Studio Unbound V

This week I traveled to Dundee to present Studio Unbound to the Masters of Design students,  as well as some Design Ethnography Master students. This is my  fifth Studio Unbound session and this time I invited James Porteous to join me via skype. James is a designer from Glasgow school of Art, studying on the Product Design course, with interests ranging from traditional areas of the subject, through to aspects such as service and interaction design. Outside of this, he works as a photographer, covering sports, news, music for various publications and clients, both online and off. James was in the audience at Studio Unbound II - shortly after attending , he wrote:

"So, I guess you could say I was skeptical of what I was going to learn (Sorry!), but the whole thing was very convincing. The depth of their arguments was engaging, and the discussion after the talk was as useful as the presentation itself. Looking at the numbers of people from the evening who are now embarking on blogging and micro-blogging, it’s plain to see that the event hit the mark."

He now twitters, keeps a blog and has an individual project blog. Sarah and me have been watching from afar and it is so brilliant to see that James has interpreted our talk in his own way and is clearly getting something out of it! In one project blog alone he has written over 10,ooo words which he admits would not have happened if it had not been for his digital platform.

James was brilliant and provided yet another perspective to what the Studio Unbound can achieve. The audience asked some great questions like "Do you have methods for this stuff?". Well, at the moment we have methods set up to run one to one Studio Unbound sessions with students to prepare them in lots of different ways for embracing the digital world. Our next step will be developing tools to capture what we do and evidence to prove it works.

A conclusion that came of out of the discussion was "Never tell anyone you are a student unless you are asked." Yes - you study ethnography but you are still an ethnographer. One student remarked "This can clearly lead to brain overload" and of course she was right! James rightly put it saying "There is so much to be said for switching off "...

Keep up with the Studio Unbound conversation and welcome new comers here.