I recently recorded 3 short YouTube lectures on developing digital artefacts. Previously, I’ve outlined how I use the concept of digital artefacts in my piece on teaching digital media in a systemic way. In brief, the digital artefact assessment framework I developed gives students the opportunity to work on projects with real-world implications and relevance, that is, projects with nonlinear outcomes aimed at real stakeholders, users, and audiences. The only criteria for a digital artefact are that 1] artefacts should be developed in public on the open internet, therefore leveraging non-linearity, collective intelligence and fast feedback loops, and 2] artefacts should have a clearly defined social utility for stakeholders and audiences outside the subject and program. Below is my lecture outlining the key aspects of the digital artefact development process.
Fail Early, Fail Often [#fefo] is a developmental strategy originating in the open source community, and first formalized by Eric Raymond in The Cathedral and the Bazaar. In the context of teaching and learning, FEFO asks creators to push towards the limits of their idea, experiment at those limits and inevitably fail, and then to immediately iterate through this very process again, and again. At the individual level the result of FEFO in practice is rapid error discovery and elimination, while at the systemic level it leads to a culture of rapid prototyping, experimentation, and ideation. Below is my lecture outlining the use of the #fefo philosophy in developing digital artefacts.
Fast, Inexpensive, Simple, Tiny [#fist] is a developmental strategy developed by Lt. Col. Dan Ward, Chief of Acquisition Innovation at USAF. It provides a rule-of-thumb framework for evaluating the potential and scope of projects, allowing creators to chart ideation trajectories within parameters geared for simplicity. In my subjects FIST projects have to be: 1] time-bound [fast], even if part of an ongoing process; 2] reusing existing easily accessible techniques [inexpensive], as opposed to relying on complex new developments; 3] constantly aiming away from fragility [simple], and towards structural simplicity; 4] small-scale with the potential to grow [tiny], as opposed to large-scale with the potential to crumble. Below is my lecture outlining the use of the #fefo methodology in developing digital artefacts.