Speculative design: 3 examples of design fiction Inside Design Blog

Table Of Content

• Sydney Sweeney claps back at critics (again), this time in new Hawaiian vacation pictures
• Introduction to Speculative Design Practice
• Case Study: Imagine Future of Jobs - SpeculativeEdu
• Collaborative and interdisciplinary approach
• The ten-thousand year question
• THE CURRENT STATE OF THE SPECULATIVE DESIGN CANON
• Benjamin Bratton on Speculative Design, an alternative to mainstream Design that complicates the speculative models…

Speculative design is a great way to get creative with your designs and to think outside the box. It can be used to create products or services that don’t yet exist, or to redesign existing ones. I hope this article has given you a better understanding of speculative design and how it can be used in business.

Sydney Sweeney claps back at critics (again), this time in new Hawaiian vacation pictures

The effects of change can be felt at the macro level, but also on the cultural and individual level. The way we work, talk, and travel has become much less of a physical activity and more of something that happens virtually, online. New words like social distancing emerge and enter the global tongue as language begins to adapt to a world that is much lonelier than before. But it is possible, if not altogether necessary, for us to speculate on the societal effects of our designed products. There are also other professions, whose titles still categorically end with the word design, that concern themselves not with the processes of beauty but rather the processes of thought.

Introduction to Speculative Design Practice

Giving Black women a seat at the table when making key decisions about what to design, for what purpose and how to go about designing such technology challenges long standing design practices, and the field of design, more broadly, to reconsider technology design in terms of who gets to future and why [80]. Finally, we call for the inclusion of Black feminism, Afrofuturism, and Afrofuturist feminism as legitimate theoretical approaches in HCI design pedagogy, practices, course syllabi, and course textbooks. Unsurprisingly, much of what is considered to be the foundation or core work of design fiction is credited to white men (e.g. [11, 64]). In particular, for those scholars who teach or talk about design history, it is often presented as void of Black women, trans, and gender variant folks, rendering these groups as being invisible within the larger HCI community [38]. Whether intentional or unintentional, such a spurious oversight contributes to the false narrative that these groups have not contributed to the design space when this could not be farther from the truth.

Case Study: Imagine Future of Jobs - SpeculativeEdu

She finished 28th out of 28 throwers but was approached during a workout the next day by Nina Ponomareva, a champion discus thrower who had earned the Soviet Union its first Olympic gold medal. Taking pity on Ms. Connolly, she offered tips on her technique and instructed the young Czech athlete to bulk up. Ms. Connolly set out to become an orthopedic surgeon and was studying medicine at Charles University in Prague in 1954 when she began throwing the discus with encouragement from coach Otakar Jandera, a former Olympic hurdler. He introduced her to the fundamentals of the sport while playing “The Blue Danube” on a loop over the loudspeakers, teaching her how to spin in time to the waltz. Ms. Connolly, who stood 5-foot-11, had by then established herself as a gifted athlete. She competed in international basketball and handball tournaments while spending part of each summer performing compulsory physical labor.

Collaborative and interdisciplinary approach

For example, in the graphic above, we can see that Daniel Kaplan – apart from words that, in an interview like this, have prominence across all interview texts, like for the word “Design” – has a strong focus on people, on work and on the concept of “creating different narratives for the future”. The central part of each infographic is occupied by a word cloud generated from the text of the interviews, with each represented word’s size proportional to the frequency in which it is used in the interview. This allows us to gain an initial understanding of the focuses of the particular subject, and comparing these focuses permits us to start understanding how different practitioners focus on different things to achieve their goals. On top of that, we performed extensive research about the tools, materials, models and process architectures that different practitioners use in their practice, as well as in workshops, courses, corporate sessions, and more. Speculative design was originally coined by Anthony Dunne in the 90s, and, he, alongside Fiona Raby, pioneered this work which they formulated at the Royal College of Art’s Designing Interactions programme. We tend to look 5-10+ years forward and speculate on how things could be and what future we want or don’t want based on these scenarios.

A HISTORY OF RADICAL FUTURING IN BLACK COMMUNITIES

Consequently, this specific call to action reflects Black feminist practice [28] as it requires an alignment of our ideals with our actions as scholars, researchers, and practitioners for the purpose of building towards a HCI community that truly embraces diversity, equity and inclusion of all people. This position paper examines the contributions of Black women scholars and designers to the concept and intellectual exercise of futuring. We argue that although these contributions were not always formally called futuring, Black artists, scholars, and writers have long engaged in thinking about otherness and imagined radical futures that differ from temporal existences.

The ten-thousand year question

Others are simpler, in the fact that they include cards which represent promising technologies for the present and future, the ones which are more prone to contributing to societal change, which is similar in concept to those ones which are dedicated to highlighting future trends. Those who criticize the currently dominant approach to the speculative practice, characterised as “Eurocentric”, highlight its excessively focus on aesthetics (on the visual and narrative level), tendency to escape to dystopian scenarios, vanity and separation from the real world. Cameron Tonkinwise, Head of Design Studies at the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University, underlines that many dystopian scenarios found in present-day speculative fictions (of the Western world) actually (and unfortunately) have been already taking place in other parts of the world. He also highlights that the present role of speculative design should provide solutions for mistakes of the modernist project and re-materialize in our everyday lives the visions of a radically different future. In terms of visual media, stories of Black people that do not center purely around the struggles of existing in a racist society allow for representations of Black life that can spark new narratives in real life.

Designers re-think the role of technology in everyday life, without dealing with the applications of technology, but rather by considering its implications. Turning away from the commercial aspects of design with the focus on the demands of the market, they are now engaged with a broader social context. The new designers use design as a medium and focus on concepts and artefacts, and, rather than solving problems, ask questions and open issues to discussion.

15 Speculative Crime Novels Coming Out in 2024 ‹ CrimeReads - CrimeReads

15 Speculative Crime Novels Coming Out in 2024 ‹ CrimeReads.

Posted: Mon, 29 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Benjamin Bratton on Speculative Design, an alternative to mainstream Design that complicates the speculative models…

Using Design Thinking and other methods, we can broaden our scope and develop boundary-pushing systems and prototypes that spur discussion about alternative ways of being and encourage imagination to flow freely. Design speculations have the potential to become the catalysts for redefining our relationship to reality and cultures; the results are truly inspiring, with a seductive vividness and a promise of a far future that is not far from science fiction stories. However, as opposed to general artistic practice, design uses a language recognizable to a wider audience, and is not confined only to galleries and salons. Publicist and critic Rick Poynor points out that, contrary to artistic practices, design is not declared an artistic fantasy out of hand, and ignored by companies, institutions and policymakers. Design is also in close contact with the new technologies and consumer society, popular media and pop culture, which is why today it boasts a significant media and social impact. Pop-culture forms, through novels, films, computer games and so on, often seem to be better platforms for speculative projects than galleries and museums (actually, that is a natural environment for design).

With the introduction of industrial processes and increased capabilities of scale, food processing techniques have caused our food to move away from its original makeup, making this “new food” poorer in nutritional value. According to Levy, the gap between the nutritional need of what our bodies require and the food that enters our digestive tract needs to be bridged. And while it can be a tough sell in today’s market, businesses and governments are starting to recognize its value. Even large corporations like Google user to explicitly dedicate time for their employees to embrace speculative design. And when coupled with more concrete design practices, speculative design can be an incredibly useful tool for businesses and even governments. Anything outside of these futures is in the realm of fantasy—something speculative design has no interest in exploring.

”, examining the interrelation between potential changes in the technological development and social relations. Rather than engaging only with a future that we desire, this approach also deals with the future we fear might come true if we fail to critically consider the role of new technologies in the society. In their research, these new designers relate to diverse fields of science, primarily computer sciences and engineering, sociology, psychology, architecture, and, in the recent times, increasingly to biotechnology, all with the goal of critically reflecting on the development and role of technology in society.

As we become more reliant on technology, it’s likely that speculative design will increasingly focus on how we interact with devices and artificial intelligence. We’ll need to think about how to design user interfaces that are both user-friendly and ethical, as well as how to create experiences that seamlessly integrate virtual and physical worlds. For example, as autonomous vehicles become more common, we’ll need to think about how they will impact our economy and workforce. These are just a few of the many questions that speculative designers will continue to explore in the years ahead.

However, Powell broke up with longtime girlfriend Gigi Paris amid the speculation, further fueling forbidden-romance interest in the two and their movie. Texas Instruments climbed 5.6% after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than forecast. Boston Scientific was another one of the stronger forces pushing upward on the S&P 500.

Recast as social justice architects, this is the work that Black women, trans, and gender non-binary folks do to leverage technology to create a more just society. This process of creating systems and artifacts should not just be considered as a point of inclusion but should also serve as a model for speculative design and equally foundational in future design work. Critical reflection and analysis bring to light the inherent biases and prejudices embedded in the design of these pervasive technologies, illuminating how the technology was designed without input from or representation of non-dominant populations. Leveraging the intersectional lens of race and gender, Black feminism [28, 29] provides a critical framework for exploring alternative design practices that center the experiences of Black women and other groups with marginalized identities [88].