Built for Us, Then Head to Head

Instructor: the room controls for this activity, and the room display for the projector.

Wednesday, September 30. I’m away again. You’re not: you meet in the room at 12:30 as usual, and this page runs the class, the same way it did on Friday. The box at the top says what’s on right now, how long is left, and what comes next.

Why Today

Soon you’ll build something for someone else in this room. Not for a user you imagine, for a classmate you can ask. That’s a different kind of building: you can’t decide what’s good on your own, and the person you’re building for can tell you when you’re wrong.

So today is about finding out what people here care about. You’ll meet four classmates, one after another, and with each one you’ll make up an app the two of you would actually use. Not a startup, not a business: something small that fits the life of the people at the table. By the end of the hour the room will have dozens of ideas, each one built on something real that two or three people share, and that’s the pile the next project starts from.

The second half picks up Friday’s finds. Every one of you went looking for personal websites that are effective and distinctive; today you look at each other’s, two at a time.

How Today Works

Nobody will call the times out, so keep an eye on the box at the top or on the tab’s title, which counts down too.

Being here today means two things. As on Friday, the work says it for me. First, meeting three different classmates in the rounds: a round counts once your group has saved an idea together, and it can only happen during the rounds, in the room. There are four, so missing one is survivable, but they can’t be made up, so be there at 12:30. Second, comparing 35 pairs of finds, which you have until Wednesday, October 7 at 12:30, when I show the results in class. The list at the bottom of this page ticks off as you go.

First: Three Things

Open your three and write down three things you care about or do a lot. Anything counts: a sport you play, a sport you watch, the bus you take, the way you and your roommates split groceries, the one recipe you’re known for, a club, a language, a game, a job, a worry. The more particular, the better. “Music” is true of everyone; “I make a playlist for every road trip home, and my sister always complains about it” is true of you.

You have three minutes. They’re there so that when you sit down with someone, you both have something to start from.

Then: Four Rounds

Each round is nine minutes, with someone new.

1. Find someone near you. Two people, or three if the room comes out odd. Someone you haven’t worked with today; the page will remind you if you have.
2. One of you types the other’s code. Your code is on the rounds page. Whoever typed it holds the pen first; either of you can take it.
3. Read each other’s three things out loud. Then talk until you find something you share, or something close enough: you both cook, one of you cooks and the other one eats, you both hate the same thing about the same place.
4. Invent one app the people at the table would actually use, and write it down: what it’s called, what it does, and who it’s for, meaning what the people in your group have in common that it’s built on. It doesn’t have to be possible, and it doesn’t have to be good. It does have to be for you.

Every round is a new idea, even if your new partner loves your last one. The page shows what each of you has already made, so you know what not to make again. Four rounds is four ideas each, all different, all for somebody real.

The talking is the work. Talk in whatever language you share, write things down before you say them if that helps, and a pair that goes quiet for a minute to think isn’t broken.

What the Room Came Up With

When the fourth round ends, the page gathers every idea in the room and groups them by what they’re about: what this class cares about, in your own words. Every idea is there with the names of the people who made it, because when the next project starts, that’s how you’ll find someone to build for.

Then: Head to Head

At 13:09, on your own: open the vote. You’ll see two of your classmates’ finds side by side, live, each with the two sentences its finder wrote, and without the finder’s name. Look at both, open them in their own tabs if the frames are cramped, and answer two questions:

• Which is more effective? Which one does what it’s for better?
• Which is more distinctive? Which one would you recognize with the name covered?

The two answers don’t have to agree, and often they won’t: that’s the reason there are two. If you want, add a line on why. Then the next pair.

• You never see your own finds, and you never see the same pair twice.
• If a site won’t load, say so with the link under it, and you’ll get another pair. If enough people say the same site won’t load, it leaves the vote.
• 35 pairs is today’s ask. That’s about thirty minutes if you take each pair seriously, which is the point: you’re looking at more personal websites in half an hour than most people see in a year. If you run out of class time, you have until Wednesday, October 7 at 12:30. After 35 you can keep going; every pair makes the ranking sharper.

Nobody sees the standings until I show them in class on October 7: two rankings, one for each question, and the leaderboard of whose finds the room rated highest. Your name is on it only if you turned it on at your eight, and you always see where your own finds placed. Nothing about it is graded.

Before You Go

Tell the course how today went. As on Friday, nobody was in the room to see for themselves, so what you say is how I find out.

If you’d rather see it than read it, there’s a walkthrough of the whole day, recorded end to end on students’ screens and mine: three things, two rounds with a new partner each time, the room’s ideas sorted at 13:09, and a few pairs compared in Head to Head.