The proliferation of device culture, social networking, and cloud technology are changing the way we work, and connect on a daily basis. For designers, this means that technology is not only transforming the process of production, but also the through which we share, critique, and organize ourselves around the work we do.
“The Project is first, and foremost an experiment in distributed intelligence,” says Mark Collins, Co-Creator. “By leveraging the “wisdom of crowds” every designer can see and understand how his or her work is experienced by others”. It has been predicted that in 2020, there will be 50 billion mobile internet connections worldwide, the equivalent of seven devices per person. Thus, this experiment is not simply about the existence of technology, but rather why and how we harness it.
What is the future of critique, the essence of design culture, in this increasingly connected world? Is the speed at which images circulate around the globe, advancing the level of within and amongst design disciplines. When placed in opposition, the time honored design school tradition of convening public debate around a set of ideas, presents a stark contrast to the typical comment forum found in social media. Taken together, however, the spectrum of valuable means of gathering feedback about one’s work becomes visible. Its continued evolution will be impacted by the tools we create for sustaining and magnifying meaningful conversation, critique, feedback, and debate with a global community.
Project begins by re-imaging the portfolio. “Although essential to design culture, the current methods of creating and sharing design portfolios and presentations still ultimately rely on fixed notions of media, time and technologies of sharing,” says Anna Kenoff, Co-Creator. The design world is lacking in tools to understand how our work is consumed and experienced by those we most want to reach. The project ultimately asked, what would happen if you could merge processes of presentation, critique and collaboration into a single elastic platform?
