Ideas
Trying to make some decisions about my final project and the path it’s going to take. I’m rapidly realising I have a serious “design head” and I’m all about solving problems and things having a point – which I’m not exactly sure falls within what the course expects of me and my final project. Having spent the last eight months starting a business and developing a product, I’m finding it REALLY hard to not think of things in terms of their commercial potential!
I’m finding it quite frustrating having to pinpoint exactly what it is I want to do. It feels too early to be doing that? I’m still quite involved in the research process and am reluctant to have to commit to a definite project spec.
The way I’m starting to see it is that there are 3 “output” revenues I can venture down:
Literal: Where each party has some physical object or piece of technology and this is used to provide the communication. This is a very product-based approach and is probably the one I’m most comfortable with.
Installation: To create a two-person dinner set which is paired/connected in several ways. My final piece would be two tables (to suggest the separation) and the whole dining experience would be exciting and interactive.
Concept: To produce a resolved concept/proposal for something more scalable. For example something like “speed dining” – a restaurant or area of restaurant/cafe where it’s acceptable to eat alone, and there are screens or similar which connect to other people dining alone in other places. Another humorous concept was “Plate Roulette” – a small screen/webcam device which you place on your dining table, which randomly matches you up with someone else eating alone. I wouldn’t be able to implement this fully on my own, so I’m not sure how I’d present such a thing.
hi jo – no reason you can’t match up a ‘useful’ concept with a more exploratory set of sketches, ideas, approaches. e.g.: could you create a prototype or scenario some time this summer – or perhaps at the exhibition itself, which represent a series of unanswered questions, or new ideas for your project.
of the things you mention above, the ‘plate roulette’ thing is ‘humorous’, yes, but it’s also a kind of ‘probe’ in its own right. there are interactions in there, and surprises you’d encounter with such a thing that you haven’t pretended to have ‘figured out,’ but could eventually lead to real ‘solutions’… as if solutions really exist for something as complex and emotional a human encounter as eating!
sometimes designers are too confident of their own solutions to really allow people in to an experience… if you absorb some of these more speculative / open-ended and yes perhaps ‘artistic’ techniques it will give you a wider palette of design approaches in the end, and make you a more versatile designer (if that’s where you’re headed…