC" concept as well.

The city sign.  Maybe it's merely a quibble, but I liked the idea of "exploring" being open to all, not the implication of "discover" being you had to be an outsider to find something, ignoring the fact that these are existing places known to many.

I had been aware of the concept of "design thinking" before this project, but he and I talked about it and related issues to design.  These blog anniversary pieces draw a lot on design thinking, business process redesign, design method, and systems thinking. This was in 2008.

(I started blogging in 2005, and these anniversary pieces draw a lot on design thinking, business process redesign, design method, and systems thinking.

--  "20th anniversary of the blog| Urban revitalization systems thinking's greatest hits: Part one -- (in)FAQ and my influences," 
-- "20th anniversary of the blog| Urban revitalization systems thinking's greatest hits: Part two -- not transportation
-- "20th anniversary of the blog| Urban revitalization systems thinking's greatest hits: Part three -- transportation"

In my writings, I prefer the application of design thinking to the typical urban planning process of constrained scopes, because that allows for an iterative process that can explore and incorporate new ideas, rather than be limited to the client's defined and usually constrained scope.

-- "Florida Market proof of concept wayfinding signage and the need for a wayfinding conference," 2009
-- Explore Florida Market (history)
-- Florida Market Map and Directory

In the project I had a idea leap using design thinking on the Florida Market Map, and how to represent necessary items like transit.  

I came up with the idea of using the local transit system's iconography rather than weak lines and or the weird looking industry-standard rail transit icon.  We extended this to mapping bus routes using the WMATA graphic design as well, although it's not as pathbreaking.

FWIW, I still haven't come across a similar use of integrating local transit map graphic design into other map products. 

 There is tons of writing and display of great transit map design, but not about incorporating some of that design into different kinds of maps.

WMATA Metrorail map.

Extract from an old WMATA bus system map 

(WMATA has since changed all of its bus-related routes, naming conventions, and map designs.)

The design method, graphic design, and design thinking offer a lot to making better government services like parks, libraries, schools, forms, etc.

-- "City branding versus identity | Branding versus Urban Strategy," 2019
-- "All the talk of e-government, digital government, and open source government is really about employing the design method," 2012
-- "PL #7: Using the Purple Line to rebrand Montgomery and Prince George's Counties as Design Forward," 2017
-- "World Usability Day, Thursday November 9th and urban planning," 2017
-- "Branding's (NOT) all you need for transit," 2018
-- "Illustration of government and design thinking: Boston City Hall to Go truck," 2013<
"Best practice bicycle planning for suburban settings using the "action planning" method," 2013,

Thank you Christopher.

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Over the past week, I came across some design thinking publications, downloadable, from the UK Design Council.

-- The Design Economy: Environmental and Social Value of Design 
-- Design Economy: People, Places and Economic Value, 
-- Design for Neighbourhoods: A design agenda for the new government
-- Future of Motorway Service Areas (interesting speculation about electric cars)
-- Public Design Beyond Central Government Key Insights and Recommendations

-- "Five components of social design: A unified framework to support research and practice," Design Journal