22-23 January 2015 at the Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute in Funchal, Portugal

Participants: 8 HCI students in two Capstone projects.

Facilitator: Maja Kuzmanovic (FoAM)

Moderators: Julian Hana, Simone Ashby-Hana, Evan Karapanos (M-ITI)

Read Capstones Flow to learn more about the techniques used in the workshop.

Photos on Flickr

Core question for the Capstones workshop: “How can Capstones enable empowering transformative experiences?”

This question was chosen to connect capstones to M-ITI’s mission: “To research, enable, design and create transformative experiences that empower people to live the best possible lives in harmony with the environment.”

Think of a situation in which you had- or you enabled a transformative experience. What did you do? How did you feel? What resources were available to you?“

In addition to the personal transformative experiences, we talked about what would make Capstones transformative experiences for the students.

Actions:

• Novelty - new methods, tasks, people and tools
• Successful completions of tasks
• Sense of creating a product
• Clarity of direction
• Understanding of own capabilities
• Identifying with the cause
• Cultural exposure
• Projects being used and useful beyond the end-date of Capstones

Aside from all the emotions in the image above, patience and balance were mentioned as important in the experience of Capstones.

Resources needed:

• Positive team dynamics which includes productive conflict, good team-mates
• Access: to users, good internet access, as well as reliable power and appropriate equipment
• Time - to work on the project, but also enough time away from the project
• Creative working space, 'decorated' with things that make people happy
• Additional communication skills
• Budget

• What do we know about the current situation of Capstones?
• What can we presume about Capstones?
• What do we not know about Capstones?

Drivers of change: technological

Drivers of change: economic and environmental

Drivers of change: societal and political

Four scenarios were created, see more about the scenarios on their respective pages:

• Crescendo where growth is primary motivation
• Dystopia where the world as we know it collapsed
• Extreme New World where discipline reigns
• Robot Caregivers where the world is transformed

• What is the project?
• Who is it for?
• Why is this project important?
• Where and how will it be used?
• What needs to be done? By whom? By when?

RootIO

PLAY

What is the root problem of this capstone project? How would you answer your core question in the four scenarios?

Question for RootIO

Answers from RootIO

Question for PLAY

Answers from PLAY

A series of coaching conversations with the two teams resulted in elaborations of goals, needs, features, options, benefits, risks and values.

Growth cards by Vali Lalioti used to guide conversations

Notes from RootIO discussions

Notes from PLAY discussions

RootIO

PLAY

some workshop_notes