Participants: Cristina Bianchi [IT], Emanuele Conti [IT], Manuel Colombo [IT],Valentina Faravelli [IT]
Brief: "The theme burlesques the famous phrase of Louis ХIV, “The State, that’s me,” and at the same time interprets Shakespeare’s celebrated phrase “Life is a stage and we are all actors.” (“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts…” William Shakespeare, As You Like It)
Every show has authors, participants and spectators. What are we: participants, performers or onlookers? What is our daily play; what is the stage where the action takes place, and what is the theatre where our life passes? The questions suggested by the theme are many, and the answers even more and often contradictory. No compulsory text." [Full brief here]
The brief was picked out by the participants from a range of three alternatives.
Duration: 8hrs
Methodologies used: Brainstorming, collective visual research, file sharing, unmoderated anonymous chat, shared work structure, micro decisions
Collaborative tools used: pickpic web platform, pickpic add-on (user script vrs)
Aims and Notes:
Aim of the workshop was to test the anonymous chat for discussing the development of the project as alternative to the moderated face to face meeting. The designers were discussing anonymously and the work they were sharing were also anonymously posted on the pickpic work board. This solution allowed them to discuss an choose only on the base of the proposals and the concept on their own, without considering the author.
shared work structure: As written in the exp 0003 designers working in the same structure, and having to achieve the same goals at the same time would make easier for them to collaborate. In this experiment the idea working progressively on different level of details was still just a suggestion that some of them didn't really follow.
individual/collective research and concept: The participant were asked to come up with two concepts in the morning session. They autonomously decided to work all together from the beginning. What happened is that they manage to define really well one of the two concepts but they had time issues in finding the second one. At the same time they got stuck in the first idea they had and they just kept on evolving that one until everyone agreed.
If they would had the time to think about the concept on their own they would probably had a wider range of alternatives, having more proposals to discuss and to react on. Also starting immediately working all together can happen that not everyone have something to say at the beginning and he or she limits him/herself to what the others have proposed. The idea of alternate individual work and collective work can also be generalized to the whole process that can be planned in order to alternate moment of collective discussion, in order to find new directions and to make sure that everyone agree on what is decided, and individual work, in order to give everyone the chance to express his own interpretation of what the group has decided.
The phase of individual work can also be replaced with pair design in the case of practical work.