Serious Design

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Serious Games 2 slides

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Denkenswerter

We are Camilla, Denise, Kristoffer and Lasse, and inspired by Nietzsche's words: "Ich möchte gern Etwas dazu thun, ihnen den Gedanken an das Leben noch hundertmal denkenswerther zu machen," (The Gay Science) our project aims to design an artifact, event or campaign which will draw people's attention to the fact that life should be lived. Here's our blog:

Denkenswerther


Friday, March 03, 2006

Street Art-presentation

Hi people
I was asked to put up the link to our presentation material. Here goes: http://www.itu.dk/people/seriksen/streetart/

By the way, we forgot to talk about the 'yellow-arrow'-project, if you havn't heard about it, it is worth checking out:
http://yellowarrow.net/
The project is basicly about pointing out details, places, views etc. in your environment. You do this with an yellow-arrow-sticker you put up 'on the spot'. The sticker carries an ID-number (connected to a database), to which you can add pictures, text and soon also music. Thereby you can leave your message to the rest of the world...

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Hack Your Life

We are going to make peace-threat, at-tag a public place withstreet-literature (which not necessary means words but approach the streetitself as a language) by clashing signs, make street-montage and hack ourway into programmed human behavior and make the hurricane …or something like that ....

We are: (Bir)gitte, Ágúst, Ida and Sigurdur

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Serious Cartoons

It was inevitable...and necessary--a class in Serious Design has a responsibility to discuss and study the situation surrounding the global reaction to the so-called Muhammed drawings. We pondered the facts, we weighed the values, we engaged the world-views (to the degree possible) of the cultures that are deeply involved in the clash heard round the world. We studied. That is our job, as students, as teachers, as designers of our own lives. We did not answer our own questions, much less those of the world...questions that are bearing down on Denmark, and other countries, with increasingly violent forms of asking. Let me retract that. Violence is not a question. It is the end of questioning. THAT is also something we must study. Design as communication must wrestle with the nature of art, the divide between form and content, the role of designer, the question of living with one another and enhancing social conditions through design. Serious goals for serious design.

This course, taught by a member of IT University's Research in Innovative Communication group, is poised auspiciously on the cusp of this global crisis. We will handle our study responsibly. We will study our responsibility vigilantly. But we will not be design vigilantes.

4 ideas for sale :)

Hi class
I’ve got some different ideas for either a 'collective action' or a 'case study' project.

The ACTION projects could be:

Integration
I would like to work with some kind of alternative ’integration’ project.
The aim would be to make an event or a product that will INCLUDE people; get people to come together and work together in a project where everybody can participate equally (there shouldn’t be a system-client relationship). The message should be communicated through ACTIONs rather than words.
I think that an interesting ‘target group’ could be women and maybe kids.
I have many different ideas to what the case could be, but I’m off course very open!
.. Could be a cook-book, a product line (e.g. food, cloth, jewellery), a festival, an ‘upside-down-integration’ with Danes living in a refugee camp or ghetto, an art project, a poster campaign …

or
Health
I think that HEALTH could be an interesting subject for a serious design project. Whether it’s a small local problem (e.g. better food in the schools) or a large scale global problem (e.g. AIDS or hunger vs. overweight), there’ll be plenty of problems to deal with.
Maybe the Imagine Cup could be used as a frame for developing such a project. Imagine Cup is a competition which aim is to use IT to improve conditions around the globe, this year the theme is health.
“Imagine a world where technology enables us to live healthier lives,” is a challenge to the world’s top student technologists to actively contribute to the mission of improving health around the world. Health means different things to different people. You may think of health as a medical breakthrough. Or you may think of health simply as a clean glass of water. In the Imagine Cup, you define health and decide how to use technology to make a real difference in the lives of people everywhere.“
www.imaginecup.com

or
For CASE studies I’ve thought about:

Serious Clothing
or
Serious Drinking

In the docs linked to, I've described some specific cases. These could also be used as inspiration and background for an activist project.

Please feel free to comment and develop these ideas!!

:) Sophie

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Group formations

Please post a project idea in order to gather potential group members. Those interested in a posted idea should indicate their interest in that group by commenting. Groups must be formed by 2/15 whether or not a solid idea is in view. Perhaps you only know you prefer the 'collective action' vs the 'case study' project option, or perhaps you just have a vague idea what you want to do. The idea is form a group, with other students you know, or with students you do not know. Remember to introduce yourself in your posts/comments and state any design/technical expertise you may have that will help the group. Or any other kind of theoretical or practical experience you wish to acknowledge that the group may benefit from. We will talk more about this in class on 2/8.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Serious Thanks for Serious Design Blog!

Thank you to Sophie for setting up our class blog! Please use this to communicate about forming your groups and topics for projects. Once we have also set up other categories, we can use it to discuss the readings, or other issues that we generate in class discussions, etc.

But if you have specific things to ask me, please do so by email to me instead of here on the blog. Post things with your classmates as your primary audience. I will, of course, contribute to the blog...but in my past experience, it's not a good place to pose questions to me that don't need to be read by everyone.

Ideas for sale!

Please post your ideas as comments to this post ..

Here comes the blog

Hi
I have in my earlier classes experienced that it often takes some(!) time to form groups. So - since we are going to form our groups already next Wednesday - I thought that this blog could serve as a room for sharing initial ideas and inspiration.
Maybe just to get an idea about what kind of cases or topics ‘the rest’ thinks could be interesting for the SERIOUS DESIGN-project.
Or maybe even to start ‘signing up’ i.e. showing interest for and sharing ideas on a certain theme.

Hope that it will be useful!