This weeks lecture explores speculative design, a creative and critical approach to designing for the future. Instead of focusing on solving current problems, speculative design imagines possible, probable, and even provocative futures to challenge our assumptions and inspire new ways of thinking.
These four terms are used in future thinking and scenario planning for us to explore different versions and views of the future
Possible - Things that could happen when they are still unlikely. It includes all scenarios no matter how far from reality they might be.
Plausible - Scenarios that could realistically happen based on your current knowledge, trends, and facts.
Probable - What is likely to happen if current trends continue without major changes
Preferable - The future that we want to create and achieve, which based on values and goals
Speculative design is important because it helps us to imagine and explore all of the possible futures before they actually happen. It’s not meant to be predicting the future but more about asking “what if?” to be able to come up with new ideas and conversations.
This approach allows us as designers to think beyond solutions and consider long-term impacts, helping them make better decisions.
Technological speculations are ideas about how technology might evolve in the future and how it could impact our lives as designers. Aswell as the speculative design they explore “what if” questions. These Technological Speculations help us to think about possibilities before they actually happen, allowing us to prepare for challenges or take advantage of new opportunities.
The last section of the lecture was spent on a class workshop task, the idea was for my group to come up with a solution that could prevent future lectures from going remote and moved online. Together we thought of some reasons for people to come into class. The first thing we thought of was that you don’t get the same treatment and learning experience if you are at home and aswell as having the social aspect because we would be able to work on things like this task of we aren’t together.
