“While the science of explanation gives us a roadmap, the art of the story takes us on the journey.”

How does a rapidly changing world change us? In what ways might we navigate and design our future in it? In this collaborative session, we will explore the social effects of digital transformation and how improvisational theater and storytelling can help us creatively navigate them. Recent studies find that digital transformation is affecting our personal and collective sense of identity as our activities are increasingly tracked, made into data, and managed algorithmically. Researchers claim that the impact on “who we are” will be the most significant – more than privacy itself. We will explore several examples of these effects in the space of the human-computer interface. As we do, we will use elements of improv and story to uncover possibilities for designing a space for the “human” as our interface becomes a relationship.

Navigating Disruption PDF CHIFOO 6-1-22 Slide Deck

About Thor Madsen

ThinkResults/Reed College

Thor is currently a creative strategist at ThinkResults and a graduate student at Reed College. He specializes in advising, writing, and speaking on societal change and social innovation. Thor has advised leaders and teams at global, high-tech, non-profit, and startup organizations. His use of improvisational theater, design thinking, and storytelling helps his clients and others rethink and uncover new roles, methods, and purpose amid change.

Before Reed and ThinkResults, Thor was an Executive/Leadership Partner at Gartner, Inc., where he advised executive clients, created Gartner’s first workshop/event-based leadership innovation program, and led an executive advisory team’s innovation program. Before Gartner, he co-led a market strategy startup at PwC Consulting for advising clients in Silicon Valley. Thor has also performed improvisational theater and storytelling at The Second City, Players Workshop, and the improv playhouse in Chicago, and the Deep End theater in Portland. He has taught at Columbia University’s graduate school and earned his BA summa cum laude from DePaul University.