Design + Power
- Use any visual means necessary to create your designs. The visuals and texts on your cards should be clear and engaging; allowing audiences to grasp the essence of ‘gameplay’ without too much explanation. Consider how ‘Cards’ can sequence, repeat, or interact.
A Concise Written Project Description
- The Issue: What contemporary issue do your Cards address?
- The Approach: How does your approach respond to or encourage viewers to critically engage with this contemporary issue?
- The Intended Impact: What change do your Cards intend for? What do you want participants to think about (mindset shift)?
Final Formatting & Submission on Medium
- Process Post
- Final Documentation & Reflection Post
Form a team of 3–4. Try not to default to your usual collaborators. Work with someone new if you can, and try to include perspectives from other tracks to enrich your team’s approach. The goal is to build a mini-collective with a diverse mix of skills and experiences.
2. Revist & Reflect (individual -> team)
Individually reflect on our four modules (Political, Material, Technological, and Metaphoric Power) and identify 1-3 key insights that resonated with you from each. What challenged your thinking? What surprised you? What felt most relevant to your own practice?
Write each insight on a Post-it note and share them with your group. Discuss where your perspectives align and where they differ.
3. Identifying a Contemporary Issue
As a team, share and cluster similar insights together, looking for emerging themes and extremes. Use visualization and/or diagramming methods to map the power dynamics surrounding your thinking. Begin your collective thinking freely on the whiteboards and then translate to digital tools as needed. How can you use diagramming and visualization strategies to identify key actors, institutions, and forces shaping it?
Together, discuss:
- What themes are recurring across the team?
- What perspectives or issues are outliers?
- Where do you notice contradictions, tensions, or gaps?
From this discussion, agree on a ‘contemporary issue’ your team wants to explore.
4. Something Familiar
As a team, brainstorm a list of card games you know. How could you use or subvert existing structure to prompt dialogue, raise awareness, or activate action around your chosen issue?
For each, jot down what makes it engaging:
- How is the game structured? (e.g., turn-taking, roles, point system)
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How do players interact? (e.g., prompt and response, storytelling, collaboration vs. competition)
- What kinds of conversations or behaviors does it encourage?
Reflect on your discussions and diagraming and choose one game mechanic to “hack.”
5. Thinking -> Making -> Thinking ...
Taking steam from your discussions, rapid visualization/diagramming, and identified remixed game structure, begin sketching ideas for your Design+Power Cards. How can text, image (sketch, photo, icon, symbol, collage, etc...) , and interaction (game-play) to engage audiences in discussions about power, design, and systemic change?
Begin by considering:
- What interaction are you inviting?
- What mindset shift do you hope to spark?
- What sort of open-ended questions, icons, visual prompts,etc... can support this?
For next class your team should have:
- A clearly defined ‘contemporary issue.’
- A stated intention/impact/mindset shift.
- Early sketches of your proposed card interventions.
- Documentation of process on Medium (see below).
6. Medium Post
As a group, document your process and evolution of thinking on your Medium(s). Your team can collaboratively make/write this, but please upload a post individually so your team and individual contributions can be reflected.
To accommodate your teamwork, Medium posts are due at midnight before the studio (Sunday at Midnight for A4 and Tuesday at Midnight for B4).
• Document and summarize your process, contributions, and collaborations.
& Production
Open studio time, with 1-on-1’s with the teaching team, to refine your projects. We recommend you use this time to respond to feedback (refine) and make a game-plan for completing the Cards for next week.
Design Week:
M 4/28 from 3-4pm
- Finalize and print the cards, identify any additional materials your team might want to display.
Final Requirements:
F 5/2 by Noon
Document and summarize your final outcome, contributions, and collaborations. In your final Medium post, tell us about the game your team created:
- What issue did you explore, and how is power built into the game?
- What kind of interaction or mindset shift were you aiming for?
- What happened during gameplay? What insights or surprises came up?
- Shout out another group’s game you enjoyed. What made it fun or thought-provoking?
Include visuals (cards, sketches, gameplay moments) to help bring your story to life.