Speculative Design
A futuring and research through design technique, that allows design to ask questions. Speculative design is the one that allows to fantasize and go beyond the wall of present day reality. While the ultimate design is still grounded to reality, it is inspirational and allows people to dream.
“Large-scale speculative design contests “official reality”; it is a form of dissent expressed through alternative design proposals. It aims to be inspirational, infectious, and catalytic, zooming out and stepping back to address values and ethics. It strives to overcome the invisible wall separating dreams and imagination from everyday life, blurring distinctions between the “real” real and the “unreal” real.”
Nature & context
Futuring, Design Technique
Resources
Exemplars, Materials needed to craft the design, stationery, recorder, camera, notes.
Procedure
Key difference between Critical and speculative design is that the former, while a design just to challenge the current practices & is aesthetically provocative, the latter goes a step beyond, to use design to speculate an ideal reality.
Before: Understand the context and identify areas of focus specially social issues that need to be discussed and changed. Conduct extensive research to support the idea and the design process. Gather exemplars to inspire design decisions. Understand target audience in order for the design to be effective and provocative enough.
During: Keeping in mind the idea of speculative design, of being able to let participants an alternative reality that fights the current social issues, develop a design using speculation but deeply bound to the ground reality.
After: Analyze discussion pointers and Use research through design technique to infer people's thought process.
Use Case
Class homework involving connected communities: As a part of the waste management project, an exemplar analysis was done that revealed ways to recycle and reuse. I used speculative design to showcase a community that runs reusables and recyclables. The design was a magic hub in the corner of the community that allows community members to feed in trash and take out various forms of recyclables like compost, reusable plastic etc.
Advantages & Disadvantages
Speculative designs allow designers to envision designs for the near future. However, during the design process, there are chances of forgetting ground reality and speculating beyond the possible. Which in turn makes the product less appealing in the market as it gets difficult to implement the design.