Week 5 - Find your teachers
We dedicated this week to finalising our outcome, refining details and producing a high fidelity prototype and presentation.
We brainstormed and attempted other tools for global communication, yet we eventually decided that the most logical outcome for this would be through technology. However, we took a subversive and non-mainstream approach, in line with the brief’s emphasis on alternative systems.
Shaye and I were in charge of creating a prototype of the platform that interacts with the NFC “Teacher Tags”. When the NFC is scanned, it leads to a domain where students can log their teachers and learning, and read one another’s entries. This platform acts as a decentralised, evolving body of knowledge, shaped by the students themselves.
We adopted a more conventional UX methodology for the UI. We mapped out the actions required by students, and allocated them to corresponding screens. We drew up an initial concept and iterated it based on testing.
↑ Original UI. We decided to remove the welcome screen, make the branding match the physical brochure and improve usability and functionality.
We also created the branding for this course, with bright blue paying homage to the “blue screen of death” and the culture of white-hat hackers, who utilise their knowledge of mainstream technology for good.
The idea of the sticker was inspired by sticker-bombing (Vasileva, 2025) and language of hobo signs (Wanderer, 2002). Only those who know what this symbol means will know what it is and used for, making this public display safe. It turns the stickers into both an access point and a symbol of belonging.
Final outcome:
↑ Student ID helps physicalise the classroom for the dispersed cohort.
↑ Walkthrough around the digital platform.
↑ Whilst some fields to log a teacher exist, they are all optional.
↑ The taggers mark learnings and presence in the real world.
↑ Inspired by the way participants documented their learnings via Chazzo’s workshop, various inputs are available on the platform.
↑ All teachers can be viewed in chronological order, so students can be inspired from their cohort wherever. Input is also allowed in any language.
↑ MA Anarchism & Activism welcome pack - includes a brochure, Student ID, and Teacher Tags.
↑ The brochure provides information about the course and faculty. The course leader is you (shown in the mirror).
↑ Once scanned, the tags lead to a private platform to log learnings, share and be inspired by other students.
↑ The map shows nearby teachers added by others, to help find local cohort members.
↑ Quick look into a nearby teacher.
↑ In-depth look into another teacher allows for discussions and comments between fellow students.
Feedback:
We were suggested to attempt the task of seeking knowledge from non-human actors ourselves. As MAUX students, we’re familiar with concepts like posthumanism and artefact analysis. Whilst this felt intuitive to us, putting ourselves in the shoes of someone less familiar with these practices could have offered valuable insights into how others might engage with the system, especially given how abstract they can be. We could have done more to explain the method of artefact analysis in the examples we provided in the brochure, and how it might support learning. In future projects, I’d like to prioritise making unfamiliar or abstract methods like this more accessible, dedicating more of the process to building clarity into the final outcome.
Reflection:
To me, the brief was quite complex. As I mentioned in week 1, I felt anarchy and design are contradictory frameworks. I also think it would have been better had the big group split up sooner, based on each person’s priorities and areas of interest, and as we did in week 3. The initial toolkit idea influenced us all moving forward. Whilst I like the idea, I think ideating from scratch might’ve led to a different, better-suited outcome. Ultimately, I think we managed to deliver a high fidelity outcome up to a good standard, which was important to us.
references:
Vasileva, N. (2025). Young People Participating in Society: Cultural, Political and Economic Perspectives on Youth Culture Sticker Art in St. Petersburg. Tampere: Tampere University. Available at: https://trepo.tuni.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/205285/978-952-03-3820-6.pdf?sequence=2 (accessed 13 April 2025).
Wanderer, J.J. (2002). 'Embodiments of bilateral asymmetry and danger in hobo signs', Semiotica, 2002(142), pp. 85–102.