Tobias Revell on Critical & Speculative Design

– Paro, Paro robotics, 2009

A baby seal, therapeutic robot, that displays emotional responses to users and adapt to their personality. Designed to offer a similar therapy to animal therapy for those especially alone and elderly.

– The continuous monument, super studio -1969: a massive steel and glass structure which encircles the entire earth, the design was globalising no individualisation. An architectural model that flowed above existing architecture to create total urbanisation. Despite this not being created it had an impact on the possibilities of architecture.

– The futures cones, Dr Joseph Voros – 2003: mapping out space with coordinates. A cone-like a diagram displaying a taxonomy of futures. Here are the definitions of each group:”

Preposterous – these are the futures we judge to be ‘ridiculous’, ‘impossible’, or that will ‘never’ happen. I introduced this category because the next category (which used to be the edge of the original form of the cone) did not seem big enough… This category arises from homage to James Dator and his Second Law of the Future—“any useful idea about the future should appear ridiculous” (Dator 2005)—as well as to Arthur C. Clarke and his Second Law—“the only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible” (Clarke 2000, p. 2)…crossing it in the outward direction represents a very important but, for some people, very difficult, movement in prospection thinking. (This is what is represented by the red arrows in the diagram.)
Potential – everything beyond the present moment is a potential future. This comes from the assumption that the future is undetermined and ‘open’ not inevitable or ‘fixed’.
Possible – these are those futures that we think ‘might’ happen, based on some future knowledge we do not yet possess, but which we might possess someday (e.g., warp drive).
Plausible – those we think ‘could’ happen based on our current understanding of how the world works (physical laws, social processes, etc).
Probable – those we think are ‘likely to’ happen, usually based on (in many cases, quantitative) current trends.
Preferable – those we think ‘should’ or ‘ought to’ happen: normative value judgements as opposed to the mostly cognitive, above.
Projected – the (singular) default, business as usual, ‘baseline’, extrapolated ‘continuation of the past through the present’ future.
(Predicted) – the future that someone claims ‘will’ happen.

Despite the examples above being different from each other, I learnt how important it is to think about the user’s experience, and the impact designs could have on human interactions. Such as, how much of an impact the Paro robot could have on the user’s emotional well being by making it as cute and attention seeking as much as possible. This shows the importance of human interaction design as stated ”Interaction design is an inherently humanistic enterprise. It is concerned most significantly with satisfying the needs and desires of the people who will interact with a product or service. These goals and needs can best be understood as narratives—logical and emotional progressions over time. In response to these user narratives, digital products must express behavioural narratives of their own, appropriately responding not only at the levels of logic and data entry and presentation but also at a more human level.” (Cooper. A, 2014, p xx) In addition, how the architectural example could create visual pollution and affect users negatively. Whereas the futures cones have taught me a new model I could use for a design process, by highlighting points to bare in mind when creating a new design as the use of taxonomy in speculative design is a way of “tapping a content item in a list typically drills down a level in the hierarchy, revealing either the content or the next level of grouping”(Cooper. A, 2014, p 518)From there our session led onto the subject of design fictions and understanding how it works. According to Bruce Sterling: It’s the deliberate use of diegetic (fictional objects from another world) prototypes to suspend disbelief about change:

The future mundane is filled with background talent
The future mundane is an accretive space
The future mundane is a partly broken space

Below are examples of top companies advertising speculative products of the future, with the use of video manipulation they have managed to portray what the future may be like. However, one thing spotted in the Google glass advert was that they only showed what the actual Google glasses looked like once. I believe they have done this to immerse the viewer into the experience of wearing the glasses, which would be more impactful than paying attention to the physical design.

Another form of prototyping we learn about was diegetic prototypes. A form of prototyping where the design is intentionally made to make the user have less time to think about the next step and therefore be more inclined to do something. Since having studied Psychology in my A levels, I already knew about Milgram’s experiment but when discussing I opened the debate of what had more of an impact on the user to press the electric shock: was it the design displaying the voltages or the man dressed in a lab coat giving prods for the participant to continue? I came to the conclusion that the simplicity of the design of just flicking the switch made it feel easy to conduct the test but as the voltages were increasing with the last few displaying X’s and the participants realising how serious their actions could result to (not knowing that it had zero effect) the need for human interaction was needed to encourage them to continue. A project I was not familiar about but interested about was Afronauts by Cristina de Middel. What I liked about her work was how she presented the obvious fact that when thinking of astronauts you would not necessarily think right away of an African astronaut. But, with her photography, she has explored what it could possibly look like, even with some African flair. She has inspired me to think of doing projects in the future that represent African culture and to address stereotypes.

Speculative Practice, Year 2October 25, 2018Speculative Practice, Year 2

My virtual sketchbook

Tobias Revell on Critical & Speculative Design