It was time to review the process: Ask.Try.Do. And, importantly, experience it in a short time. So we spent the afternoon designing the experience of the visitor to the Sauder Building Opening Celebration on March 1. In a way it was the perfect opportunity to put Ask.Try.Do into action on a problem that was close at hand and with which the students have great experience: living in the new building. They are also keen to let other people know what happens in the d.studio. So ideas abound.
Here is Ask.Try.Do.
One of the important messages for this week is that there are many ways to think about and visually represent the design process. Ask.Try.Do. is just one of them.
The students jumped right into the task — and I think the intimacy (read 25 people in the space is quite tight) of the studio has its advantages. The energy is contagious. I usually have a 3:30-4:00pm “low” but not today.
This was also an opportunity to engage in prototyping — testing ideas and enriching them through “building” them or finding other ways to express them.
There is some aspect of “freedom” that is expressed in the studio. Students released from the structures of their day at Sauder. Not suggesting that every class should be a studio but it causes me to wonder about the lack of diversity of learning environments generally for students at university. There is no doubt a scaling challenge. There are 22 students in the d.studio and there are 2400 B.Comm students. But I guess you have to start somewhere.
We ended the studio with a preview of the next Project — Project 4: Climate Smart Business. We are partnering with Climate Smart and linking student teams with businesses who are in the “greening” process. Should be fun to see how this unfolds. Stay tuned.