DAY 12 M 7 OCT                                  AW V. 1.0, 073013

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IN PROGRESS CRITIQUE: CREATING PERSONA PROFILES

“In-progress design critiques help you see your work from other  perspectives.”         

– Design wisdom

“Design critiques help you see what you didn’t know was in your project.”  

– Design wisdom                                                             

DRIVING QUESTIONS:

1. What is the status of your PERSONA PROFILES today? How does that status correlate with your team’s RESEARCH PLAN and PROJECT PLAN calendar?

2. What do others see in your PERSONAS and what constructive critique can they offer?

3. Is the status of your PERSONAS where you like it to be today?

4. What is your plan for getting there?

SCHEDULE

Today the entire class will be critiquing each team’s progress on PERSONAS. Here is a suggestion from our guest Judy Brooks: When you’re evaluating your peer’s persona profiles, ask yourself …
– what are some of the clear characteristics that jump to the forefront?
– which dimensions have they included (demographic, psychographic, etc)? Name them, what’s missing?
– do the persona profiles cover a wide range of attitudinal, emotional and behavioral motivators and influencers? Name a few you notice and speak to a few you think may be missing.
– how do the persona profiles relate to the team’s focus/topic?

4:30-5:00pm:  TEAM 1 presentation of Family of You 2050 Personas v. 1.0 and critique feedback by all

5:00 – 5:30pm :TEAM 2 presentation of Family of You 2050 Personas v. 1.0 and critique feedback by all

5:30 – 6:00pm: TEAM 3 presentation of Family of You 2050 Personas v. 1.0 and critique feedback by all

6:00-6:10pm: break

6:10-7:00pm EST:

7:00-7:20pm: Next assignment discussed. All general discussion about the course, student expectations, questions, concerns

7:20pm: CLASS ENDS

ASSIGNMENT 12: FIELD TREK

“Innovation is not what innovators create but what people adopt”      

– Michael Schrage, MIT Media Lab Fellow,  Author, Serious Play

Up to now, this class has pursued the following activities : 1. FORESIGHT: we have explored possible ways to think about NORMATIVE SCENARIOS for LIFE2050 broadly and generally through discussion from our own personal points of view as well as surveying scenarios from planners, economists, political scientists and futurists who create future strategic scenarios for public, private and civil organizations. We have familiarized ourselves with PLANPGH, the comprehensive plan for metropolitan Pittsburgh to horizon year 2035. Class teams have identified three pathways toward desired futures to explore as their design lab project;  i.e.: LEARNPGH, SHAREPGH and OPPORTUNITYPGH.

2. FARSIGHT & INSIGHT: We have begun to look laterally at “the edges” of design to adjacent fields in order to discern EARLY SIGNALS/FUTURE SIGNS of FORCES OF CHANGE that are likely to shape the future and suggest opportunities to proactively DEXIGN THE FUTURE.

Now it is time to try to step away from our own personal biases and preconceptions and begin to envision the future from the perspective and the lived experience of the people who are going to live in the future. To do that, we need people to design for, with and by – people who are going to inhabit and experience the future, specifically LIFE2050 in PGH3.0 – people who are not us and not today’s planners, futurists, scholars and experts. A way designers do this is through PERSONA-BASED SCENARIOS – narratives of the future (sometimes called “future fictions”) told through the lived experience of PERSONAS – composite characters usually comprised of characteristics drawn from informed imagination and present day observed study subjects.

We conduct EXPEDITIONARY TREKS to observe and interview real people today in their accustomed situations. Here our purpose is not to gather projectable statistical data. Rather it is to uncover what interests, influences and motivates peoples’ attitudes, behavior and lifestyle today and how they express their concerns, dilemmas and hopes for the future. These serve as data points of reference for attributes and salient  patterns that might inform future persona profiles and scenario narratives for our FUTURE PERSONA cast of characters.

Following are some of the Collective Invention templates and frameworks we will refer to in creating a gallery of FUTURE PERSONAS.

This PERSONAS TOOLKIT was prepared for a workshop at INDEX, Denmark.:

1. Build Persona Profiles  CI_Personas_toolkit#2   Pp. 1 -7 show a template for building a PERSONA MANDALA or profile. You can substitute content relevant to your own field of focus.

2. Conduct Field Research CI_Personas_toolkit#2  Pp. 8 – 12 show templates for an EXPEDITION TREK to observe and interview subjects in the field. Following pages are example templates for PORTRAIT CARDS to be filled in to build out the PERSONA MANDALA.

3. The Family of You 2050  Collective Invention FamilyofYou Booklet    Each team will create a family of six personas, two each for each team member. These personas should be as differential from one another along as many dimensions as possible – DEMOGRAPHIC, PSYCHOGRAPHIC,  and SOCIOGRAPHIC, GEOGRAPHIC and IDEOGRAPHIC  (see p. 8 Glossary of Terms in CI_Personas_toolkit#2

Here is an example of how to think of positioning your personas along differential dimensions in order to ensure that they represent as wide a range of attitudinal, emotional and behavioral motivators and influencers as possible: CSCP Personas dimensionsV1.0

Here is an overview paper by Arnold Wasserman on the subject of  Scenarios & Personas:    SCENARIOS & PERSONAS

Where is this course heading? The final deliverable of each LIFE2050 LAB will be a presentation of Persona-Based Scenarios for LIFE2050 in PGH3.0. Here are some examples of how we use personas to create PERSONA-BASED FUTURE SCENARIOS. The final deliverables of this course should be some combination of features from these examples – plus any other methods, techniques. media, platforms, frameworks or tools you choose to add – that best support the NORMATIVE FUTURE SCENARIO vision you want to portray:  –Collective Invention FamilyofYou Booklet  Collective Invention WBCSD LIFESTYLE 2050 CHARRETTE WORKBOOK     – Collective Invention LIFE 2050 Online Overview  http://life2050.collectiveinvention.com                                            – Collective Invention 2012 Retrospective  http://bit.ly/13HCrBn  http://bit.ly/1c5xFQN http://bit.ly/16GV2yS     http://bit.ly/1hloERp   

REFERENCE & RESOURCES  For further exploration:

–– Can Science Explain Why We Tell Stories? http://nyr.kr/17H3zj3 

– Future Fiction: What is its history and meaning? From GALLONCZ SCIENCE FICTION: The difference between fictions of THE NEAR FUTURE  http://bit.ly/17aWVgx   and fictions of THE FAR FUTURE  http://bit.ly/1geYeDl

– Top 10 Future Technologies That Exist Today video:  http://bit.ly/18YAy1c

STUDENT-CENTERED OUTCOMES: Measurable or Observable Knowledge, Skills, Attributes, Ability to Apply, Interpret, Create, Design, Explain, etc. TBD

OTHER REFERENCES & SOURCES TBD

 

 NOTES