Unit 15 · The rule nobody expected
Week 16 · 45 minutes · 10th and 11th grade · every project, alone or in a group.
What you’ll do
Version 2 of your project. First someone who isn’t on your team tries it —plays it, uses it or hears it— while you watch without explaining anything. What you see —where they hesitate, where they get bored, where they do something you didn’t expect— is your material for changing the rules.
Why it’s worth it
A project only its authors understand isn’t ready yet. Testing with others and changing things because of what you saw, not what you wanted, is what real designers do. And there’s more: when the tool builds in your change, you’ll record where it failed. That’s part of your project too.
How the session goes
- Anticipate. You write what you think will happen when someone else tries your version 1, and which criterion you’ll watch for.
- Act. Use test by tables, in ninety-second turns with the volume low. You watch and take notes, without explaining.
- Reflect. One minute of silence to write. Then one sentence per project, starting with C1, C2 or C3. Did what you anticipated happen?
- Act again. Ten minutes without screens to rewrite rules and card by hand and decide whether you need to generate, or whether paper is enough. If you need to: a single generation per project, counted on the board, after checking aloud that the card carries no one’s data.
- Reflect. Listening against the criteria, the record of where the tool failed and which trade would have done that work. Did the instruction get better, or did the question get better? What did the AI decide here that a person should have decided?
The criteria
- C1. You changed at least one rule because of something you saw in the test, and you can say what.
- C2. The new rule fits in your project without breaking it, and you can defend it.
- C3. Someone trying it for the first time understands the new rule without having it explained.
If your project is without AI
You make your full version 2 with your technique —on paper, physical or digital without AI—, with the same time, the same envelope and the same criteria, within your materials and time budget and without waiting in the queue. Where others note where the tool failed, you note where your technique or your material pushed back and what you decided because of it. In the listening, the question for you is: what did you decide, and why?
If your project can’t be tried yet
You try the paper rules of another project at your table, build today’s change into them and hand them back to their authors. They decide whether to adopt it: you propose, they decide. And if your project is on paper today, you build everything in by hand and join the listening just the same.
For inspiration
- Soccer with a rule that doesn’t exist — how far a project can go by February, seen from a distance.
- Point or not? — how you explain a doubtful rule, in any project.
- Padel against the wall
To rewrite your card, use the assistant for building your instruction.
A warning
There will be a sealed envelope on the table from the first minute, and it’s read aloud to everyone at once. A perturbation you see coming isn’t one. If you haven’t lived this Unit yet, don’t open it.
Reveal this Unit's perturbation
10th grade: “New rule, for every project: your project has to have a twist —something that changes halfway through that the person using it doesn’t see coming. For example: in a game, the rules flip halfway; in a song, the rhythm changes; in an app, a question appears that forces a choice; in a story, the narrator turns out to be another character. Decide what your twist is and where it goes. Eight minutes, on paper.”
11th grade: “New rule, for every project: whoever uses your project has to make a choice that changes what happens next, and that choice costs something: gaining one thing means losing another. For example: in a game, spending lives to open a shortcut; in an app, choosing between the quick answer and the full one; in a song or a story, the listener picks the ending and loses the other. Build that choice in and explain why its cost is fair. Eight minutes, on paper.”
It’s the same for every project in the group and it isn’t scored. If a team gets stuck, the person guiding the session can lift it for that team, without saying anything aloud, and that team carries on with just the changes from the test.
What this is, and what it isn’t
This Unit’s design is original: a design position, not a research finding, and the perturbation is a declared experiment. It promises no effect. Nothing is graded. Your version 2 stays in your project’s folder and its private repository; nothing is published without written consent for that piece. If your project has a narrator or character, it follows the rules you wrote in Unit 12: it’s never a companion.