Design has been mainly aimed at solving problems in nowadays society. In this sense, the main function of design is closely related to the needs of the market and to address clients’ need (Ivica Mitrović, 2015). However, design in that sense can not help human design for a better future, not alone provoking people’s thoughts and raising awareness. As what Arturo Escobar said in “An Outline Of Ontological Design” that what we design will finally design us back (Arturo Escobar,2018). I would like to introduce two design principles that effect my design a lot- speculative design and human-centered design.

 

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SPECULATIVE DESIGN

Speculative design is a “futuring” way of design which allows for raising social questions and discourse rather than making profits. I think use the way of speculating, I can better rethink products that I did and whether they are “futuring" or “defuturing” our future.

 

Speculative Design, also called Design Fiction, Critical Design,Discursive Design，is a design strategy to address challenges and opportunities in the future.(Anthony Dunne, Fiona Raby, 2013) In a design for industry environment, the word “speculation” sounds like a bad thing, because it is fictional and can not produce profits. However, the mission of speculation is to “unsettle the present rather than predict the future.” The biggest problem of modern design is that designers are constrained by the demand of market to produce practical and attractive products. Designers are so eager to find so-called problems in life and hope to solve it. They are hard to step back and look at the world about the real problems. From the perspective of app design, that’s the reason why there are a huge volume of similar functions of apps. If you search for apps for time management , you will find lots of similar structure and organization of apps with little or no innovation. 

 

On the contrast, speculative design methods aim at explore possibilities and push limits to extreme situation to present problems to audience instead of solving them. Each speculative design projects is very different and mind opening. Sometimes, I will find inspiration from fictional movies, novels or dramas and find my own way of presenting the concept which are technology related on most situation.  As what Donna Haraway said in Cyborg Manifesto that boundaries between things are becoming unclear (Donna Haraway, 2006). Reality is just one step away from future, it is necessary for designers to have a speculative perspective of world. It is valuable to provoke thinking from possible future world and look back on our present world.

 

One of the key factors responsible for the success of speculative design project is the amount of the freedom of the speculation. “A design speculation requires a bridge to exist between the audience’s perception of their world and the fictional element of the concept ”(James Auger, 2013). Storytelling is a very crucial element in speculative design project. To make the background story of the project seems reasonable and get connection between the audience, the story must include a detailed timeline indicating how far is that future is and how technology is developing within that period. Besides, there must has a detailed technical diagram explaining your speculative design products to prove to the audience that this is a possible products in the future.

 

Through these imagination and radical approach of speculative design, by using design as a medium, it can inspire audience to think not only about what they do want for their future selves but also what they do not want. Speculative design approach separate the need of commercial world that normally kills creative practices and also discourse about social challenges. Only by speculating, designers are able to view the world in a different way and try to think deeply about existing products, systems and world for creating a better future.

 

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HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN

Human-centered design is another principle that I valued a lot. I think design must always comes from my lived experience and focus on improving human’s life. Design should be practical and functional so that it can really effect others.

 

A very important requirement of a good design is that it should reach its audience. “Reach” in this sense means that audience can feel the concept exactly what designers want to express and may strengthen or form a new value on them. It function like a good book to enlighten its audience. For me, the most common practice to make sure design is human-centered is through user research and usability test. For user research, it should be carried out before designers have the concrete concept, but for usability test, it should be consistent throughout your whole design process, not only after you have finished your design. In that case, it would be too late to do any adjustment.

 

Also, design should be included in a system. The reason why Airbnb is so successful not only because its innovative modes of commerce but also because the delightful user experience. It devoted for making booking rooms easier and more convenient for customers. If you want to rent your house, Airbnb even teach you how to shoot better photos. So when I browse the website , it become an enjoyable thing for me to see different and nicely-decorated houses. Having the idea of system design and service design, instead of consider design as an isolated thing can achieve better success on making design more human-centered. When designers design a project, we must consider all stakeholders and every process of how design products are being used so that the audience can experience true difference.

 

 

 

Reference list:

• James Auger (2013) Speculative design: crafting the speculation, Digital Creativity, 24:1, 11-35, DOI 10.1080/14626268.2013.767276

• Anthony Dunne, Fiona Raby, Speculative Everything, MIT Press, Dec 6, 2013 - Art

• Ivica Mitrović, Introduction to Speculative Design Practice, 2015

• Haraway D. (2006) A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century. In: Weiss J., Nolan J., Hunsinger J., Trifonas P. (eds) The International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments. Springer, Dordrecht

• Arturo Escobar. “An Outline of Ontological Design ” in Designs for the Pluriverse. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018. pp. 110-134