Setting aside the refinement, as I've realised that the parts I really need to focus on there is the activity, not the tool... We had a session of world cafe today - reminiscent of DECO3500 but with some... improvements I would say. The benefit of a larger class meant more ideas, but also more perspectives so that the ideas that did get presented were more vivid amd varied.

In light of recent reflection where I considered the consequence of format consideration, I'll go with a bullet list of what I considered to be the more interesting points for each round here...

Round 1: Musical Things

• A quick start, cause everyone was excited perhaps, the first round the group still felt fresh and excited.
• "A musical instrument is a musical thing"
• a thing that producs sound is an instrument
• provided there's control, anything can be an instrument
• Musical prosthetics that make sounds
• Doot (trumpet sounds) as communication
• A musical tunnel that reacts to your movements
• Would speed affect this?
• Also sounds like an opportunity for trippy visualisation
• Just wearing a music suit with bits of instruments on them
• No need to think up completely new usages of instruments
• simply adaptations of instruments, grafterd onto a suit kinda thing it seems
• Kick Drum with literal kicking
• So taking literal actions and making them instruments
• Taking activities you do in real life and generating music based on the data, like your running path generating a unique track you can share

Round 2: Enhanced Mundane Spaces

• What is mundanity?
• "repetititon and tedium"
• Musical instruments - tedious for children
• have to repeat same musical notes, not very exciting
• Mundanity of packing bags
• packing things can be a tedious process
• too many things make going around for the day tedious
• too much extr weight, can't even use the things being carried sometimes (like chargers not being tested and tagged)

Round 3: Enhanced Mudane Spaces (Host)

• Making cars more involved - people tend to zone out
• more involvement in general, there's lots of tasks people lose focus at because they're so dull or repetitive
• Driving Dungeon
• an enclosed but safe location to practice driving
• replicating conditions while driving... how? (unfinished point)
• Kindergarden jail
• Teach discipline by recording every action
• children that break the rules get set to time out
• recording of mistake replayed over and over until they learn

Round 4: Musical Metrics

• Pretend to be a construction worker, make music with fake construction tools
• So, turning data and information into music through various methods
• Musical playground
• Things like monkey bars and slide becoming instruments
• Turning graph into a slide, customise graph, get a crazy slide

Round 5: Creative Learning

• A variety of topics to learn
• color theory
• math
• artistic skills
• how to drive
• being ambidexterous
• the methods for learning however... those were harder to think of, what makes for a successful learning experience?
• using texture to trigger certain associations
• A bear that falls apart when answering questions wrong
• In hindsight I regret not taking charge with more drawing ... speaking out ideas and brainstorming here was great but it feels like I just help put down a small wall of text

Round 6: Guided Movement

• I would argue this rund was ... our least successful table session
• combination of factors
• not the hosts fault as there was too much to summarise
• a lot of existing suggestions were abstract tech descriptions about locating common things, rather than promoting interesting movements
• we kept going around to see what could be modified..., but no real thoughts on how to break these complex down or use them successfullly.

Round 7: Change Through Discomfort

• So, forcing a break in habits so that people stop doing things that are damaging to themselves and others
• Smoking damages / changes the colour of your clothes and or accesories
• A fridge that requires a prompt to open, lock out wasteful roommates from grabbing food from them

Round 8: Altered Landscapes

• many ideas focusing on transforming the campus through mixed reality, so.. literally transforming the landscape
• seeing the university at night during daytime or vice versa
• lighting being different, or the atmosphere or mood being mismatched between what you see, and what you hear
• admittedly you'd have to be in a space where you're thethered because processing day and making it look night is a rather.. large task
• drawing inspiration - take a picture of your friend, then draw them to show them off on the building
• so getting people to take a closer look around things they see
• not just a giant screen taking up space, but promotes some form of reflection and consideration of parts of the environment people pass by... provided the focus is around everything in the area, and not just drawing your friends funny

What Went Well?

• Especially in earlier sessions - collaboration where we could get everyone doing something
• Free flowing ideas and not many expectations
• arguably lost later on as more and more things were on the butchers papers, perhaps this became a bit overwhelming.
• using silence, holding back and waiting could sometimes trigger some group members to contribute ideas - most of the time being proactive still would have been the ideal however

What Didn't?

• A tapering off of ideas in the later rounds
• I think it was because people needed to be more careful with suggestions
• Takes more time to think through an idea than just lay one down
• Many people gave up on drawing things after the second and third rounds, myself included (because the papers were more filled, there was less space to draw things out too
• A lot of text, reading everything could be fatiguing
• many times everything from the previous x rounds would be ignored in favour of something completely new with no baggage
• needed to engage more with what we already had rather than what we could have
• not a bad thing, but it meant some potentially cool ideas got dusted
• Directions - text was all over the place - might have been somewhat disorienting
• We didn't end up sticking to the instructions, some portions of refinements we simply continued with different approaches to ideas, or tweaks and improvements, so some thoughts on making it practical, but still dreaming quite big
• maybe we were intended to think of each third of the three mega rounds just as different forms of brainstorming

Thought Train and Carriages

• A little concerned at how long this took to go over
• even just covering important details... not much success at reflecting on them, but gathering the bits and pieces to use later for other things was helpful
• spent a bit too much time trying to refine this post...
• inspirations in progress, it's its own post for now... chosen domain will be discussed there.