Demo Day "Out of Control"

Demo Day version of Friday 18th October 2013

Vision of Demo Day Team

The Demo Day of Friday 18th October 2013 is open for all visitors such as clients, students and coaches of other Themes, etc. As other Themes are engaged in their own days, we focus primarily on an internal function of the day for the Theme. Given this background the Demo Day Team has developed the following vision:

the Demo Day of "Out of Control" enables students to gather unanticipated feedback on an experience of approx. 2 minutes they provide.

Feedback fuels reflection on current project work and enables the student to direct their own learning. We acknowledge the limitation of the Demo Day: most experiences will not be in their envisioned context which limits the experience. Participants providing feedback can benchmark their own work and/or can get inspiration.

Proposal of Demo Day Team

The format in short is:

• in the morning maximize the amount of feedback for each student stimulating participants to visit those students/teams that you did not see beforehand
• in the afternoon facilitate next steps of students

Grounding

An issue we touch upon in the issue is the problem of raising expert questions without having domain knowledge. We reason that students (should) have collected feedback from clients, experts and other stakeholders already in the weeks before the Demo Day. Phrased differently, the student has already done effort to phrase expert questions on the verge of their domain knowledge. The Demo Day then is a way to maximize the chance of unanticipated perspectives a.o. expert feedback that is valuable for the student.

In terms of Vygotsky's learning theory, the Demo Day serves as a 'Zone of Proximal Development' where the 'More Knowledgeable Other' is likely to be met and where guidance can be given in context. In terms of Lave's learning theory, students and other visitors reaffirm their belonging to the 'Community of Practice of designers in a technical university'.

Please share here your objections and suggest amendments of the above:

First proposals

• Wild idea: Out of Control will have a bouncer to remove students without prototypes that can be experienced in 1 minute or less.

  • In general, some sort of a "bouncer/butler" to welcome people to the space and to recommend projects is interesting; also from a crowd control point of view

• Even wilder idea: we release two angry lions. The last prototype standing will get €250
• Less wild idea: we will have a simple distribution system for visitors upon entrance of the Theme in order to maximize the chance for each student to obtain feedback; think of a card system
• Less wild idea: we will have a referral system so visitors are referred to others upon a demand for expertise
• Less wild idea: visitors will be adressed to provide feedback from a role like 'Expert', 'Potential end-user' or 'Devils' advocate'

  • Maybe in combination with the "six thinking hats" , although this limits the type of feedback one can give.

Please do not edit this page without permission..: