Activities

The Wonderful World of Make Believe

Session Title

The Wonderful World of Make Believe

Presenter

Alexa Andrzejewski, Adaptive Path

Session Type: Activity

Have you ever set out to “reimagine an experience,” only to find yourself feeling trapped? The harder we try, the harder it is to escape from assumptions about what something should be like. But if trying harder isn’t the answer, how then can we break free?

Do you remember playing “let’s pretend” as a child. Children have an uncanny ability to immerse themselves in imaginary experiences and see the world through fresh eyes. By engaging a little “Make Believe” yourself, you will find that you can still awaken these abilities!

Join this session to give it a try: Based on the “Wand in the World” activity developed by Kate Rutter at Adaptive Path, you’ll be given a random object and sent out beyond the conference room walls and into the world. By imagining that this object is the thing you’re redesigning, you can see for yourself what new ideas and paradigms can emerge when you step into the Wonderful World of Make Believe!

Biography

As an interaction designer for Adaptive Path and formerly for Lextant, Alexa has immersed herself in the worlds of nuclear pharmacists, smartphone users and diabetics.

Left-brained by nature, Alexa is always seeking new ways to channel analytic energy into experiential thinking and idea generation. Her interest in “creativity for left brained people” has been put to use in projects ranging from creating a motivating learning environment for Smart.fm to reimagining the mobile device of the future for a major handset manufacturer.

She strives to advance these design tools and methods through blogging, writing and speaking. Recent appearances include UX Week 2009, the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and New York, and LIFT 2008 in South Korea.

In addition to her work at Adaptive Path, Alexa is also investing her Experience Design skills into founding a new social startup called Foodspotting (http://www.foodspotting.net).

One Comment

  1. Posted October 1, 2009 at 10:30 pm

    Sounds very interesting—I’d be interested in attending this. I like the idea of going out into the world to look at design in new ways.