What does collaboration look like? Having run The Design Office — a collaborative of designers — for 10 years, I have been keeping a list of ways that designers can work together — since the term gets thrown around as something that is either easy to achieve or necessary.
I’d like to stage photographic sequences for each of the collaborative models. Probably would take place in an abstracted white room setting… but perhaps also at The Design Office big table. Images would be inspired by 1970s matter-of-fact how-to imagery … but using contemporary tools and dress.
Collaborative models
- Back and forth: Limited number of participants (2 ideally), with everyone shaping it in an ongoing and iterative way. One person working, then passing to next.
- Crowd-sourced: One person asks, people in other places satisfy that ask. Best result(s) used.
- Active hand-off: One person designs, then hands to the next person
- Passive hand-off: One person designs, leaves the design, another person chooses to pick it up.
- Parallel play: All doing same task alongside each other. Pick from results or combine results
- Perpendicular play: All doing different projects alongside each other. Ideas rub off.
- Group share: One larger task is done by multiple people at the same time in the same space.
- Group split: One larger task is broken up into smaller tasks then recombined or synthesized. Larger task may be known (have been planned out) or unknown (needs to be discovered)