The Designer's Approach to Speculative Design

How did movies such as Star Wars, 2001: A space odyssey, and blade runner even begin to predict the future? They did use a concept called speculative design. Speculative design is a design practice that is concerned with future design proposals of a critical nature. We can see that it is a valuable design method as it has successfully predicted technology that has now become every day. Star Trek’s PADD (Personal Access Display Device) correctly predicted the Ipad and large touch screen phones. Almost 30 years ago.

Star Trek’s PADD (Personal Access Display Device)

As I find it, designing for the future is a necessity. Be it in the near or far future. It is every designer's social responsibility to design for the present but more importantly for the future.

An interesting exercise, the Pollak game, was performed at our workshop this week. The game represents an understandable approach to introducing the interpretations of the future, at both culture and individual levels. Through two separate questions:

Q1. Things are good and getting better, step forward.

OR Things are bad and getting worse, step backwards.

Q2. I, alone, can enact change in the world.

OR I, alone, cannot enact change in the world

A class of 50 had divided themselves into four groups, each with their outlook of the future:

I ended up on the lower left. As I believe as an individual there is not much we can do. However, following the exercise, I explained to friends that I do believe as a collective, people as collective can create change. This can be changed through thinking big and creating new systems. This is precisely my interpretation of why speculative and critical design is so very important.

A large scale problem in the world is climate change. This is something that simply cannot be ignored. Global warming is something that we may just have to design our way out of. As the large corporations have indicated, they have no intentions of changing their pollution output until there are cheaper methods than their factories. The situation is more complex than what I just said, but as design students and future designers we have to ask ourselves these critical questions such as ‘ what will the world look like in 20 – 30 years, ‘ what materials and technology will exist in 20 – 30 years, ‘what will my role be as a designer in the future.

I am finding out that we cannot let ourselves become comfortable as product designers. We have to challenge and experiment with the possibilities of these new materials and technologies. A fantastic example is the development of nanotechnology and its potential in the medical industry.

On a lighter note, it is always fun to think and sketch for ourselves what our dream hover car would look like!