My home assignment

6 years ago – in the Spring of 2008 – I applied for admission to Design School Kolding's Interaction Design programme. Through the previous one and a half year I had been attending different preparatory courses at different schools. To be honest, I didn’t know that I wanted to apply for before late 2007 (like super late, as in December), because I had a master plan which should in the end, after all my fun, send me to study math at University. Things sometimes change.

The assignment I chose out of the two given out, took it’s starting point in the clashes that had been going on between the police and second-generation immigrants in 2007 and 2008. It was very much in the news at this time. I had to create some kind of design around these events and problems. 

First, I went into the problem trying to understand it. What was actually happening? What did the immigrants feel and think? Why were they so angry with the police? What did the police do? How did it reflect on the rest of the country? I found that people in the ghettos were frustrated with the massive police presence and they felt that they were met with brutality and that the police were insulting, offending and defamatory towards the citizens in these areas. And therefore the young boys went into fights with the police.

I thought that with good education the boys picking the fights could find other ways to change the problem. Because as I saw it, the fighting could give them a criminal record that would hunt them for the next years and compromising their chancers of getting jobs etc. 

Therefore I chose to focus on the youngest of the kids in creating a room, which should stimulate the kids' senses based on the idea of humans having eight intelligences. If kids' senses are stimulated it is easier for them to concentrate, learn and it can change their behavior.

I focused on the tactile sense, the sense of sight and the auditory sense:

• For the tactile sense I create a surface with undulating movements and heating elements to raise the temperature a bit.
• For the sense of sight I placed a kaleidoscope in the ceiling reflecting the sun and elements on the wall.
• For the auditory sense I found some instrumental sound art pieces and real sounds which could be selected on the pad on the wall.
• In the end I created a doodling pad where kids could draw and record the story of it and share it with their friends.

Thinking back at this, I first have no idea of why I did a new project at the last two pages of my application. And secondly; it’s quite funny that I made this “interactive pad”, because this was way before the iPad even existed - or was talked about. :-) And why on Earth did I get in to Design School Kolding with these kind of badly handmade pages?

Sometimes it’s not all about the looks – and especially not at this home assignment. It’s about the process, the ideas and the experiments. And I think that’s why I got in – definitely not because of my drawings!

(I apologies for the pictures being soo blurry. What can I say? It was 6 years ago...)