Chapman University Design Fiction 101
The Project
I went back to Chapman University to give a Design Fiction 101 talk with a wonderful group of students in Jillian Warren's course. We followed that with an interactive discussion and questions, and then the fun part — a practical component, hands-on, where we went into a possible future and imagined that future through artifacts that the students ‘found’ there.
Summary
A 3 hour Design Fiction 101 talk and hands-on workshop utilizing the 2023 Work Kit of Design Fiction as an ideation aid.
Written By: Julian Bleecker
Semantic Tags DESIGN FICTIONFUTURE THINKINGWORKSHOPS
chapman-university-design-fiction-talk-and-workshopEvery workshop I facilitate brings fresh insights into the ways to tap into the creative insights that are lurking in our imaginations but have difficulty finding their materialization — getting them ‘on the page’ in some fashion. These students are quite lucky in that they have a prediliction still towards expansive imagining — that is, they are not in the mode of considering even the peculiar and adjacent weird things as not even worth saying, let alone considering. So — they got the exercise immediately and got straight to work to do that first difficult step of immediately capturing and expressing their ideas.
The butcher paper is another simple and useful platform to begin this work. Not using a computer and just drawing things out without care or consideration that, perhaps one’s drawing skills are inadequate or will result in embarassment, etcetera.
Jillian was excited to have her students use the cards from the 2023 Work Kit of Design Fiction, and it was important to emphasize that these are not the answers, but rather a kind of prompt to help locate and situate possibilities.