Speculative Everything: Be a Dreamer with Critical Design and Design Fiction

Talk, photos and glitch artworks by Mino Parisi
UX Book Club Rome // May 2018
SPECULATIVE
EVERYTHING
Talk and glitch artworks by
Mino Parisi // UX Designer
Be a Dreamer with Critical Design and Design Fiction

How design  
will evolve  
in the Future?

30 years old
approach
How design will evolve in the Future?
Is this the
Future of
Design?DESIRABILITY
(HUMAN)
VIABILITY 
(BUSINESS)
FEASIBILITY 
(TECHNICAL)
INNOVATION

30 years old
books
Is this the
Future of
Design?

Design culture
shaped by
claps, likes and
viral articles 
 
(please stop using this photo!)
Is this the
Future of
Design?

Trends,
pattern and
pastiche
culture
Is this the
Future of
Design?
Photo by Harpal Singh on Unsplash

Is this the
Future of
Design 
?
Branded design
methods

Tech buzzword
- driven design
Is this the
Future of
Design?
Photo by Andres Urena on Unsplash

A set of
rules and
steps for a
no-failure
design
Is this the
Future of
Design?

Is this the
Future of
Design?
A“commit“
culture

We are
living in
many of
these filter
bubbles!
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

What
happen if
we blow up
these
bubbles?
Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash

Liz Sanders,
2008
Map of design
practice and
research
Article →

Future of Design Map
Trans-human 
Design
(New)
Normal
Near
Future
Probable
Future
Bio mimic
Design
Bioclimatic
Design
TUX 
Tactile User
Experience
Human -Centered Design Partecipatory Design
Past
Design + Emotion
D.I.Y. 
Design it
Youself
Social Design
Design
for all
Anarco
Design
Design
Fiction
DesigN.A.
Expoplanetary
Design
Mino Parisi, 2018
Speculative Critical
Design
Design
Yourself
Data
Centered
Design
Non-human
Design
Robot
Centered
Design
Alien
Design
Design without
designer
Open
Source 
UXD
UXD +
Hacking

Affermative
Problem solving
Design as process
Provide answers
In the service of industry
For how the world is
Science fiction
Futures
Fictional functions
Change the world to suits us
Narratives of production
Anti-art
Research for design
Applications
Design for production
Fun
Concept design
Consumer
User
Training
Makes us buy
Innovation
Ergonomics
Critical
Problem finding
Design as medium
Asks questions
In the service of society
For how the world could be
Social fiction
Parallel worlds
Functional fictions
Change us to suit the world
Narratives of consumption
Applied art
Research through design
Implications
Design for debate
Satire
Conceptual design
Citizen
Person
Education
Makes us think
Provocation
Rhetoric
[ a ] [ b ]
“B was not intend
to replace A but to
simple add another
dimension…Ideally,
C, D, E, and many
others would
follow”
A/B 
Manifesto
Dunne & Raby

What’s the role
of designer in the Future?
Taxonomy of
the Future
Dunne & Raby

Critical Design uses speculative design proposals to
challenge narrow assumptions, preconceptions and
givens about the role products play in everyday life. It
is more of an attitude than anything else, a position
rather than a method. (…) Its opposite is afﬁrmative
design: design that reinforces the status quo.
Anthony Dunne

And about Speculative design? 
 
“We believe that by speculating
more, at all levels of society, and
exploring alternative scenarios,
reality will become more
malleable and, although the
future cannot be predicted, we
can help set in place today
factors that will increase the
probability of more desirable
futures happening.” -
Design as
provocation and
storytelling
Impacts of
emerging sci-fi
and technology
Future
methodologies
Dunne & RabyImage by Luiza Prado @futurefemmes →

Dunne & Raby
United Micro
Kingdom
Project Website →

Dunne & Raby
United Micro
Kingdom: 
Digitarians
Project Website →

Dunne & Raby
United Micro
Kingdom: 
Communo-
nuclearist
Project Website →

Dunne & Raby
United Micro
Kingdom: 
Biolibertarians
Project Website →

Dunne & Raby
United Micro
Kingdom: 
Anarco-
evolutionist
Project Website →

Who will we
design for in
the Future?

For whom we will design in the Future?
Will we
design for
his needs?
Augmented
sense & organs
people
Photo by Franck V. on Unsplash

The Cyborg
Foundation
They’re
already
among us
Website →

Will we
design for
their needs?
Transhumans,
Fake TV spot for
Deus Ex videogame
promotion
Spot Video →

Oscar Pistorius
They’re
already
among us

Will we design
for utopian
communities?
Foragers,
Dunne & Raby

Mutoid Waste
Company
In the past,
have designers
designed with
utopias?

Will we design
for non-humans
needs?
Android Birthday//
David Grennan
Project Video →

Will we design
for non-humans
frustrations?
Teacher of
algorithms //
Automato Farm
Project Video →

Will we design
for non-humans
emotions?
Addicted Products//
Simone Rebaudengo
Project Video →

Will non-
humans design
our needs?
End of Life Care
Machine//
Dan Chen

Will we design
for undeads’
needs?
Ubik // Philip K. Dick

We will
design for
this worker
needs?
Endless Chair//
Van Der Kooij

S
Bogner + Schmitt
+ Voigt //
Raising Robotic
Natives
We will
design for
for robot
native
children?

We will design
for people who
living in a
robot?
Eco-pods // Howeler +
Soon Architecture +
Squared Design Lab

We will
design new
relationships?
Respiratory Dog //
Revital Cohen

We will
design new
species?
Algaculture //
Burton Nitta

A/B 
Manifesto
Dunne & Raby
Affermative
Problem solving
Design as process
Provide answers
In the service of industry
For how the world is
Science fiction
Futures
Fictional functions
Change the world to suits us
Narratives of production
Anti-art
Research for design
Applications
Design for production
Fun
Concept design
Consumer
User
Training
Makes us buy
Innovation
Ergonomics
Critical
Problem finding
Design as medium
Asks questions
In the service of society
For how the world could be
Social fiction
Parallel worlds
Functional fictions
Change us to suit the world
Narratives of consumption
Applied art
Research through design
Implications
Design for debate
Satire
Conceptual design
Citizen
Person
Education
Makes us think
Provocation
Rhetoric
[ a ] [ b ]

At the end of Computer Age
Users
Tech VS Society
Design = User Friendliness
Alternatives realities or futures
Imagers or Dreamers
World big Issues
Design = Catalyst for debate
Everyday Design Speculative Design

Understand or predicts users’
needs and frustrations to
reduce the gap between
people and technologies to
allow them to buy or interact
with products and services
Explore public perception to
involve people in the debate
about ethical, cultural, social,
and political implications of
technologies with society with
the aim to deﬁne alternative
worlds and futures

Consider people as consumer
that suspend their disbelief on
other impulse when they using
technologies and citizen when
they discuss big issues
Design can help raise
awareness of the consequences
of our actions as citizen-
consumers

We design for users and
language needs to be natural
and transparent
We design for viewers or
imagers and design language
needs to be unnatural and
even glitchy

Happy designers talking in
happy conferences about
users that they made happy
through useful and meaningful
products or services
Critical Design maybe be dark,
because darkness is an antidote
to naive of the techno-utopians.
Dark and complex emotions are
usually ignored in design

What role will
design play in
the Future of
technology?

Emerging
technologies
hype cycle //
Gartner
What role will design play in the Future of technology?
Emerging
technologies
are mostly
planned or
forecasted
Case study →

“A perfect world for perfect people interact
perfectly with perfect technologies”
From: “Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming”- A. Dunne & F. Raby, 2013
Bradley
Cooper’s
selﬁe at Oscar
Ceremony
2014

Design play a role in democratisation of technologies
change by widening participation in debate potential
ethical, cultural, social, and political implications.
Hyper-
Reality //
Keiichi
Matsuda &
Skillbard
Video →

Tech industry concept promote only corporate
values with limited scopes and vision
Uninvited
Guests //
Superﬂux
Case study
and video →

• Unsettle the present rather then predict the future 
• Generate a parallel design channel free from market pressure 
• Provoke, pose questions and inspire concepts 
• Swift from design application to design implications 
• Rise up designer’s civic purpose rather then just for business 
• Look into the possible consequences of technological applications 
A speculative approach can:

How designers
will shape
the Future?

How designer will shape the Future?
Ability to
imagine
other
worlds &
alternatives
IMAGINATION

Ability to
imagine
other
worlds &
alternatives
Everyday
within
material
culture
IMAGINATION EVERYDAY

Ability to
imagine
other
worlds &
alternatives
Creating speculative products and services
Everyday
within
material
culture
IMAGINATION EVERYDAY

“The problem with speculation for designer at
least, is that fictional. Which is still seen as a
bad thing.The idea of fiction and not found in
the shop is not good. 
We are interested to liberate this story making.
This dream materialising ability.  
From purely commercial applications and
redirect to more social ends, that address
citizen rather than the consumer.”
Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby

Speculative Design Thinking
Mino Parisi, 2018
CRITICAL SPECULATIVE DEBATE
Exploring underground,
and radical realities
outside industries
SUBVERT
What if…? 
Working with
unreality or thought
experiments
DREAM
Observing emerging
behaviour and frictions
EXPLORATION
Collect tech and society
tendencies and understand
how things works
PREDICT
From mixed
reality props
(Design Fiction)
PROPTYPE 1
Prototyping
speculative
experiences or props
PROPTYPE 2
To makes darken
and satire
speculations
PROPTYPE …
Trigger a debate and  
co-design alternatives
worlds & futures
PEOPLE

What if were possible to
extract nutrition value
from non-human foods
using a combination of
synthetic biology and new
digestive systems of other
mammals, birds, fishes and
insects?
What if…?
Foragers // Dunne & Raby
From: “Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and
Social Dreaming”- A. Dunne & F. Raby, 2013

“Design Fiction is the deliberate use
of diegetic prototypes to suspend
disbeliefs about change”
Bruce Sterling

Curious
Rituals //
Near Future
Laboratory
Exploring emerging behaviours and frictions
with Design Fiction
Video →

• Speculative design overlaps on design ﬁction with other emerging
design methods and approaches
• Deliverables: future vision video, photos, and props
• Design Fiction suffered as cinema objects a dependence with the
already know, not extend the imaginative possibilities of prop
• Rarely critical of tech progress and sometimes is a sort of
celebration aesthetics than be a catalyst of questioning
Design Fiction VS Speculative Design

Props = Triggers
Props in speculation are not art pieces because help us entertain ideas
about everyday life and disturb it at the same time.
Menstruation
Machine //
Sputniko!
Suited for
Subversion // 
Ralph Borlan

Starting a
debate!
Testing
Hypotheticals //
Extrapolation
Factory
Case study
and video →

Who inspires
our design
mindset?

Speculative Design try to
reconnect to the Radical
Architecture spirit because
today we needs more value
and ideology to treat
Design as catalyst not a
source of vision.
Who inspires our design mindset?

From 1980 Design become
hyper commercialised,
capitalism won and Design
align it self with.
Speculative Design try to
reconnect to the Radical
Architecture spirit because
today we needs more value
and ideology to treat
Design as catalyst not a
source of vision.

“It was immediately obvious in the first years in which  
I worked on the ELEA that in the design of certain gigantic
instruments, as electronic machines were then, or in the
design of group of machines which have a logical and
operational relationship between each other, one end up
immediately designing the working environment; that is,
one end up conditioning the man who is working, not only
his direct physical relationship with the whole act of
working the complex mechanisms of physical culture and
psychic actions and reactions with the environment in
which he works, the conditionings, the liberty, the
destruction, exhaustion and death.”
Ettore Sottsass

1960 
Proto-radicals: Archigram,
Metabolism and Yona Friedman

1960 
1966 
Radical Architecture: Superstudio,
Archizoom, 9999, UFO, Haus-Rucker Co.
Walter Pichler, Ant Farm and many more

1960 
1966 
1972 
Italy: The New Domestic Landscape
@MoMa, New York

1960 
1966 
1972 
Italy: The New Domestic Landscape
@MoMa, New York
1973 
Global Tools

Arts as source of
inspiration
Cremaster Circle //
Matthew Barney
Slide to Expose // Refrakt
Slogans for the twenty
ﬁrst century //Douglas
Coupland

Science research is
where design as critique
can exploring ideas before
they become products or
technologies and they can
look into the possible
consequences of a
practical applications.
TED Talk: Neri Oxman (MIT) -
Design at intersection of
technology and biology →

Utopia &
underground
culture
Photos from my
collection of stickers
and zines

Literature

Music
Oneothrix Point Never
Garden of Deleter
Boards of Canada
Music has the right to children
Alva Noto
Xerrox vol.01
Play it → Play it → Play it →

Movies and fictions

Curious Rituals //
Near Future
Laboratory
Speculative
anthropology
& technology
frictions
Download free
e-book →

What does
Ethics mean
in design?

What does Ethics mean in Design?
Once upon a time, Enzo…

What does Ethics means in design?
Enzo Mari
1974
Proposta per
un’autoprogettazione
Link to Enzo Mari’s
interview about
Autoprogettazione →

What does Ethics means in design?
Carlo Giulio Argan
"Enzo Mari is right.
Everyone must design: after
all it is the best way to
avoid being designed "

Thank you…
and reconnect to the spirit to be a dreamer!
Mino Parisi // UX Designer
mail
linkedin
twitter
website
minoparisi@gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/minoparisi
twitter.com/minoparisi
www.minoparisi.com

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