{"id":4813,"date":"2022-11-28T13:50:12","date_gmt":"2022-11-28T18:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/?p=4813"},"modified":"2022-11-28T13:55:35","modified_gmt":"2022-11-28T18:55:35","slug":"speculative-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/2022\/11\/28\/speculative-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Speculative Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

1.\u00a0<\/strong>Stuart Candy and Kelly Karnet, \u201cAn Introduction to Ethnographic Experiential Futures\u201d in Design and Futures, (Taipei: Tamkang U Press, 2019).<\/a><\/p>

In addition to reading Stuart Candy and Kelly Karnet\u2019s article, I listened to a\u00a0podcast episode<\/a>\u00a0on speculative design for justice featuring designer Alix Gerber. In response to Michael Brown\u2019s murder, one of her projects entailed interviewing activists and residents of St. Louis and Ferguson, MO, on how communities could be kept safe without policing. The purpose of her project was to provoke conversation about morality, community, and the role of government. Gerber (perhaps unknowingly) used the EXF framework to generate 4 potential futures: mapping people\u2019s images of the future, creating alternative future scenarios, translating these ideas into representations, mounting the possible scenario representations, then opening a discussion about the findings.<\/p>\n

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Candy and Karnet (2019)<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Gerber understands that policing is a systemic issue embedded with racism that be traced back to colonial America\u2019s \u201cslave patrol,\u201d and that as a designer, her ability to create actual change is limited.<\/p>

My question is, with so many systemic-based social justice issues in the United States today,\u00a0how can designers use speculative design to provoke more conversations about decolonized, anti-racist, and\/or socialist futures? How can speculative design be used to spark conversations (or even action) for infrastructural change? Is it possible for designers to lobby for social change through ethnocentrically-provocative exercises?<\/strong><\/p>

2.<\/strong>\u00a0Speculative Everything\u00a0<\/em><\/a>by Tony Dunne, Resonate 2013<\/p>

I appreciate how Tony Dunne described Speculative Design as \u201cdesigning for how the world\u00a0could be.<\/em>\u201d This \u2018anything is possible\u2019 mindset opens the door to aggregated creative pluralist futures.<\/p>

To be honest, Prospectus For A Future Body\u2019s electronic muscle-movement experiment made me deeply uncomfortable \u2014 likely because of the awful noises the electronic currents made. It felt unethical, even though the participants likely consented to the experiment. A few thoughts:<\/p>\n