Designing the Apocalypse 2

This is the second session of drilling down ideas and designing an experience for a final event

The plan for Sunday 8th October 12-4pm: Fab Lab

12-12:10 Recap from the last session.

12:10- 12:30 Chat about the constraints of the project:

Your project has the following constraints:

1. Use of only one space (Not the auditorium)

2. Budget of: $1,500 as a group

3. Timeline of two more times for designing (Mon 23rd, Sunday 29th)

4. Making and production planning groups in November:

Sat 4th: 12- 4pm (inductions if needed?), Sat 11: 12-4pm, Sat 18: 12 -4, Sat 25: 12-4

12:30 Chat about what will happen today

12:30-12:45 Focus on choosing one element of your idea

12:45- 2pm Rapid prototype - emphasis on rapid (the idea- test-reiterate- test- reiterate) using the space in The Edge

2pm Test it with the group

2:30pm Try something else

3pm: Test it with the group

3:30pm Reflect as the group

Preparation

- The pieces of paper with ideas on them from the last session (Solitude and Collapse of Technology)

- Chips

- Water & glasses

- Music playing

Reflection

It was a very rainy and overcast day.

There were 5 people that attended this session. There was one young person who came along who had never been to one of the apocalypse thinking/design sessions before. He has been coming to the games nights though. It was great to see this conversion.

The group slowly arrived at different times. We kept recapping where we were up to as people arrived. The group worked on one idea today (there was no one present who had been interested in the collapse of technology)

There was a lot of discussion around possible ideas and the group early on decided that they wanted to explore the idea of 'confessional' or 'last words'- and explore giving people choice to choose if they would do it analogue or digitally. The tension of choice:

To concentrate on self and say what you want to say in your last 5mins or to have an emotional connecting moment with someone:

Text msg vs phone call

Write a letter vs record your voice

In person vs face time

The group then looked at spaces and liked the two small white rooms down the hallway from the Fab Lab.

The group began to ask questions around what is happening for people to be given 5 mins until the end of the world.

There was discussions around real life of 9/11, the floods in Brisbane, Josh Richards who plans to live on Mars and say goodbye to earth.

The group brought up needing a sense of hope within this world that they are creating and two people particularly felt strongly that there needs to be a narrative.

There were some very strong characters in the group today and we discussed a lot of ideas. I could see that some of the group would have been happy to lock more things down and use some of their initial ideas, as well as some that are still keen on their ideas from weeks back.

Ideas that came out

The end point that the session got to was:

'Global warming causes another problem that is both local and global and possibly leads people to have a choice on how they leave messages as they prepare to leave'

At the end of the session myself and Mick reflected on the need for designating roles for this group moving forward so as to keep moving forward:

1. Experience design role

2. Write backstory/narrative

3. What the physical space looks like and design of it?

Next session: the plan is for this group to continue with this. Those that join us to pick up on the other idea 'collapse of tech' as well as maybe the 'white room'

Here is the digest that was sent out to members of the group that wanted to be emailed. I also posted it to the FB group page. ola_design_sunday_15th_october.pdf

Photos