Category: design fiction

  • What’s The Future of Education, Really?

    UTS Business School has released a short clip on the work we’ve been doing with our students. It’s been a tough semester, including a lot of strong emotions among my students as well as me. The comments they made on this clip validate so beautifully that learning is a liminal threshold, and being outside your comfort zone is…

  • Hacking Monopoly

    Ishan Markandeya came over to Sydney and we co-designed a special Futurescouts session for the course I teach for a group of MBAe Business Students at UTS. We flipped Monopoly and asked our students to hack the game further, to prototype resilient business for a time of transition, to experience the commons, to create economic…

  • Fieldbooks United

    Over the years we have created a whole series of co-ethnographic fieldbooks to document our social projects. Here is an overview of the lot, in no chronological order, but favorites first. There might be some buzz word alarm. And a lot of depth beyond the buzz. To download click on images. This is the first of our…

  • Level Up – Resilience and Empathy Card Game

    In Bavaria, in not so ancient times, 30 researchers from different faculties at 18 universities got together to develop their field of study through a lens of “resilience”. They worked for a year and came together in groups of 2 or 3 to then design games based on their research. That means, when playing this game,…

  • LORE :: Androgyny

    Over the course of a few years, I’ll tie different strands that I research together. I use LORE as a term for this package of research; LORE in the sense of “folklore” but also as “body of traditions” or (in)visible cultural norms we abide by. First, because everything I do places itself in storytelling. Also, because…

  • Superhero Card Game

    Play this game with a group as an icebreaker or as an energizer to make people talk casually and intimately to learn something about themselves and their peers. Group size: minimum 10 pax Playtime: 5 Min intro, played across breaks, 10 min framing, ideally leads into a self-inquiry game (ask us) What: The game objective…

  • This is Not Art

    In October we were invited to Newcastle to run a two-part game called Be.Poietic.Punks. Our plan was to explore intuitive and associative ways of collaboration. Claire Marshall and I weren’t sure if we could make it to Newcastle that day, so we asked the incredible Maree Lowes if she’d be interested running the show on the day. Maree had never…

  • PhD Creativity Unbound

    TITLE Creativity Unbound – An Analysis of Open Collaboration between Experience Design and Poietic Practice ABSTRACT This thesis concerns social engagement at the intersection of open design and media technology. The study reflects on the practice of a group of creative entrepreneurs, who seek new methods and contexts for collaboration both online and offline. My case…

  • The Tech Pentagram

    This workshop explores and excavates the landscape of where technological innovation meets established industries such as media, manufacturing, energy and health. It’s a living, thinking event that uses game mechanics and future scenario design to unleash the imagination of its participants while teaching how to integrate concepts in relation to the systems they span. Group…

  • how to…

    …engage participants? There are many ways and all throughout 2012 our team had a strong focus on developing story-led design challenges. We developed several models and I wrote a basic manual for two of them. How to run a StorySprint: Here’s an article that describes the session. Download manual [1.1 MB, pdf] Download templates [3.3…

  • to design a purposeful story by many

    I recently thought about our recent experiments with open design and story as Purposeful Storytelling. Stories have long been used for the purpose to inform, sell or persuade, but we’re onto something that involves story to ignite action and THEN do all of the above. I mean using storytelling to solve problems, to create a…

  • the power of detachment

    Do we produce better stories together, or alone? Do we actually know of stories that are created solo? Auteur theory has always neglected the fact that every film is made by a creative pool of producers, writers, directors, actors, designers, programmers, camera person… These established routines are challenged by mass collaboration, audience engagement and immersive…

  • research synopsis

    This PhD investigates co-creative practices in participatory storytelling. I compare two transmedia productions – one commercial, one non-profit – that experiment with co-creative story development. One of the projects is a commercial TV production that engages a group of 30 skilled fans during production. First, these game designers, artists and storytellers re-enacted the back-story of…