AFTER

This pilot will create a supportive environment where high‑school students explore “what if” scenarios through participatory speculative design. Students will receive a short brief tied to the overarching theme “Life after an apocalypse” and then collaborate in small teams to imagine, prototype, and critique community life on a clean slate—reframing constraints to explore what could be.

This approach leverages participatory and experiential design methods that have been shown to productively engage secondary students in structured problem‑finding and solution design within school contexts. By emphasising collaborative making and scenario work, the workshop targets core competencies frequently strengthened by design‑based learning—creativity, critical reasoning about trade‑offs, and applied problem‑solving—while also improving teamwork and communication through iterative co‑creation. A future‑workshops format can scaffold the session so students move from identifying problems to proposing and prioritising actionable ideas, and brief reflective activities can help cultivate durable habits of reflection linked to deeper learning outcomes.


AFTER is a thesis project for a BA in Interaction Design hosted and run by Markus Duvenhage, a design students at CODE University of Applied Sciences.