Critical Experiences

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Guide to a Random Topic

Prompt


Using a random topic to research, make a creative guide to that topic. The guide may use any medium or technology, be low or no-tech, and should be in a recognizable form that (overtly or subtly) engages with a system that you mapped. 

Recognizable forms include: a field guide, an audio tour, a cookbook, an exercise tape, etc. 

You/your guide should…

  • Have a lens through which you are presenting your topic

  • Have in mind a specific user/audience/public 

  • Be “usable” –  it should enable the user to do something (ie, helps you identify a bird versus learn about birds) – your guide can be educational, but should be more than a ‘Wikipedia-esque artifact about your topic. 

  • Take advantages of the affordances (the inherent qualities) of the form you chose

  • Intentionally employ a visually metaphoric system

  • Have a clear intention for the effect you want the guide to have on its audience (to illuminate, educate, transform, lighten, criticize) 

  • Have a clear tone, mood appropriate to your guide’s intended effect  (humorous, ironic, nostalgic, mournful, serious)

  • It does not need to be a LITERAL guide – have some creativity! How far can you twist or turn the form and still have it resonate as that form?


Note to facilitators: 


The topic can be nearly anything (past topics have included: lipstick, sugar, and the Sims). Topics that seem most generative tend to be 

  • able to be understood through multiple critical lenses (ie: feminist, aesthetic, economic)

  • have some concrete manifestation (abstract concepts don’t make great topics)

  • produce significant material when researched through traditional methods. 


If you are running the course with a large enough group, we recommend organizing the topics into cohorts of 3-5 people with a shared thematic category.

For example, a topic and two different systems approaches might be: tomatoes/cultural food preferences OR tomatoes/supply chain logistics. 

//related materials

/modules

Experience

Feedback

Form

Metaphor

Research

Systems

/readings

//related examples