Hey so…

I found this old video that some students made back in the day showing the 2nd edition of the Work Kit of Design Fiction in action. It’s fun, simple, and makes good use of a Lazy Susan.

The overall sensibility is that there are some basic mechanics to playing with the work kit. What I’ve learned over the years is to recognize that some people need structure and rules to get going, while a small number of people can just dive in and start playing without any rules at all — or who spent enough time with the old MadLibs game that they get the sorta idea that these is generative and somewhat open-ended, which is to say there is just enough structure implied by the cards, and the way one might be inclined to lay-flat cards — different “suits” and such — that one can allow the combinations to produce a kind of generative effect.

”Rinse and Repeat.”

Part of the origination of the deck was to help people develop a muscle to contend with open-ended play. My belief is that developing that muscle for handling open-ended outcomes or trajectories is absolutely vital for bulking up one’s ability to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty, vital capabilities for strategic thinking, futuring, and just contending with the complexity and vagaries of life in general.

My general experience has been that over-indexing on structure, analytics, data and rigid frameworks tends to diminish one’s sensitivity to unexpected events, emergent phenomena, and the kinds of surprises that often lead to breakthroughs — or the kinds of events that are considered “Black Swans” — the over-structure oriented consciousness has a kind of myopia when it comes to sensing unknowns, and thence the phenomenon of the unknown-unknown increases in potentiality.

The Work Kit is a way to practice embracing ambiguity and uncertainty in a playful manner. Kettle bells for the brain.

P.S. I cannot actually recall the names of the students who made this video, and I found it on an old drive so there wasn’t much to go alongside of it. If you know who made it — or if you are reading this and made it — please let me know so I can give proper credit!