Speculative Futures in Practice: Audrey Desjardins
In advance of our event on February 24th — Speculative Futures in Practice–we asked our panelists to answer three questions about their work and interests.
Audrey Desjardins is an assistant professor in interaction design at University of Washington, in the School of Art + Art History + Design, and adjunct assistant professor in Human Centered Design and Engineering. She will present the early stages of a research-through-design project called Data Epics.
Data Epics is a service where a fiction writer uses monthly data archives from home Internet of Things devices to create stories. Each month, a chapter is sent back to the inhabitants of the home from which the data came from. One chapter might be about data’s travels; the next, their origins, who and what else they connected with, or how they changed throughout those adventures. This project purposely uses fiction, imagination, and layers of interpretation to accentuate data’s liveliness and otherness, and to open potential ways for living with data.
How did you first get started or interested in design futures?
When I finished my undergraduate studies in industrial design and worked as a designer I had many, many questions about people’s relationship to technology. These questions lingered, so I decided to go to grad school in interaction design. I wanted to understand the relationship between the physical, material presence of things, the way they computed and behaved, and people. There, I learned that I could use design as a mode of inquiry, as a way to ask those questions. This is where I also realized that designing, or making, was a way to interrogate futures — or alternative presents — and to materialize glimpses of what futures could be. That was fascinating to me! From there, I knew I wanted to use design as a tool and a method to investigate paths that are often left unexplored in contemporary design directions.
What inspired your most recent project?
One of the projects I am working on at the moment is called Data Epics. Data Epics is a service where a fiction writer uses monthly data archives from home Internet of Things devices to create stories. Each month, a chapter is sent back to the inhabitants of the home from which the data came from.
This project was generated as a speculative response to fieldwork I had been doing last year with design students at University of Washington. We had been visiting people’s homes asking them to show us the Internet of Things devices they live with, and particularly how they engage with data that are collected through these IoT services. From the field work, we found that people rarely engage with data directly, but they have their own imagination around how data work, where they go, and who gets to see them or use them. The project also emphasized how much translation and interpretation is happening between events in the home, and inferences that are made through data.
Based on these insights, we wanted to create something that would be more engaging and creative (like a story), and that emphasized the complexities of translating and interpreting data to make inferences about the home. We found that fiction would be a powerful strategy to do just that. We were also very curious about the relationship that would build between the fiction writer and the home dweller.
What is something interesting you have read, listened to, or discovered recently?
The Moonrise Podcast is a Washington Post audio miniseries hosted by Lillian Cunningham about the complex history behind how the USA went to the moon. I stumbled upon it right before the winter break and listened to the whole miniseries while on a road trip to California! The first two episodes describe the fascinating relationship between what science fiction writers were writing regarding going to the moon, and how these writings opened up actual possibilities for science. These first episodes are amazing at describing the intricate details around how fiction and reality influence each other much more than we often want to believe.
Also, two projects around seeing data differently:
Data Feminism — by Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein — the book is not out yet! But I can’t wait to read it. This will be about new ways of seeing data, through the lens of intersectional feminism! And finally, a project around data.
For those who have not seen it yet: Dear Data, by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec. These two information designers have sent weekly hand drawn postcards back and forth for a year to depict their personal data. There is something really poetic about thinking of data at that small, personal and interpersonal scale.
Learn more about Audrey’s work here: http://www.audreydesjardins.com/.
Join us on Monday, February 24th to hear from Audrey and our two other panelists, Regina Lee and Afroditi Psarra: https://www.meetup.com/Seattle-Speculative-Futures/events/268276128/
