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Week 1: Welcome! (Aug 26)
Slides (password: pratt)
In Class Activity
Reading
Watch Danger of a Single Story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and be prepared to discuss it in class.
Assignment
Due: Next week
This week is all about Figuring out what you want to explore in your thesis!
You do not need to have a thesis topic, argument, or solution yet. Instead, use this assignment to notice what you are already curious about, where that curiosity comes from, and what questions begin to emerge when you look at it more closely.
- What is a question, topic, or thing you are curious about, drawn to, or unable to stop thinking about right now?
- Where might this interest have come from? What experiences, stories, histories, or references feel connected to it?
- Who do you think about when you think about this topic? What identities, communities, histories, or systems might intersect with it?
- Why does this topic matter to you personally?
- What questions are becoming more complicated as you learn more?
- Has anything already changed the way you think about the topic?
- Who could you talk to, learn from, or observe to understand it differently?
- How might this project connect to the kind of designer, artist, researcher, or practitioner you want to become?
- If this project could open one conversation or shift one way of thinking, what would you want that to be?
The goal is not to arrive at a finished thesis statement. The goal is to discover a direction worth following and begin building a set of questions, references, relationships, and possibilities that can grow through the semester.
We will discuss these next week.
Week 2: Co-create, Research and Inquiry (Sep 2)
Slides (password: pratt)
Readings
Choose one of the following readings to focus on this week:
Assignment
Due: Next week
This week is all about inquiry!
Continue developing your thesis by looking more closely at the questions, assumptions, and narratives that already surround your topic. Instead of trying to define exactly what your thesis is about, use this week to investigate what you currently believe, where those beliefs come from, and what they might be leaving out.
Pay attention to who is telling the stories around your topic, who benefits from those narratives, who may be excluded or harmed by them, and what counter-arguments, contradictions, or untold stories might complicate what you think you already know.
The goal is not to arrive at a definitive answer. It is to develop a stronger inquiry: one that becomes more specific, more complicated, and more interesting as you research.
Your goal this week is to expand your inquiry in at least three new directions. Find perspectives, examples, histories, arguments, or sources that challenge or complicate your current understanding of the topic.
Be prepared to share your findings and reflections in class next week.
Week 3: When Does Making Become Research? (Sep 9)
Slides (password: pratt)
Assignment
Due: Next week
This week is all about rapid prototyping!
Choose one question, tension, contradiction, or overlooked perspective that emerged from your research. Over the next 7 days, make 7 rapid prototypes that investigate it. A prototype does not need to prove your thesis or resemble a finished project; it can be a question made tangible. These should not be five unrelated ideas. Let each prototype respond to something you learned from the one before it.
Your prototypes may take any form appropriate to the inquiry: an image, object, interface, publication, diagram, performance, conversation, intervention, code sketch, writing experiment, or another testable form. Keep each one small enough that you can make it, examine it, and use what it teaches you. Let the previous prototype inform the next one, and let the next one respond to what you learned from the previous one. Pracitice this process of iterative making and testing, and document what you learn along the way.
For each prototype, document:
- the question or assumption you wanted to test;
- what you made and how you tested it;
- what happened, including failures or surprises;
- what the prototype revealed that you did not know before making it;
- what you changed in the next iteration as a result.
Submit documentation of all seven prototypes and a short synthesis identifying the most important discovery, the question that now feels most urgent, and the next experiment you want to pursue. Bring the prototypes—or the best possible documentation of them—to class next week.
Week 4: Situated Knowledge (Sep 16)
Slides (password: pratt)
Readings
Assignment
Due: Next week. Print your materials and bring them to class.
Submit Assignment
Use your prior research, 7-in-7 prototypes, and the Riddle exercise to trace how your inquiry has developed over the past four weeks. This is not a finished thesis proposal. Instead, show how your questions have become more specific, complicated, or changed through researching and making.
Present this like a small research fair. Print everything you want to show and bring any prototypes, objects, books, materials, or other physical traces of your process. We will not use computers during presentations. Rather than presenting slides, you will guide us through the physical traces of your research and show how your inquiry has developed over time.
Your goal is to identify working research questions or directions that feel worth following into the next five-week iteration.
Your presentation should communicate:
- Where your inquiry began and what you have explored
- What became knowable through your research and making
- What surprised, complicated, or changed your understanding
- How your position or assumptions shaped what became visible—and what may still be missing
- The questions or directions you want to continue investigating
Each person will have 7 minutes to present + 7 minutes for feedback.
Think of the presentation as a trace of your inquiry, not a summary of everything you have done. Use your prototypes and research as evidence of how the questions have moved.
Week 5: Provocation (Sep 23)
Readings
Assignment
Due: Next week
Use what came out of Crit 1 to choose one question, tension, contradiction, or assumption that you want to continue exploring.
Generate at least 8 provocations using de Bono’s methods:
- Reversal: Reverse how something normally works.
- Escape: Remove something that is usually taken for granted.
- Wishful Thinking: Imagine something you wish could be true, without worrying about whether it is realistic.
- Outrageous: Make a deliberately unreasonable, absurd, or impossible proposition.
Don’t make the provocations reasonable too quickly. Set them up first, then ask where they might take you.
Choose 3 provocations that make you see your inquiry differently. For each one, create a prototype, experiment, or study that follows the direction opened up by the provocation.
Your prototype does not need to literally represent the provocation. Use it as a way to arrive somewhere you would not normally go.
For each prototype, document:
- the provocation and method you started with
- what you made
- how you moved from the provocation to the prototype
- what it revealed or complicated about your inquiry
- what you might pursue next.
Bring all 3 prototypes, your full set of provocations, and any relevant research or references to class next week.