Ritual Project
Brief
For this project, you will be designing a ritual and producing a prototype for a mobile app interface that would support the ritual in some way. A ritual is a designed experience that combines habits and routine with symbolism, ultimately producing an event or moment that has meaning. Rituals are intended to be specially-designed events that provide opportunities for reflection, celebration, connectivity, behavioral nudging, focus, reinforcement, and more. An example of a small or humble ritual could be a group of friends who have lunch together every week or a busy professional who writes reflective journal entries at the end of the day. Larger, more prestigious rituals include graduation ceremonies, weddings, and organized sporting events like football and baseball. Small rituals tend to not require many resources, are relatively inexpensive, and occur more frequently than larger rituals, some of which may only be experienced once in a lifetime.
A ritual is an interesting design problem because it is produced for the purpose of disrupting the flow of everyday concerns to bring about new perspective. This is counter to the way we typically think about design – as something that you wouldn't notice if it is done well.
Inspiration
See Wade Davis TED Talk on ritual and what makes us human. (19:08)
https://www.ted.com/talks/wade_davis_on_the_worldwide_web_of_belief_and_ritual
Medium articles:
- Can we design rituals to improve orgs’ culture?
- The 3 most unconventional designers of 21st century — starting with Design shaman
Previous student work
"Signly" by Daniel Bershefsky, 2017: Download (10MB)
Materials and tools
- Camera (a smartphone camera is fine)
- InVisionApp account (free)
- Graph paper
- Pens, pencils, markers
- Scissors
- Post-It notes