Re-thinking the Future Role of Designers > Speculative Design
As a Designer, I have always looked at my profession as a 🪄 problem-solver; making a product better or a process more efficient. But what if, instead of solving problems, we posed them? That’s where we meet ‘Speculative Design’, sometimes called critical design or design fiction.
So, what is Speculative Design?
It is rather broad if you try to search for its definition, hence, here are a few points that sum up the concept of Speculative Design :-
- A way to manifest possibilities of a better livable future — Not predict the future, or look at it as a destination, but rather use it as a tool to design the kind of future people want (and do not want)
Addresses people as citizens with dreams and not just as consumers with wants (Source: Speculative Everything by Dunne & Raby)
- A shift from typical practice of designing that addresses today’s problems to bigger future problems like financial crisis, environmental disasters and political strife
- Aims to open up new perspectives about alternative worldviews and futures
- Create spaces for discussion & debate with ‘WHAT IF’ questions
- Encourages to adopt a more responsible design approach
From moral imagination to provocative vision and impressive arguments, Speculative Everything has covered it all.
Forward-thinking companies like Apple and Tesla, do use speculative design (whether they know it or not) to consider possible futures, define the preferable ones, and then work towards them.
“I believe in a preferable future containing a 100-percent-sustainable and automatic transport system.” — Elon Musk, Founder of Tesla
“I believe in a preferable future in which we are all intuitively aware of how to use everything we touch.” — Jonathon Ive, Chief Designer at Apple
Interestingly, when we consider Design Futures, there’s an intersection between Speculative Design and AI
The Future
will have human designers coexisting with AI
AI will take over repetitive or dangerous tasks.
AI will replace Tasks, Not Design Jobs
which means jobs will be enriched and elevated by AI. There will be a huge spike in new positions for designers that will require their uniquely human abilities. Here’s a list of qualities that will resist future designers’ from getting replaced by AI :-
- creativity + empathy
- critical thinking
- social intelligence + strategy development
- ability to adapt to different contexts and situations
- ability to formulate the right questions
which will, in turn, increase happiness and job satisfaction.
A quick representation of how human designers and AI would be co-existing in a design environment :-
And this, in fact, sums up the idea of Speculative Design. Something that is perhaps inherently human is the ability to formulate the right question.
Great design is as much about the hunt for intelligently framed questions, as it is about coming up with a valuable answer, which makes the challenge of codifying valuable ideation even tougher.
In conclusion
How to bring Speculative Design into practice?
Reverse the process and begin with what kind of society we might prefer, rather than facing the consequences and eventually, devising a crisis management plan few years down the line.
At this early stage of my own exploration of Design Futures, I am simply advocating for being more responsible as design practitioners and innovation managers by thinking holistically about the knock-on effects our designs might have on the environment and society in the future.
The best way to transform these philosophical ideas into something tangible is by creating future-oriented design sprints within an organization. Questions like “What might grocery shopping look like in the future?” open up new perspectives on what are sometimes called wicked problems. These “speculative design sprints” can allow deeper insights and opportunities to reframe problems and in turn, drive uncommon partnerships, while tackling projects that create better outcomes for all.
fin.
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