"Original and world-changing design was long considered the product of solitary geniuses, masters and heroes, but recent research has argued that cultural innovation is often the result of everyday actions by ordinary people. This course critically and creatively examines the dynamic and collaborative networks that characterise professional and amateur design today, and prepares students to face the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead."

[Course aims, course content, course assignments (4 of them) follow, all worth reading]

To get started, students are required to complete the following task (adapted from The Exercise Book) for the first tutorial:

1) Go for a walk with a notebook and pay close attention to what’s going on around you.

2) Compose one written page with three sections. Start the first section with “I see…”, the second section with “I remember…” and the third section with “I imagine…”."

"I put a short post up a few days ago in an online group I’m in, with the above image and this brief description:

superhero school. center for disruptive innovation. continuous learning zone. collective intelligence. live/work startup incubator. community center. hackerspace. makerlab. autonomous zone. permaculture and sustainable food production. cooperatively owned communications infrastructure. resilience. r&d; lab. a place for creative troublemakers. hudson valley. i want this to exist.

It blew up to over 100 comments in less than 48 hours, with many people sharing their own thoughts and plans and existing initiatives to create similar things in their areas. I was inspired! Is this an idea whose time has come?"

[Also here (with comments): http://emergentbydesign.com/2011/11/09/superhero-school-an-epicenter-for-disruptive-innovation/ ]

"Now we are entering a third age in which the central economic actor is someone who both produces and consumes in the same act. I like the term “creator,” as this new kind of actor is doing something more fundamental than the mere sum of their simultaneous production and consumption. Creators are ordinary people whose everyday actions create value…

Not everything in the creator economy will require interaction, any more than manufacturing disappeared during the consumer economy. But the most successful companies will be the ones that harness creator instincts, and the biggest winners will be the companies who harness the smallest creative acts."

"Local Projects is a media design firm for museums and public spaces. We create a diverse range of installations from large environmental interactives, websites, and mobile applications, to simple experiences composed of thumbtacks, vellum, or conversation.<br />
While innovation drives much of today’s design, we’re interested in creating projects that can endure. For us at Local Projects, interaction design is more than just controlling technology. We create media that is integrated into architecture, and that connects people with the world and each other. We look to create experiences that inspire awe and wonder.<br />
<br />
Many of our projects are about co-creation: gathering visitor stories, or collecting opinions, or memories. We’ve learned that the most incredible material emerges when you create a platform for visitors to communicate."

"Increas­ingly, I’m con­vinced that no media is suc­cess­ful or even com­plete until it’s been trans­formed or extended. I know this is not super-controversial—it’s sort of the Cre­ative Com­mons party line—but it turns out things don’t trans­form them­selves! A lot of media gets CC-licensed and then just sits there.

"Many video games let you create (your own levels in a first-person shooter, your own creatures in an adventure, for example) and upload these creations so you can share them with other players. It's called participatory culture, where consumers are not couch potatoes but rather active participants and creators themselves. But some argue we're merely being tricked into thinking we're being creative."

"I like the idea of the event as a fun­da­men­tal unit of media, specif­i­cally because at its best, it can be gen­er­a­tive. And the media it generates—that grow­ing data shadow—is what builds the audi­ence over time. But its urgency—its live­ness, human vital­ity, and, frankly, its risk and unpredictability—is what makes it more than just another link in the stream.

"This online textbook is being created by Clay Burell's grade 9 Modern World History class in Seoul, South Korea"

"“We-Think” approach is not always the best, requiring as it does a good many preconditions, including a group of pioneers at its core, a wider circle of informed contributors, transparency and clear rules"

"Learning as a Process, Not a Product...spaces for exploration, experimentation, & problem solving...Games as Interdisciplinary Spaces...Serious Games and Participatory Culture...Reality -- Augmented, Alternate, & Otherwise"

"I think it's really important that we stop and look at the kind of participation and engagement actually engendered by projects that purport to solicit the collaboration of the audience."

"The channel is teaming with a gaming company to create a TV series that also plays out on the Web. Fans would help shape the story arc."

"In this deceptively casual talk, Charles Leadbeater weaves a tight argument that innovation isn't just for professionals anymore. Passionate amateurs, using new tools, are creating products and paradigms that companies can't."

"A brief presentation that describes skill sets of a super learner and what you can do to identify, develop, and enable them."

"Interview with Martin Konrad Gloeckle, NYC, on consumer co-design and his series of "un-readymade" designs, a great interpretation of the customization trend"

"the created products were named un-readymades to express the involvement of the end-user in the creation of the final product. they aim to inspire, encourage, and enable consumer involvement, creativity, and a deeper experience."

"describes how people participate in the development of products they use. For example, von Hippel in the fifth chapter uses the history of mountain biking to propound that users can also "be sophisticated developers"."

"So city leaders invest huge efforts to adapt school systems to demands of modern service & innovation economy...debate is about schools & teachers’ contracts, not about learning in families, communities & workplaces"

"can formal education learn from its informal counterpart, utilising the technologies that young people use outside of school, to offer a diverse, flexible and relevant curriculum? can school realistically take a co-design approach to lesson planning?"

"time is right to begin exploring aspects of DIY Future, especially profound implications for info arch & UX design. Using designer's powerful fusion of analytical perspective & creative vision, we can balance speculative futurism with an understanding of

"Unimaginable fast-food combos are available for those who utter the right code words at the take-out counter."

"people are already organizers and designers of experience par excellence...Weiser wanted to offer users ways to reach into and configure the systems they encountered; ideally, such seams would afford moments of pleasure, revelation and beauty."