Around Town: Pecha Kucha Night
Last Tuesday Martyr’s was packed to a sold out crowd for Pecha Kucha night. This was Chicago’s 4th Pecha Kucha, which began in Tokyo five years ago as a presentation style performance for designers. Amy Batchu was among that night’s thirteen presenters, who each presented slideshows of 20 images in 20 seconds in any topic.
Batchu was asked to present by her former employer Peter Exley, of Architecture is Fun, who helped bring Pecha Kucha to Chicago last year. Amy decided to present her final project from Observing Users last semester that she did with Patricia Kelton, Shilpa Rao, and Sean Lim. “I cut down our presentation on Rand McNally, took out the contextual research, and left the user research.” Most of the presenters presented final design artifacts like photographs, but “Amy brought something that was different from what was there. She presented process which was well received by the audience,” said Amber Lindholm.
Ido Mor was one of the attendees. “The event was great – it was like a bunch of the Chicago design community coming out of the woodworks. People were there from varied backgrounds (graphic design/architecture/industrial design/etc.), but everyone could appreciate and respect the work that was shown.”
Amy’s presentation was an exercise that gets to the heart of a fundamental challenge here at ID, communicating a complex project to people outside of ID in a clear, compelling format. Amber agreed: “Students need to step out of our community and be able to talk in an engaging way to people who don’t know the words ‘user’ and ‘framework’ and all the other technical words we use here. I think it was really cool that she did it. It is one thing to present to students and class, and it’s a completely different level to present to people outside of your community.
