When we cross from problem-solving to dreaming, mind the traps.
Speculative design (SD) serves as a catalyst for social dreaming. Overwhelmed by the complexity of the wicked problems in the world, some designers find it futile or impossible to solve them using reasons and problem-solving frameworks, therefore growing the lassitude and even desperation among them. Not shouldering the responsibility of endorsing a credible solution or a better future but being experimental and dystopian, SD fascinates designers as an antidote to such passivity and negativity.
But why does SD offer possibilities but not certainties? Why is it aimed at provoking controversy but not presenting a credible solution? As for designers, without understanding what SD is, they might result in imagining too much but contributing so little to the real world. This article is not aiming at criticizing any designer or designs with false understandings and approaches of SD, but at reminding the designers about the traps they might come across.
WORKSHOPIFICATION
“Fantasy exists in its own world, with very few if any links to the world we live in. It is of course valuable, especially as a form of entertainment, but for us, it is too removed from how the world is. ” — — Dunne & Raby
In the post-pandemic stage, more and more online SD workshops have popped up thanks to the growing adoption of digital collaboration tools among designers. Through gamification/workshopification, the participants are usually required to follow the given framework and tools to generate a fictional design in hours, giving young designers misperceptions that the SD process is playful and productivity-oriented, focusing more on the co-creation approaches and the storytelling of the outcome. Therefore, SD is downgraded as an entertaining complement of collaborations rather than a design field that requires collaboration on building complex speculative worldviews and sparks public discussions to co-imagine our pathway to a preferable future.
What’s more, without enough time and emphasis on researching and identifying the weak signals and trends that might indicate the future, and pinning the future back down to the current condition, this kind of pseudo SD is conflated with blind “what if…” fantasies without any strategic coordination. On the opposite, SD designers should first analyze the relationship between people and reality through the lens of values, beliefs, ethics, dreams, hopes, and fears on certain realistic issues, and then speculate and introduce the imaginary, macro-metaphysical variates within the issue. After that, rigorously follow the implied or explicit rules/laws in the alternative future, infer a possible opportunity for change, and backcast it to the present for future moves to strategy making.
SPARKING EMOTIONAL IMPULSE RATHER THAN CONTINUOUS DEBATE
“Emotions are steered by the limbic system… They form the pre-reflexive, half-conscious, physico-instinctual level of action that escapes full awareness.” — — Byung-Chul Han
Even though designers are using SD to propose alternative futures and spark public debates about the preferable future, there seems no better “alternative” way for exposure other than social media so far. Because of the volatile and vertiginous characteristics of social media, some designers have to spend more effort creating a series of eye-catching aesthetics, mind-blowing concepts, and playful forms to arouse emotional resonance from the audience and to receive considerable “likes” and “reposts”. But emotional arousal and consumption alone on social media do no good in igniting public debates. Instead, the fire of thoughts would be put out the moment the emotional arousal reaches the climax. Irritated, shocked, scared, devastated, worried or amazed, etc., these fleeting emotions provide a short-lived moment of sensory fulfillment, hence stopping the audience from taking the next step to reflect upon the design, not to mention to further debate it. Often we see SD work on social media with atomized comments and no iteration of the design work, turning SD projects, which are meant to be anti-capitalism and anti-market-imperative, into some entertaining, fast-moving consumer goods.
Therefore, as creators and facilitators, the role of designers is to make debates happen and accessible, maintain the fluidity of the conversation and then backcast them to reality, forming “a culture of practice that is under constant reflection and evolution”. Like the debates in the Design and Violence comment section under the Republic of Salivation project (Michael Burton and Michiko Nitta), the artists and designers post reflections and critiques and form joint epistemological contemplation, exploration, and discussion with timely provocations, facilitations, and responses. Building on that, it would be better to engage a diversity of people, such as policymakers, scientists, the public, and others in the process to understand different values, beliefs, ethics, dreams, hopes, and fears.
THE ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE AND “SETTLER MOVES TO INNOCENCE”
“SD is often criticized with being a practice that comes from a position of white, northern European, culturally colonizing, patriarchal privilege (Prado de O. Martins & Oliveira, 2014).”
The trap I want to address is not the colonial characteristics in SD, but the absence of colonization. Relating to the legal concept of “Negative Evidence” (the absence of material evidence is used as evidence in its own right), it could presume an expulsion of the current exploitation of underprivileged people. Since SD only reveals a small part of the alternative future using images, videos, and other media, many signs of colonization that serve as historical and material agents in shaping the future world like artifacts, infrastructures, cultures, or social systems are unpresented or unmentioned. It wipes out the symbolic violence of the current settler and could introduce a new settler group that distracts the audience's attention from addressing the current issue.
In addition, designers have to acknowledge that, many of them are on the side of the “neo-settler” that produces the technical system of exploitation (e.g. the gig labor platforms like Uber and Upwork), power and control (e.g. the passport and border control system and the health QR code system in China) and also consumption stimulation (e.g. e-commerce and social media platform). And if designers are using SD to detach themselves from being responsible for the current problems in politics, economy, geography, class, race, gender, and ideology, and escape to the imaginary future and spark a new discussion about a non-emergent issue, it could be a “settler move to innocence”, a strategy that attempts to relieve them of guilt or responsibility without giving up any power or privilege, without having to change much at all. SD is not about neglecting “the near and direct urgency of nowness”.
CONCLUSION
There are many criticisms about SD that might serve as warnings of other traps. But instead of going on a row of critiques, we shall regard it as a real weapon that can be grasped by the masses. To make full use of this weapon against the wicked problems, let us designers reject both lassitude and fantasy, step out of the comfort zone of making subjective speculations that eases the responsibility and guilt of being unable to tackle real-world problems, and propose “what if…” prompts that uprise from a negation based on thorough research and understanding of the status quo, follow strictly the alternative worldview we shape and infer a possible opportunity for change without neglecting the impact from the material and historical agents, and then, engage the diverse public into debates under in-time facilitation to co-recognize the diverse expectations and needs among us. In the end, learn from that process, conversations and imagination and refine the future practices.
SOURCE
1. Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, Speculative Everything
2. Design & Violence, “The Republic of Salivation”
3. Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, Decolonization Is Not A Metaphor
4. Mahmoud Keshavarz, Design Politics: An Inquiry Into Passports, Camps And Borders
5. Eyal Weizman, Forensic Architecture
6. Elliott P Montgomery and Chris Woebken, Extrapolation Factory — Operator’s Manual
7. https://speculativeedu.eu/critical-about-critical-and-speculative-design/
8. https://laboriacuboniks.net/manifesto/yi-nv-quan-zhu-yi-yi-zhong-zhen-dui-yi-hua-de-zheng-zhi/
9. Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power
