Macro Unit Week One
Brief: Axa: Design a way for people to manage complex risk together
Methods: Brainstorming and article reviews.
Team: Qibin Cheng, Harry Solomons, Ruoxi Song, Wan Li, Mo Bekkouri, Roshni Suri, Yanxu Chen, myself
Axa were encouraging of our less conventional practices and pursuits on MAUX, and their openness to our independent creative process gave us the reassurance to research and design unrestrained. In hindsight, this was a challenge as much as a benefit, as there was no direction or end goal for our project.
We looked at the brief as an assembly of three points:
the risk;
the people;
the strategy to manage it
The group divided up the research to cover more ground, focussing on natural disasters, AI and health, however this resulted in more varied and disorganised information to filter through.
Initial research. Image by author
Understanding what strategies that are used today to mitigate or manage risk could direct and inspire what we would later create. Some interesting strategies we found were unions, Ask for Angela, and discreet communication for domestic abuse situations.
Strategy inspiration: UNISON logo, Ask Angela scheme, poster within clinic cubicle. Image credits below.
The connection between these strategies was how it originated upon people relying upon and trusting each other. This insight would later inform the final outcome of our project.
As we had no clear direction from the brief, our first step was to frame some project proposals for review and feedback by the tutors:
Resistance Movement to disrupt AI art by digital artists
Re-invigorating non-digital forms of education to offset the learning done online
Re-engaging the community feedback system, sharing restaurant reviews in a non-digital form to avoid fake results
The most notable piece of feedback was our project directions were not following the Axa departments we were working with (Cars and Health). Whilst I appreciate the tutors were not aware that Axa had given us the freedom to pursue any topic, it was quite a rough start to the project to have our ideas pushed back so quickly.
The project has started slowly while we try and pick an area to situate ourselves within. This is needs to be a careful choice, as the consequences of this will affect how successful we are in the next 4 weeks. There is a lot of indecision and passiveness within the group; it is hard to make unanimous decisions as an eight. Splitting into the smaller groups will be essential to make progress next week.
UNISON logo. Available at: https://medialibrary.unison.org.uk/pages/search.php?search=%21collection225&k=ddc8806cb4# (Accessed: 13 April 2023).
Ask for Angela poster. Available at: https://burnhamvillage.uk/ask-for-angela-campaign/ (Accessed: 13 April 2023).
Domestic abuse poster. Available at https://i.redd.it/njkn1tubi2m11.jpg (Accessed: 13 April 2023).
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