In our Fall studio course, we are currently exploring various design provocations and finding “trails” (aka trials) that inform or reveal things about those provocations. Currently, I’ve gone down a long winding road all about DECISION MAKING and IMPROV. Two things that, if you think about it, could be a little contradictory. Decision making involves thought and research to come to conclusions. Improv is spontaneous. How can those things coexist in design? When tasked with writing an abstract about this subject, I chose to IMPROV. I recorded myself talking candidly about the subject. Besides absolutely hating how my voice sounds, it was an interesting exercise in retention, improvisation, speaking confidently. After I recorded my abstract, I chose to explore my provocation further by designing something without using the CMD + Z (aka Undo) function. I saw this as a metaphor for the “Yes, And” concept within Improv. (Also a bit of an homage to this blog, which I love dearly) The content of the design was the transcript from my recorded Improvised Abstract. The result was pretty neat. Check it out!
