Diagnosis
A written diagnosis of the coexistence norms in one shared space you already occupy, using the first four weeks' frameworks.
Due: 19 March 2027 · Weight: 25%
The brief#
Pick one space you share with other people on a regular basis, and diagnose how it actually works.
A kitchen, an open-plan office, a shared studio bench, a project team’s group chat, anywhere with an unwritten rulebook that everyone follows and nobody wrote down. Spend the first four weeks watching it the way you’ve been taught to watch: who defers to whom, where the personal-space bubbles sit, what “civil inattention” looks like in this particular room, and whether the space functions as anyone’s third place or just as a corridor between other things.
The room the brief leaves is which space you pick and which incidents you foreground. What it does not leave room for is vagueness: “people are generally respectful of each other” is not a diagnosis, it’s a shrug.
What you submit#
A single written document (1200–1800 words) that:
- describes the space and who shares it
- walks through at least three specific incidents you actually observed, each dated and described in enough behavioural detail that a reader who has never been there could picture it. The log template is a reasonable place to have kept these as they happened
- names, for each incident, which course framework explains what happened and why
- ends with a one-paragraph diagnosis: what is this space’s actual, unwritten rulebook, and where is it under strain
No names, photographs, or identifying details of the people you observed; see the privacy policy for how to describe behaviour without identifying anyone.
The spec
The brief poses the problem and leaves room for a response. The spec is the fixed part: what a marker checks. Some lines can be checked mechanically; the rest call for judgement.
- submitted by the deadline, as a written document of 1200-1800 words
- names at least three specific, dated incidents observed in the chosen space
- explicitly applies civil inattention, proxemics or third-place framing to what was observed
- the work is yours, with any assistance declared
How it is marked
| Criterion | Weight |
|---|---|
| Quality and specificity of the observations | 50% |
| Correct, well-argued use of the course frameworks | 50% |
What separates the grades
Where the mark actually lands within a band is a judgement call; this is what tells the bands apart.
| Band | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| HD | Incidents are dated and behaviourally specific, and chosen because they reveal where the space's unwritten rulebook is under strain, not just because they happened. The framework applied to each one fits precisely enough that swapping in a different framework would visibly not work as well. |
| D | Incidents are specific, dated, and correctly matched to a framework, but the choice of incidents is safe rather than revealing; nothing here would surprise someone who already knows the space. |
| C | The three incidents are present, but at least one drifts toward the generic ("people were considerate"), or a framework is named for an incident without being argued for it. |
| P | The required parts are all there in name, but incidents read as reconstructed after the fact rather than logged at the time, or a framework is misapplied without the diagnosis noticing. |