The 'nanas Project

The ‘nanas Project questions the idea of the designer as the unique source of creativity. We staged a study with the trappings of science — lab coats, formal signage, the apparatus of a research setting — and used bananas as stand-ins for design objects. Within that formal frame, ordinary participants were given free creative range; the resulting design ideas turned out more distinctive than those produced by an individual auteur working alone.

The aim isn’t to undermine auteur theory as such, but to challenge the post-modern instinct toward individuation — the belief that creativity belongs to a single named maker. A central tenet in the Mellbratt & Wiberg toolbox is that process is the engine of good design, not the individual, and that the unconscious thought of a wider population, properly elicited, can outperform a single designer’s intuition. The pseudo-scientific staging was both elicitation method and framing device.

Part of a competition entry for the HCIEd Student Interaction Design Competition.