Improvisation in the Design Classroom

The Improv Critique

The Improv Critique is a means of bringing a given sampling of student work out from under the constraints imposed upon it by students’ often limited perceptions of the possibilities — an initial narrow range of conventional ideas. Our goal is to help students discover more surprising and engaging design. Improv critique begins by forming students into groups of four or five. We ask each student to submit something they’re currently working on, such as a logo iteration, a series of page spreads, or an interface screen. One by one, each student in the group presents the work to be “critiqued” on a table or a wall (print media), or full screen on a large display monitor (screen media). We have learned that, to aid focus, the work being discussed should be isolated from other visual stimuli that might distract attention, although attending to this is not crucial to the success of the exercise.

Recall that one of Saltojanes’ primary rules of improv is to Listen to what is said by those around. Because this exercise also includes a visual component (the work), we add the rule “Look” at the artifact under discussion. The critique begins as one person in the group offers a concrete statement about what he or she reads, perceives, or observes in the work. He or she might state, “It’s a lonely sky,” or “The red is smiling,” or “It’s an upside-down coffee cup.” Because the exercise asks students to enter into a wholly imaginative space of play, everything that is said initially is in fact true in that moment. Another person in the group then responds (again, while also looking at the work) with “Yes, and ...,” and adds a new bit of information, such as “Yes, and the sky is lonely because it has no clouds;” “Yes, and the red is smiling like a Cheshire cat;” “Yes, and coffee is spilled all over the table.” Because every addition becomes true upon utterance, statements are spoken in the present tense. Additionally, students who try to plan what they will say instead of listening to the previous statement and building on it find that their contributions do not fit into the flow of the emerging narrative.

The improv critique continues in this manner with each student speaking one after the other, around and around within the group. Meanwhile, the person whose work is being “critiqued” writes down what he or she hears. The round is complete when either time is up (usually between five and ten minutes, depending on the complexity of the piece), or the round yields at least a dozen or more “Yes, ands.” Upon completion of the improv critique, everyone applauds (Applause!) before the group moves on to critique the next person’s work.

Improvisation requires free and immediate associations, individual interpretation, and timely and responsive reactions to advance the narrative. We have found that design students sometimes have a difficult time making direct and imaginative statements in this context. They often start by describing the thing they’re looking at literally (“It’s red and green,” “It’s making use of a classical typeface,” and so on). We have found that we need to prompt students to move beyond simple formal descriptions, encouraging them to freely interpret what they see and respond to what has been said. Students also initially tend to employ common “design speak,” prefacing statements with tropes such as “I think it looks like ... ,” “It feels like ... ,” or “It reminds me of ... .” Such deferrals direct focus away from the work being discussed and prevent students from engaging in an exchange rooted in the all-important now. Students also typically begin with “Yes, but ... ,” which implies rejection rather than acceptance of what is offered. SO — “buts” are not allowed. Nor are “ifs.” Only “Yes, and” can propel the critique into an unpredictable narrative.

Changing up the group members and running the exercise several times, perhaps with other artifacts that students are in the process of realizing, gives the students more material to work with and affords time for everyone to become comfortable with the practice in order to understand its potential for instigating lateral creative thinking.

The “I Wish ...” Critique

The “I Wish ...” Critique uses improv practices and rules to guide the iterative development of students’ design work and help them expand the scope of their formal and conceptual ideas. This activity places students outside of project brief criteria (should these exist), and aims to interrupt both their self-imposed constraints, or those that have been inspired by language in the brief, or both. We have found that students who attempt to design work under these types of constraints can inhibit their own progress toward developing fresh (for them) ideas. As of this writing in January 2018, we have only tested this critique format at the point in the design process when a given project is nearing resolution, at least in the mind of the students who are anxious to complete a project.

To facilitate this type of critique, we separate students in the class into pairs, and then ask each student to present some part of his or her project for review by his or her partner. Paired students gather around a large piece of paper, such as butcher paper. Tracing paper, markers, scissors, adhesives, and other making materials are at the ready to facilitate quick ideation during the “I Wish ...” Critique.

The pairs of students critique one student’s work at a time. The student whose work is under review may take a brief minute or two to describe a particular aspect of or about his or her project, but long, drawn out defenses of the work are pointless in this exercise. The dialogue is prompted with the reviewer stating three “wishes” that he or she believes the work should fulfill in three successive rounds. The first of these wishes is practical: “I wish the letters were larger in scale.” The second is arbitrary: “I wish the letters were reflective.” The third is an absurd wish: “I wish the letters acted like kids jumping in a bounce house.” In improv fashion, the student being critiqued cannot question or reject the reviewing student’s wishes, but must accept them as points-of-fact that must be addressed. (Applause!) A student who express “wishes” likely has reasons for making particular wishes for a specific work, especially the practical one. However, the improv rule “Assume You Know” comes into play here, which means that the student whose work is under review accepts that the reasons and rationales that are guiding his or her partner’s wishes are sound.

Once one student makes the first wish on behalf of his or her partner, both students set out to realize the wish through drawing, diagramming, illustrating, etc. using available materials. To visually manifest the wish, the partners build on each other’s ideas in one or a series of connected visualizations. In this way, both students assume ownership of the work and together, enact the wish fulfillment with the butcher paper before them. Once a pair of students fulfills the three wishes for the first of their pair, they reverse roles and repeat the process for the second.

Following both the “Improv” and the “I Wish ...” critiques, we ask students to quickly develop additional iterations, or to engage in further ideation, regarding a specific component of the project-in-progress (this sometimes occurs collaboratively, and other times occurs independently). Immediate return to the design allows students to apply to the work at hand concepts and ideas uncovered and / or invented during the critique, which effectively influences ensuing production. The visualized “wishes” serve as a document of the conversation as students proceed toward the final work. Students need not heed the wishes literally. Rather, the wishes and the ideas they spark are meant to encourage lateral thinking, to help students see their work in a fresh light and return to the full scope of the project with renewed energy.

The “OK, GO!” Workshop

The title of this workshop, “OK, GO!”, reflects its purpose: to jump-start ideation early in the students’ design process with the aim of initiating concepts through visual exploration toward unforeseeable options. The first round of this workshop launches with two trigger questions: “What is it?” and “What is it not?” — the “it” being whatever students are working on to fulfill the parameters for a given project: a museum brand identity, for example. The students, teachers, and TAs (Teaching Assistants) who are participating in the workshop shout out anything that comes to mind that might be informed, at least in part, by their acquired knowledge about and lived experience with whatever is being designed. Someone then records the statements on a chalkboard or whiteboard: “It is free!;” “It is multifarious!;” “It is not silent;” “It is not scary.” Everyone in the room is called upon to contribute at least one word in response to each of the two trigger questions. The words need not be the truest, nor the most exact or accurate, but, once they have been stated and recorded as concepts, they become “fact for the moment,” as improv rules dictate.

A second round of this workshop invites all of the participants to add a descriptive association as a phrase to the first round of statements and words to render each more concrete. For example: “It is free!” might be amended by “... like Harris Teeter™ sugar cookies,” or by “... like Wikipedia,” or by “... like air.” Any and all associations offered become valid and are written on the chalkboard or whiteboard. These phrases then serve as prompts for the ensuing “performance,” which entails rapid image creation in a series of quick, five-minute rounds. Students sketch, draw, photograph, collage, construct, etc. using any media at hand and any digital software they have access to. In the first few rounds of these experiences, students create new images. In subsequent rounds, they build upon, add to, and / or manipulate selected images from previous rounds, applying the improv ethos of trying to add on to what has been posited previously as truths. These latter rounds are meant to evolve rather than to refine the images. Students end these processes by papering the walls of the classroom with all of the images they have produced. (Applause!) Together, the class identifies and discusses visual and conceptual patterns, triggers, and provocations as they affect and are affected by the project parameters.

In our experience, students, upon completing the “OK, GO!” workshops, begin the project with openness and concrete starting points. Students effectively triangulate their “improv” experiences and outcomes with their own hopes for the project, as well as with the project requirements. As creative individuals, design students naturally “put-two-and-two-together” in order to make something that not only has not been made before, but that can also be considered good. When the whole class contributes to this goal together, the design work developed by each student with input from his or her peers is positively affected.

Picking up threads

The three exercises described in this article represent some of the many ways of introducing and then practicing the improvisational mindset into the design classroom. Improvisation is just one framework educators can use to teach students that uncertainty is an asset, and that responsiveness to change is an essential skill that enhances the design process. The beneficial outcomes of learning exercises like these, we speculate, make for more broad-minded design students who will carry such skills beyond the safe margins of the learning environment.

Pedagogical approaches using similar methods have been explored since at least the early 20th century. Blueprint for Counter Education was conceived by Maurice Stein and Larry Miller and designed by Marshall Heinrichs (1970), and included three, folded 45” × 37 1/4” posters plus a booklet entitled “Shooting Script.”[6] The publication served as a syllabus of sorts for a program of courses offered beginning in 1971 at the California Institute of the Arts (formerly the Chouinard Institute) in its Department of Critical Studies.

The posters were originally designed to function as “a portable learning environment for a new process-based model of education, and a bibliography and checklist that map[s] patterns and relationships between radical thought and artistic practices — from the avant-gardes [sic] to postmodernism.” Although anchored in the philosophies and theories of Herbert Marcuse and Marshall McLuhan, the posters presented students with a wide range of discussion points and potential trajectories of study. Selecting as a starting point a theorist, philosopher, or concept from one of the posters is akin to picking up a prompt to initiate an improv scene. In use, Blueprint inspired what were called “wanderings.” Students embarked on explorations that were “predicated on individual perceptions, relationships among participants, text and visual pairings, and the immediate environment in time (physical contexts).” In a word, improvisation. The fact that Blueprint was re-printed in 2016 suggests renewed interest in pedagogical and curricular reform in the process of adapting to diverse cultures that thrive on change.[7]

Inserting improv practices and rules of play into design (or any) pedagogy teaches students to appreciate and accept that which can be expressed and that can occur “in the moment.” They also learn that this type of acceptance precludes judgement in this process. Improv practices are, by definition, social and collaborative, and, if the ground is well-prepared, lead to fertile environments for learning and creativity. Improv rules help to encourage participation and elicit responsiveness in any momentary design scenario. These rules exemplify the value of expanding and adding to the ideas of others while maintaining a focus on the larger goal of generating appropriate and surprising design rather than on boosting individual performance. The lessons of improvisation, as well as the experience of improvising, help shift the design mindset from “I must solve this problem” to “We must construct something together and see what it tells us.”[8]

Improv players are fond of prefacing performances with something along the lines of “This is the very first and very last time you will see this.” What might happen if design educators were to attempt to guide their students through thinking and problem-solving processes wherein the principal ethos is exactly that? (Applause!)