Speculative Design and Designed Realities
How to design futures in the 2020s
I received direct teaching from Dunne & Raby, the proponents of Speculative Design, at The New School in 2020. Studying Speculative Design from them has been my longtime dream and why I moved to NY.
The word Speculative Design was born in 1999, and I believe its meaning has been changing in the last 20 years. Dunne & Raby no longer proactively use the word Speculative Design and explore “beyond” Speculative Design in the Designed Realities Studio, established at the New School in 2016.
In this article, I look back at the evolution of Speculative Design and introduce the concept of “Designed Realities” that Dunne & Raby are currently researching.
What is Speculative Design?
The future seen from the present spreads in a conical shape like a flashlight illuminating the darkness. Distant futures are vague, but there are many possibilities, alternatives, and dreams rather than a single probable consequence by extending current values and technologies. The purpose of Speculative Design is to materialize and imply fragments of possible futures and broaden our horizons through design. It encourages us to think of alternative futures and discuss which direction we should go.
The Origin of Speculative Design
In human history, design has always been a problem-solving process. There have been problems such as inconvenience, hardship, and vulnerability in the world, and we have continuously solved them by Business, Technology, and Design to make our world better. This process of finding and solving problems will continue to be the mainstream of human production and economy.
During such mainstream values, Dunne & Raby argued that design and technology should have other uses to critique the current world and envision futures we want to live in. Anthony Dunne used the word Critical Design in Hertzian Tales in 1999, and the concept of Speculative Design had evolved from it.
Because they are from product design, they tried raising new questions for possible futures through tangible products. In the era before iPhone or Alexa was born in the world, they sought inquiries of how we would interact with super-sophisticated robots in the future.
This concept heavily related to and referred to other arts and philosophies such as Science Fiction, Radical Design, and Postmodernism. They sought not a commercial success but questions of how advanced science and technology could change humans and society.
In this way, the starting point of Speculative Design in the early 2000s was to use design as a medium to probe pluriversal future possibilities rather than to solve problems by rationality and functionality.
Speculative Design until the mid-2010s
From there to the mid-2010s, when Dunne & Raby were teaching at the Department of Design Interactions at the RCA, Speculative Design’s scope had spread from technological worldviews to more ethical, societal, and political ones.
For example, Japanese artists Sputniko! and Ai Hasegawa, who learned under Dunne & Raby at this time, asked ethical questions through their works Menstruation Machine, Takashi’s Take (2010), and I wanna deliver a dolphin... (2011). They showed some new technologies that would allow men to experience menstruation or the feasibility of letting humans give birth to dolphins, but what they explored was not these technologies itself. Instead, they wanted us to think about what people’s mindsets of ethics, gender, and policy should be in the future when such technologies are realized.
These works are also called Design Fiction. Fictional designed objects work as a lens for imagining complex socio-technical futures and encourage people to think about what if such a future would come, how human values would change, and whether it would be the future we want. Dunne & Raby tried these practices when teaching at the RCA, and it is the currently recognized Speculative Design concept.
From Design Fiction to Designed Realities
So how has Design Fiction changed since Dunne & Raby established Designed Realities Studio at The New School in 2016?
In my experience, one characteristic of Designed Realities Studio was to discuss futures together interdisciplinarily with students from diverse backgrounds worldwide.
When Dunne & Raby were at the RCA, Speculative Design attracted students with a strong interest in technology due to the characteristics of the department of Design Interactions. Personal critiques about current technologies and alternative uses of advanced science and technology were the key triggers of speculative inspirations. And as Sputniko! practiced, the individual’s fictional scenarios seeped into a big audience and evoked critical discussions in society.
On the other hand, Designed Realities Studio gathers students from various majors from design, architecture, technology to business, political science, anthropology, and they discuss thought-experimental questions together. The questions are mostly political, anthropological, and ethical. For example, what is a nation operating on an entirely different policy-making system, or how do humans look to post-Anthropocene creatures? By thinking of these as a transdisciplinary body, we can imagine these worlds and possible products with more sense of reality.
In a dialogue with me, Fiona Raby said, “Speculative debates are now happening worldwide, unlike in the 2000s. No one blindly believes that technology will keep advancing humans anymore. This is what Speculative Design wanted to create. So from now on, I have to use that imagination to create reality to tackle planetary problems.”
Therefore, Design [Fiction] and Designed [Realities] are literally opposite processes for me.
The New School is a private research university in NY consisting of multiple autonomous colleges called “divisions.”
Therefore, students from all divisions come together at Designed Realities Studio regardless of specialty, nationality, or gender. When I was there as a student in Design and Technology at Parsons School of Design, I sat at the same table with students majoring in all other design practices, fine arts, and social studies. For me, Designed Realities Studio was like a small “society.” It was the place to throw my idea, spark chemical reactions from every kind of academics, and imagine different worlds with higher resolution.
At Designed Realities Studio, I have envisioned an imaginary pluriversal worldview where all humans, animals, and machines coexist. Newspapers in this world no longer have geographical tags (North America, Asia, etc.) or the categorization for human beings (Sports, Entertainment, etc.) as in the current news. Instead, it has changed to categories for all entities on the planet, such as climate, resources, and habitat.
These fragments of an imaginary world worked as a catalyst of critical discussion. For instance, we discussed that there would be new conflicts between humans and other species in this world. However, these conflicts seem as same as the current conflict between nations. If so, what’s the core issue of human value, and how can we truly coexist with others, countries, and other species on our shared planet? One poetic prototype evoked new research questions through such discussions, and the next exploration started there.
3 Phrases to describe Designed Realities
The following three are my memorable phrases to express what Designed Realities is.
- Not Here, Not Now
- Aestetics of Unreality
- Show us, Not Tell us
Designed Realities Studio nudges us to imagine the world “Not Here, Not Now” through “Aesthetics of Unreality” of tangible prototypes that “you can show, not talk.”
Designers, political scientists, anthropologists, and linguists are all required to present their POV individually in sharable prototypes, receive feedback from the transdisciplinary “society,” and take it back to themselves for further iterations. Outputs vary depending on each person’s major and skillsets, but they all prototype a world of “Not Here, Not Now.”
I injected an advanced technology perspective into a political scientist’s prototype, and the political scientist injected a social system perspective into my prototype. It was an experience that could be called a “shared brain” in which each person borrowed brains of others to expand the horizon of imagination and evolve one’s ideas, rather than “co-creation” in which everyone finally reaches one idea. It can be possible only in such a transdisciplinary environment.
Experiencing this process in person has definitely become my lifelong asset. I think Dunne & Daby explores designing futures we all satisfy rather than possible futures as the “beyond” of Speculative Design in the 2020s.
Bridge “Not Here, Not Now” and “Here, Now”
Dunne & Raby consistently mention about the importance of imagination in confronting the wicked problems of the 21st century. However, how to bridge “Not Here, Not Now” and “Here, Now” is another important topic for us living in the present. Without it, it would be just an imaginary movie or a fantasy.
When I asked Dunne & Raby this question directly, I thought it was essential to repeat this process of “imagination through design.” Through the prototype of “Not Here, Not Now,” new questions and discussions arise. After that, if we feel we’ve gone too far, we go back next by using our imagination again. Or, if we’ve not been able to convey the worldview to others, we visualize the world again from another angle, such as society, economy, policy, or environment. Then, repeat this process again and again. By arranging several prototypes that tell fragments of the world of “Not Here, Not Now,” the appropriate pathway toward our future gradually becomes apparent. Using imagination, Designed Realities attempts to overcome the problem that imagination ends with just imagination, which Speculative Design experienced.
What is the value of designers in an era when the design is democratized?
In Speculative Design, it sometimes happened that a handful of artists with intense inspiration created cutting-edge works, exhibited them in contemporary museums, and ended up. After that stage, Dunne & Raby is now actively trying to install the skillsets of imagination and storytelling into not only designers / artists but also all people across disciplines.
By democratizing imagination, we can increase the resolution of the future vision together. By moving back and forth between “Not Here, Not Now” and “Here, Now” like a pendulum, we can envision the humane pathway towards the world we all satisfy. It is probably an ideal theory, but I believe that we all must train our imagination muscles to overcome our wicked problems of the 21st century. This futures thinking through design is what I want to research throughout my life and practice in society as a design futurist at JPMorgan Chase now.
Imagination, indigenous wisdom, and Transition Design are more critical to envision humane futures rather than emerging technology, science, and rationalism. An individual of course needs to have such an attitude, but it is difficult for one individual to practice it alone in an organization. Thus a long-term strategy is needed on how diverse, holarchy-driven, and “shared brain” cultures can be installed throughout the organization. Also, in terms of bridging “Not Here, Not Now” and “Here, Now,” I believe it is essential to see things from plural lenses such as present and future, concrete and abstract, ultra-micro and ultra-macro.
So, what role do designers play in an era where design is democratized and everyone is making full use of their imagination? Through the interaction with Dunne & Raby, I believe the value of “Aesthetics of Unreality” does not change. Designers always materialize things that don’t exist in the world yet and aesthetically tell the fragments for the future. As long as the design is with humans, designers will continue to be the unique profession that can show “Not Here, Not Now.”
2021 Masaki Iwabuchi | LinkedIn | Twitter | Notion
References
Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative everything: Design, fiction, and social dreaming. MIT Press.
Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2022). Designed Realities Studio. Retrieved 22 Jan, 2022 from https://www.designedrealities.org/
Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2009). Work in Progress. Retrieved 22 Jan, 2022 from http://dunneandraby.co.uk/content/projects/476/0
STRELKA MAG. (2018). DUNNE & RABY: FROM FUTURES TO REALITIES. Retrieved 22 Jan, 2022 from https://strelkamag.com/en/article/dunne-and-raby-from-futures-to-realities
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