Experiential Futures<\/p>
The first thing I notice is the shift: shift in verbiage.. shift in explanation and literature from this week\u2019s theme: speculative design, to the previous themes \u2013 disability, hacking, and processing. It\u2019s not that I think speculative futures is any less credible than any other realm in design; instead, I was perhaps taken aback by how heavily research-driven the papers are. But thinking back to it again, this, of course, makes sense in academia.<\/p>
In Ollenburgs\u2019 \u201cA Futures-Design-Process Model for Participatory Futures, in Design and Futures,\u201d she lays out a theoretical basis to speculative futures. She crafts the FDP (Futures Design Process) model which builds upon preexisting frameworks to incorporate human-centered practices in an address of reproducible design future workshops.<\/p>
It\u2019s not as if speculative design as a process has crawled out of the woodwork. Ollenburg, for example, mentions previous works from Robert Jungk & Nortbert Mullert\u2019s Future Workshop and Joseph Voros\u2019 \u201cGeneric Foresight Framework\u201d to name a few. What then determines how we frame these practices? I wonder if it\u2019s the abstractness of the concept \u2013 that we can\u2019t concretely define the future that has to lead us to the kind of terminology used to discuss it. It reveals the power of definitions within our literature; speculative design has specific connotations and researchers have come to the conclusion that solely predicting futures is limited. Instead, it requires a touch of human-centered design and an element of tangibility, that turns speculation to a possible reality.<\/p>
What about the term \u2018speculative\u2019 as a subject matter requires it to be dissected in this academic manner?<\/strong> What would the merits be to leaving language vague and the possibility of futuristic design without reproducibility? Or does that subvert the subject matter as a whole? Does this have something to do with the fact that the future is so uncertain, that we must ascribe concrete and certain definitions to it?<\/p> Hagborg<\/strong><\/p> I\u2019m fascinated with Hagborg\u2019s design process \u2013 that she carefully articulates and crafts research questions from the forefront and lets her experiments guide further research. From crafting human faces from stray hairs to reproducing different renditions of Chelsea Manning, Hagborg has established this sweet spot of a marriage between science and art.<\/p> What\u2019s surprising to me is how people view her work. People don\u2019t consider how \u201creal\u201d her work is, despite how everything is scientifically conducted by Hagborg \u2013 every cell culture, strand of DNA is carefully nurtured in a lab and teased out in her artistic vision.<\/p> This also brings to light a question that Hagborg has mentioned herself. Why is it that people are inclined to believe a company over an artist? Does everything created by an artist somehow imply that it is less real? And if so, how might we work to subvert those expectations? What practices can we enact to create a reality where everyone\u2019s work is treated as real: not less credible than the other?<\/p> She\u2019s also described how people never seem to take into consideration how real her work is. What people don\u2019t know is that she\u2019s done the work with science and carefully measured the stuff. That leads me to a question that Hagborg herself has raised:<\/p> In terms of credibility, why is it that people are inclined to believe a company over an artist? <\/strong>Does it mean that it\u2019s less real? And if so, how do we work to subvert those expectations? What practices can we enact to create a reality where everyone\u2019s work is treated as real, not least credible than the other?<\/strong><\/p> Resources:<\/p>