On Thursday something strange happened at our interim project presentation: Somehow our initial main components got lost. That led to a confused audience and – as far as I can tell – a team of unsatisfied “2 or more” group members.
As mentioned before, our initial components consisted of:
- Conversations
- A path or guidance (a metaphor for time)
- An unfinished “thing” you can add to in the end
Our presentation consisted of an unrelated set of ideas that were derived from the main concept. One could see that we were struggling with too many ideas that too many people tried to own and no one had had the time to coordinate, consolidate and edit yet …
The Morehouse student ID card: At the entry visitors should get an ID card of a Morehouse student who virtually would accompany them through the exhibition and whose personal stories they would be able to listen to.
The media booths: Nelson, Jerry and me presented a combined version of media walls and conversation booths. This led to the fact that our exhibition consisted mainly of private media booths. Inside these visitors could experience news stories on a monitor, hear personal stories, talk to a student in real-time and leave their feedback, not much different from an intersting experience you could have at home.
In the course of the next days we will have decomposed this conglomerate of ideas to make it more tangible and more of a physical experience for the visitors.
The contemplative recreation area: Alisha and Sheila built a prototype of an area resembling a revolving door that showed social media snippets on the outside and provided a contemplative, quiet reflection area in the inside. As fun as Sheila’s impression of the revolving animation during our presentation was – very little did the sculpture fit into the overall picture.
I love the iterative design process and I am convinced that it leads to the best possible results in the end – but it can be pretty frustrating when you are stuck somewhere in the middle of this process …