A SPECULATIVE DESIGN CONFERENCEFebruary 24-26, 2017 | San Francisco, California

What exactly is Speculative Design?

Source: James Pierce

SPECULATIVE DESIGN“Today designers often focus on making technology easy to use, sexy, and consumable. In Speculative Everything, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby propose a kind of design that is used as a tool to create not only things but ideas. For them, design is a means of speculating about how things could be—to imagine possible futures. This is not the usual sort of predicting or forecasting, spotting trends and extrapolating; these kinds of predictions have been proven wrong, again and again. Instead, Dunne and Raby pose “what if ” questions that are intended to open debate and discussion about the kind of future people want (and do not want).”

— MIT Press

CHEAT SHEET➤ Website: http://www.primerconference.com/

➤ Speakers: http://www.primerconference.com/speakers/

➤ Core77 Articles: http://www.core77.com/posts/63489/Primer-2017-A-Speculative-Futures-Conference

➤ Wired article: https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2017/02/primer-speculative-design-conference/

➤ My album of key slides: https://goo.gl/photos/6APBk5ecnzoNd8Gb7

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➤ georgewang89@gmail.com | linkedin.com/in/georgewang89 | @georgewang89

A LITTLE ABOUT MEGrowing up, I’ve always been a little weird. But weird is a relative concept. Put me in a room with other people who are equally intoxicated on their own journey of discovery and creation, then I’d still be weird. “Wait, what?” Were you expecting me to say I’ll fit right in? Like that — weird people always try to inject a little surprise into the conversation. We love asking questions, experimenting with perceptions, and above all, loosening the way people think about the world and themselves.

George is the name I picked after immigrating to Canada. The intent was to have the same name as the guy from the Titanic, but ended up being called Curious George through most of school. I used to be embarrassed by it, and now I wear it proudly. “Curiosity keeps leading us down new paths,” said Walt Disney. It has certainly done so for me.

Today, I an INNOVATION STRATEGIST with a background in Engineering and entrepreneurship who thrives on tearing down walls and connecting people and ideas. Playing at the intersection of culture, emerging technology, and commerce, I bringing people together to envision and bring about new possibilities.

Everything I do is guided by three questions: How might we be useful? how might we be inclusive? and how might we share well to flourish? My ultimate drug in life — creating situations where everybody wins.

George

Kesha

MAKING SENSE OF SPECULATIVE DESIGNF

Left: A manifesto entitled A/B that positions what we do (speculative design) in relation to how most people understand design. Source: James Pierce

Right: A comparison of design on the left vs speculative design on the right. Source: Christian Ervin @tellart.

A couple more ideas as warm up for what you’re about to see in the rest of this deck…

Jason Kelly Johnson, Co-founder of the Future Cities Lab, shared an interesting story of his daughter asking innocent questions that have seemingly obvious answers, but upon closer inspection, challenge the way we organize the world. A big part of futures studies is around challenging our pre-existing schemas, in order to make space for us to imagine alternative futures.

MAKING FUTURES TANGIBLEChristian

United Arab Emirates was formed in 1971. The reason why it didn’t appear on the news as much until recently is because for a very long time, the picture on the left is what UAE looked like back when it was founded. The association that UAE has with luxury is a relatively new concept. The contrast between the two images shows just how much change can happen within the span of a few decades.

Museum of the Future, led for Tellart, is an exhibition at the World Government Summit in Dubai. The exhibition is comprised of about a dozen immersive experiences that paints a picture around future impact of current advancements in robotics and artificial intelligence on society. The following slides explore three ways that immersion can be achieved.

GAMESImmersion is about suspending disbelief. What makes games, games, is their capacity for players to willingly suspend disbelief.

Top: Healthcare in the future will be preventative and experienced as a game. The goal of the game for patients is to move their bodies according to on-screen instructions. The system is able to read their movements and detect abnormalities. Participants of the exhibition take the role of patients and play the game.

Bottom: After coming home from a long day, an AI — of middle east origins — will welcome you back and help you unwind by starting a game of “do not touch the lava!” right in your living room.

MULTI SENSORY EXPERIENCE

An experience is more immersive when it engages a multitude of senses.

This is a “clinic” of the future. Instead of going to the doctor when you’re sick, inhaling this wellness mist once in a while will ward off any harmful pathogens and keep you healthy.

MEANINGFUL CHOICES

Giving participants the opportunity to reflect and make meaningful choices is one way to create an immersive experience.

Choosing a career in the future will be facilitated by an AI that knows your values and interests and matches you with a career that aligns with those values and interests.

It understands your values by asking situational questions whose answers reveal your underlying values.

STORYTELLING FOR DESIGNBeverly May, Founder of the Concepts Lab

Short phrases capturing people’s sentiments towards an experience

In summary, this is what the existing experience feels like

DESIGNING THE DRIVER EXPERIENCE

… and this is what we want the future to feel like. * note the change in colours

Storytelling is a crucial skill in design products for today and designing experiences that don’t exist yet. Here is the story of how participants in a workshop designed the future experience of driving and riding in a vehicle, told by Beverly May, using her signature storytelling format that’s both engaging and succinct.

… and this is what we want the future to feel like

* note the change in colours

Write each component of the dashboard on a card and experimenting with different ways to categorize them

Redesigned dashboard layout Taking an used car and replacing its dashboard with the redesigned dashboard

DESIGNING THE DRIVER EXPERIENCE

Persona of the target user Macro user journey

Journey map for each point in the macro journey

DESIGNING THE DRIVER EXPERIENCE

Similar to driver experience,

1. Short phrases capturing sentiments towards the passenger experience

2. What the existing experience feels like

3. Characteristics of the desired experience

Persona of the target user, and how it changes over time a

Final output: Redesigned seatingAND NOW FOR THE

PASSENGER…

OVERCOMING BIASES FOR THE FUTUREPaolo Cardini, Associate Professor, RISD; Global Futures Lab

Our experiences are Common images of the future is rooted in a Western perspective. Certain things we consider as “the future” is already “the present” in other parts of the world. For example, a dystopia future where the atmosphere is so poisonous that we cannot breathe unless wearing a mask — is already a reality in China. A future in which people’s life partners are arranged for them — is already a reality in India.

Left: Why can’t an astronaut be wearing traditional African garb? #AfrofuturismTop right: Traditionally decorated furniture from India modified from IKEA nightstand.Bottom right: In India, there are elements that connect to their future scenarios that we don't see here, spirituality and religion for example.

Top left: Foosball table with “players” dressed in Middle Eastern clothingBottom left: Toy pieces for building houses are designed for a western culture where houses look like a rectangular body with a triangular roof. Houses in other parts of the world are shaped differently, so toys should be as well. Right: Kids from parts of the world don’t recognize moose, but they do recognize camels.

How do we get rid of stereotypes of the future, and create something original? How do we make sure the ideas we have about the future based on social cultural understanding and not from something we inherited?

So much of what we perceive as “the future” is a technocratic one — holograms, florissant lighting, and minimalist designs,Fishermen will continue to exist in the future, but only equipped with new technologies.

IMMERSIVE

WORDS TO ➤ Pluriverse: The world never has a

singular future. There are always multiple futures (if not futures of every kind) co-existing alongside one another in the world.

➤ Eutopia / Eupsychia: Rather than aiming for an extremely good dream or an extremely bad dream described by words like utopia and dystopia, eutopia and eupsychia are a “dialed-back” version of their extreme counterparts that’s based on our time and place. They are hypercontextualized dreams.

DOESN’T QUITE WORK

Apple doesn’t have nearly as many features as android; Snapchat photos self destruct after a number of seconds; Twitter limits you to 140 characters

These products all illustrate the concept of “counterfunctionality” — it’s actually operational, but it doesn’t quite work (work in the sense that we expect it to)

Here’s a “counterfunctional” project that James did. He bought eight cameras and encased them in concrete — leaving only a power button and a charging port exposed. The idea is to prevent the user from being able to retrieve the photos they take, unless they smash open the concrete exterior. The device was neatly packaged with an instruction manual and was sold / given to people from all walks of life. What’s the point of this? It’s an unusual kind of interaction that allows the user to observe how they behave and in turn, reveal who they are to themselves. (I made this last part up, as the point of this is really whatever you want it to be. Strange but interesting, isn’t it?)

The camera project was a real world example that James used to give some tangible form to his attempt to define the space of speculative futures.

AMBIENT STORYTELLING

What kind of story can by told by the environment and objects within it — especially in a IoT world where things are increasingly aware of your choices and actions. The modern car, has more lines of code in it than a space shuttle. Can all of this data be constructed into a story? Scott Fisher, Founding Chair of the Interactive Media Division in the USC School of Cinematic Arts, programmed the driving experience so that milestones’ can be unlocked as the car is being driven over time. He also created a Twitter account that tweets about the driver’s behaviors. All in all, this was an experimental project that pushed the boundaries of who, what, and how stories could be told.

FUTURE OF WORK… THROUGH VR

Virtual reality is maturing into a techno

DESIGNING THE HUMAN BODY

EMPATHYDentists used to practice their techniques on models from a hundred years ago that elicited zero empathy. Even though these models have come a long way in terms of accuracy, empathy is still the last thing it elicits from a person. On the other hand, empathy is easily elicited by the video in which a human kicks a robotic dog. The fact that we have more empathy for something that hurts as if it were a living thing but does not resemble anything alive, over something static that merely looks like a real person, is telling of behavior’s ability to trigger empathy.

To bring this idea to life, Agi Hanes, a speculative designer in the area of biology and medicine, created a model that hurts like human. If you make a noise, the models would cry and bleed. The louder the noise, the stronger then outpour of fluids from the body.

Agi’s work is focused on designing the human body. How might people respond to the possibilities of our body as another everyday material and how far can we push our malleable bodies while still being accepted by society? Instead of inserting mechanical devices into our bodies, what if we adapt the specialized organ of an electric eel into a pacemaker? What if we modify babies when they are born to help them cope with health or extreme weather conditions that’s a consequence of climate change? Of course everything you see here is fake, but made realistic enough so they move from being abstract ideas to tangible realities that people can have gut reactions to.

Here are three other experiments she ran that provoke people’s thinking. Left: Having participants peek into a hotel room with a man sleeping from across the floor from his testicles that “live” in its own capsule. Middle: Getting people to perform surgery on ultra-realistic (but fake) eyeballs Right: For people with neurological diseases, what if their skulls are modified to have a transparent section through which the brain condition can be monitored with ease?

INTERESTED IN HEARING MORE?

Guy on the left:

Me! Always happy to share. Feel free to reach out even if you’re just interested in connecting.

georgewang89@gmail.comlinkedin.com/in/georgewang89 @georgewang89

Guy on the right:

Phil Balagtas, Founder of Speculative Futures & PRIMER Conferencehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/neshacom/@neshacom1

TOP FOUR TAKEAWAYSFuture is just around the corner

Dubai went from a desert to a metropolis in the span of forty-something years. The speed at which changes can happen is astounding. By closing the temporal distance in different aspects of our world - our economy, environment, technology, politics, and values - between today and the future, it puts weight on our actions today. Whether we’re talking about flooded coast lines or unlimited clean energy, the future is coming sooner than we think.

Speculative design questions about the unquestionable, and makes the outrageous feel achievable

Paolo’s work exposes our stereotypes of the future casts doubt on the certainty of our beliefs. Agi’s work Å the outrageous idea of implementing animal organs in humans feel vaguely familiar. While one raises the question of ‘why?’, and the other ‘why not?’, both expands our field of view and allows us to recognize new possibilities. This is what speculative design is all about.

Stereotypes of the future

How we think about the future is often colored by stereotypes. For example, our visions of the future tend to gravitate towards the Utopian and Dystopian extremes. But if you compare our world today to what people twenty years ago thought our world would look like, while we can carry a million songs in our pocket and can barely afford to buy a house, the facade of our world remain largely unchanged. The future mostly looks more or less same to our world today - mundane and messy.

Speculative design is irony manifested

A friend once told me that art is philosophy manifested. If that’s the case, then I think speculative design is irony manifested. Speculative design is about the coalescence of contradictions — about making things operational, but doesn’t actually quite work.

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