Designing the Future Through Fiction
This week’s assignment introduced me to an interesting design concept. That being, designing the future through fictional or hypothetical prompts. Design fiction can be understood as both a discipline and a method. Blythe (2014) has attributed the creation of the term to Bruce Sterling from his 2005 book Shaping Things where he first discusses the term, but fails to give a comprehensive definition. Sterling later provides a definition of the term in a 2012 interview with Slate magazine as “the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change.” (Bosch, 2012).
For this week’s assignment, which let me practice this concept, we were given a card game where we were given, in arc, an object in a terrain, and had to develop a product or idea based on those three prompts.
Design Fiction: Nostalgic Sphere
Arc: Growth
Object: Relic
Terrain: Childhood
When I thought of relic and childhood the first thing that immediately come to mind was nostalgia and the need for seeing the “Good Ol’ Times” again. so I designed the Nostalgia Sphere which Is a tool that once you become a adult you gain access to and In a way similar to a magic 8 ball you ask It to show you a childhood memory and It replays In a short form video. The drawing below shows the general Idea of its design. You press a button to request a memory replay, and then the memory begins playing on the screen.
Design Fiction: Breathing Mask
Arc: Transform
Object: Mask
Terrain: Space
For this design, I created a “Breathing Mask” because the prompt was Space and Mask, and the Arc was Transform, so I imagine a future society where we can all easily access space travel and the only gear needed is this mask. I included both a front and back view of the mask. I also included a mouth slot for communication and purposely did not add a nose gap for the transform prompt, as I imagine society and humans have evolved to the point where we can function freely without worrying about clean air to breathe.
Design Fiction: Truth Telling Pen
Arc: Collapse
Object: Ritual
Terrain: Journalism
For this design, I developed an object given out to a “Broken” society once a year. This pen will be raffled to one person each year, who will serve as the village's journalist for the entire year. The pen has a number lock with a code that changes each year for each person who holds it, and a fingerprint pad for second verification and to keep the information written for the village “honest”. I thought of this as a way for a broken-down society to keep itself from spreading misinformation and eventually give them hope of rebuilding through verified Information.
I found this concept really interesting as a way to stretch my own creativity and design for a product that will be accessed in the near future. It was fun to develop a concept that was either fictional or something in the far-off future.
Sources:
Levine, Davis. “Design Fiction. “The Future Is No Longer Regarded As… | by Davis Levine | Digital Experience Design | Medium.” Medium, 13 Mar. 2016, medium.com/digital-experience-design/design-fiction-32094e035cd7
