workshop 3
Increasing the resolution of our materials and developing the structure of our workshop by adding more guidelines and parameters to stick within was our aim. We started by thinking about what materials we could include apart from paper and string in order to allow to the participants think and create in a 3D dimension. We were mindful of not providing a large material bank and a large variety of options as that would run the risk of overwhelming our participants. The material properties we wanted to include were something being mouldable, something having a strong base, and something being soft. This allowed us to create a new material catalog. This workshop had 17 participants.
Reiterated material catalog
WORKSHOP STRUCTURE
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A brief introduction about the changing paces of life and role of cultural tempos
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Giving personal examples as probes for participants to be able to understand and resonate with our topic of exploration
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We asked participants to think about the changing paces of life they encountered upon moving to London and write down their experiences, or examples
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The next stage was creating a visual representation for it. Here we added certain guidelines being to move away from the 2D plane and add depth and shape to these narratives
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We also asked them to be mindful of the type of materials and colours they were choosing for their representations
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The workshop ended with a discussion and we recorded their individual stories
WORKSHOP FINDINGS
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The expanded material catalog made the participants more conscious of what they were using to create their stories
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The outcomes were nonlinear, multi-sensory narratives. Being able to represent and retain these textural qualities was important
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These participatory workshops were able to allow us to explore different dimensions of times through the lens of cultural tempos, however, the next step was designing an environment that could retain the physical and have these stories be told, be mixed, and be experienced
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With the higher resolution of materials, participants started having discussions amongst each other on ways to represent their stories. This led to an exchange of experiences and conversations around their changing paces of life
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This got us to thinking about building a community through these stories. We thought we could incorporate this feature as a way for people going through similar changes in their pace of life to be able to experience that support, leading to a restorative experience.
Some of the co-designed artefacts from the workshop
Developing our material catalog gave a new dimension to our project. The outcomes from our workshop were great and had the layers and complexities of changing paces of life and tempos. The participants enjoyed the workshops and were very engaged in making their artifacts be a correct representation of the experiences they had on moving to London. We had to work towards designing a way to retain the physical aspects of these models in our digital artifacts.