♣️Card Sorting

Co-opted from Dana Karwas' Pre-Thesis Syllabus

There's Always Room For Good Ideas Illustration by Jolby from Gettoworkbook

Card sorting is about creating associations between information. Please complete the following steps and take pictures of your cards at the end of each step. Post the results to your project website.

CARD SORTING:

• Use a dark pen or sharpie to write.

• Get four different colors of post-it notes or index cards.

• Take pictures of each step along the way. Make sure the photos are lit well and have good contrast.

• Upload your photos to your process website.

Step 1: PROJECT or THEME CARDS

Identify five existing digital media projects/apps/events/games/installations/etc. that are of interest to you and which relate to the thesis topics that you have been throwing around. Create project cards with the project names. For example, if you were inspired by the Rain Room installation at the MoMA, you would write “Rain Room” on a project card. All the project cards should be the same color.

Step 2: DESCRIPTOR CARDS (What is it? What are its components?)

Choose a second card color and create a set of descriptor cards for each project by listing adjectives or traits of those projects. Try to extract at least three descriptor cards per project. For the Rain Room project, the descriptor cards could be: environment, feeling of rain, spectacle, scientific, weather, biological connection, and installation. All the descriptor cards should be the same color.

Step 3: ENABLER CARDS (What Assets/Tools/Technology Do You Need To Create Your Project?)

Choose a third card color and create three enabler cards for each project. The enabler cards are underlying traits that enable the project to exist -- the technology, software, circumstance, environment, or tools that are needed for the project. For a painting, enabler cards would be paint, brushes, easel, subject, canvas, or light. (It is OK to use more than the suggested amount of cards.) All the enabler cards should be the same color.

Step 4: IDEA CARDS

Now is the fun part. Take a look at all of your cards. Lay all the projects and their cards out on the table and start to pull descriptor and enabler cards that interest you (choosing from all the projects). Start to make associations between the cards to form ideas. If you don’t see what you want on an existing card, add more descriptor and enabler cards in a miscellaneous group that is not attached to an existing project.

Take the cards and play with them so they come together to form ideas for a project. Once you have an idea, write it on a new idea card. Do this multiple times and take photos of your idea cards. Try to play with the idea of contrast, and pairing complementary or opposite things together. Think also about what interests you in the existing projects, and why those projects are interesting. Look closely at the relationships between the elements of your newly created ideas.

Once you come up with a project idea, try to deconstruct it and organize different groups of descriptor and enabler cards that would be relevant to the same idea. For example, if your project idea is to provide the experience of weightlessness, think of different ways to make that happen – it could be a 3-D goggles project, or a physical experience, or a sound installation. Try to come up with different sets of cards that describe the same idea, or describe a different realization of the same idea.

Step 5: IDEA LIST

Figure out which of these ideas speak most strongly to you. Make a ranked list of the idea cards. Ask yourself why you choose those cards, and why the idea is interesting to you. Take photos and notes and post to your project management platform.