We presented our Project Brief #1 to our peers today. It was awesome viewing others interpretations of the task. People came up with such introspective, abstract reflections of self which highlighted the fact that I was in a real sea of creatives. What was I thinking?!?!? That I would be fine to hand in my “no-videos-due-to-copyright’, sloppy-old-photo work…. Thank goodness this one wasn’t being marked. I was plagued by writer’s block and instead of pushing through, I did as all good optimists bad uni students do and hoped for the best whilst completing the bare minimum.

We used also utilised De Bono’s 6 hat system to give feedback to our peers for the project. The system helps to separate thinking into 6 distinct categories, allowing the group to give feedback on someone’s work in a vastly different way. Listed below are the 6, however we only used 4 due to relevance.

Black: is judgement.

Blue: is used to manage the thinking process

White: is information needed

Yellow: is positive feedback

Red: are initial feelings and gut reactions

Green: is the creative or alternative possibilities

I loved being the red hat. It’s how I would usually give feedback anyway, from whatever gut feelings I experienced. Hearing feedback from the green and black hats was also great, as I learn through sharing ideas and therefore need critique/alternate possibilities in order to improve my work. However, it was difficult to be the black hat, aka the bearer of bad news, and risk offending someone. I noticed for myself, and even people in my group it was tempting to do a combination of both red and black or yellow and black (to soften the blow of the critique)