Critical Contextualisation | Prophetic Prosthetic’s
The purpose of this report is to critically reflect on the issues that were raised by our group with reference to our design. Speculative and critical design (SCD) was used on the project and allowed the team to achieve our final ideas. This enabled our group to look at a number of different scenarios and address anything that was highlighted, which inspired good group conversations on the issue raised. The issue raised was societies reliance on modern AI systems. Through critically analyzing all of this we are able to finally see how successful the group was. Furthermore, the final design and ideas on prosthetics will be looked at historically, theoretically and critically.
The brief we were provided with was to work as a group in order to imagine how prosthetics will appear 50 years from now. Time was spent working in close collaboration to develop through research method. This would enabled us to execute a research method in order to gather information regarding peoples perspective of how they think the evolution of prosthetics will be years from now. With all the responses and investigations collected we could come to 2 conclusions. The issue we want to raise is societies reliance on AI and how it could develop in the future, and the final design will be a prosthetic arm.
Based on the feedback through the research methods the focal point of our design centered predominantly with AI. One of the key reasons for this was because many people felt that current household AI, such as Siri and Alexa, would be progressively more advanced in the future and have the ability to function and complete a more complex set of tasks and commands. From this we came to the conclusion that in the future a prosthetic arm could ultimately be fully controlled by the AI system and not by the user. The early development of a concept was very successful. This was due to our group using the feedback and speculative and critical design to come to a design idea.
After reaching this outcome, we generated a number of different scenarios and situations where we felt an AI controlled arm could be demonstrated in typical day to day tasks. These scenarios were made into a short video presentation, showing how productive the prosthetic arm could function in any given situation, but also how dangerous and volatile it has the potential to be. SCD was continuously used throughout the project due to its effectiveness and importance. This method of design is used for the prosthetic brief because it allowed us to generate a design with a new way of thinking. The final design could then provoked the viewer to ask questions. But more importantly ask themselves, ‘what do you think prosthetics will be like in 50 years time’.
As stated previously, SCD is the design method we used developing the project. The reason SCD is important to the prosthetics project is because it had an overall positive impact on how our group addressed the brief. As a group SCD is an area of design we were all unfamiliar with, therefore by using this method we were able to research together and discuss our findings, which allowed us to complete to project at a higher standard. Due to SCD being a sufficient method that worked well with raising our AI issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67ZsArFWDZc
When discussing SCD it goes without saying that we have to acknowledge the work that Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. Both very famous for their book ‘Speculative Everything’, in relation to speculative and critical design. The video linked above shows Dunne explaining what speculative design is. Dunne suggests that speculative design is not simply stating an idea that must be enforced. Instead it presents an alternative way of looking at society, then gives us the opportunity to harness these new ideas as an incentive to motivate further thinking (Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby on Speculative Design, 2019).
This is important in the evolution of our prosthetic project because it relates to how we approached our design idea. Clearly we are not outwardly stating that 50 years from now AI will have be all controlling and be in a position to dictate prosthetic features, or that Alexa will be able to complete every physical task you would require a prosthetic arm to do. However , theoretically speaking it could be a real possibility. This core issue raised creates a ripple effect of conversation, and as Dunne suggested it sparks society to really think about what is being asked.
Looking in more detail at the theoretical aspect of this project. It allowed us to see how we have harnessed the idea that society currently rely to heavily on AI controlled technology, and looking forward into the future it could play an important role in peoples day to day life's. Especially people with technological advanced prosthetic features. This idea of AI taking over has been theorized for many years and even made mainstream media. Weather it is seen in movies such as Terminator with SkyNet taking over, it becomes a real worry to consider. There are examples of current practice in modern day of experts experimenting with AI.
For example just such a team at UC Berkely have designed a version of a budget robotic arm that will assist with the further development of AI (Knight, 2019). However, there is no denying the leap from creating a moderately functioning robotic arm to assist with AI to SkyNet is obviously a big leap. Nonetheless the relationship between current practice and futuristic expectations opens up vast amount of ideas and conversation. Society can, and should reflect on their current dependence on Alexa and Siri, but then theories about all of this is ultimately what we feel will be our future. This is where our AI controlled prosthetic arm opens that avenue for conversation. Viewers react to our design and the issue raised, then use that thought for future designs possibly.
After revising all of this, we feel that this was an area of the project our group excelled at. By employing current AI systems such as Alexa in our design, today's society were able to relate to it quicker because it feels close to home. Suggesting that Alexa could control your prosthetic arm to do daily tasks, is closely linked to asking Alexa to turn the lights on in your current home, so they could actually see the theory becoming a reality. Critically speaking we feel that in this situation that our group found a perfect balance between current practice of AI systems, and theoretical futures. This all further empathizes the dominant effect that SCD had on our final design outcome.
Through further investigation another reason SCD was important to our overall design, what that it raised the concept of AI, through our group focus on the use of critical design within the project. Critical design is very similar to speculative design in the sense that they both encourage exploring new ways of thinking. Critical design is seen as ‘challenging the mainstream product design principles’ (Jakobsone, 2017). Liene Jakobsone wrote an article on ‘Critical Design As Approach To Next Thinking’. As quoted previously Jakobsone highlights what critical design is. She says that the purpose of the article is to encourage more designers to be aware of the critical design aspect when designing. Using their ability to challenge what has always been. This will allow designers to produce more ‘conscious design products’ (Jakobsone, 2017). This was our groups way of thinking when undergoing the project. To be more conscious of our final design, due to critically reflecting back on previous design ideas.
When looking at critical design it shows the relationship between historical, critical and practical design. Critical design encourages and motivates designers to reflect critically on past design ideas, looking at areas that have excelled and those which stopped the design from evolving. After doing so, it gives the designer a confidence to dissect the pros and cons and in turn opens up new approaches of thinking that can be implemented in current practice. It is easy to see when relating this method of critical design to our project, why we felt it to be the most beneficial method to produce a strong design of our prosthetic arm. Our group successfully researched how prosthetics has developed and how it has been viewed over many years. We felt that the aesthetic look of prosthetics was very machine like in design, not soft or human like in its representation. This factor became the most important area of the design of the prosthetic arm that we were determined to alter. As a group we all agreed that the prosthetic design was to be as life like and have a detailed arm shape. We achieved this by showing in the short video the actors arm being painted with silver paint to keep it as detailed as possible and life like.
Another example is the AI issue we raised. Like critical design implies, we critically reflected on past and current AI systems, such as Alexa. So, through critiquing it we could explore different ideas that oppose from current AI. Instead of helpful AI, we explored the idea of modern AI being dangerous and being in control of a prosthetic arm. This resulted in our group clearly presenting our issue, due to positively using critical design as a method of design.
In conclusion, after analyzing SCD and using that information to critically reflect on how impactful it was on the prosthetic project, it can clearly be seen that the issue of AI we currently depend on in modern society, becoming so advanced that in 50 years it can control prosthetics, was firmly executed by our group due to SCD.
Through showing our understanding of historical, theoretical and critical design, we as a group could conclude our findings and create a effective final design idea. That in the end accomplished the aims of the project.
References:
Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby on Speculative Design. (2019). [video] Directed by A. Dunne. Strelka Institute.
Gonfalonieri, A. (2018). How Amazon Alexa works? Your guide to Natural Language Processing (AI). [image] Available at: https://towardsdatascience.com/how-amazon-alexa-works-your-guide-to-natural-language-processing-ai-7506004709d3 .
Jakobsone, L. (2017). Critical design as approach to next thinking. The Design Journal, 20(sup1), pp.S4253-S4262.
Knight, W. (2019). This may be the Apple II of AI-driven robot arms. [online] MIT Technology Review. Available at: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613289/this-may-be-the-apple-ii-of-ai-driven-robot-arms/ .
Muoio, D. (2016). These high-tech bionic limbs are the future of prosthetics. [image] Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/alternative-limb-project-pushes-prosthetics-into-future-2016-6?r=US&IR=T
Powell, A. (2017). AI is fueling smarter prosthetics than ever before. [image] Available at: https://www.wired.com/story/ai-is-fueling-smarter-prosthetics-than-ever-before/
Reilly, C. (2016). Wearing a Deus Ex-inspired bionic arm is the future of prosthetics. [image] Available at: https://www.cnet.com/news/wearing-a-deus-ex-inspired-bionic-arm-is-the-future-of-prosthetics/.
By Douglas Jones
