SpeculativeEduApproaches, methods and tools for Speculative Design

Table Of Content

• Beyoncé says hair-care line Cécred has personal roots, including her psoriasis battle
• An overview of contemporary speculative practice
• A HISTORY OF RADICAL FUTURING IN BLACK COMMUNITIES
• CONSIDERING RACE AND TECHNOLOGY
• L.A. looks at eliminating up to 2,000 vacant positions as the city’s budget outlook worsens
• M4 MacBooks: Everything we know so far
• How to use design as a tool to create not only things but ideas, to speculate about possible futures. Today designers…

In turn, we hope the answers we come across during the project would lead us to alternative paths not yet explored. Speculative design projects often take shape as design proposals, in the medium of exhibitions, films, novels, product design, and sketches. They are ideas that take shape in the world through the means and methods of design production.

Beyoncé says hair-care line Cécred has personal roots, including her psoriasis battle

A small number of scholars in the HCI and interaction design space have begun exploring these frameworks as approaches to shift whose voices are amplified in design futuring [5, 63] as well as how methods reflect these lived experiences. Much of this research has used speculative fiction to elicit the ways descendants of the Black diaspora activate imaginations which shifts the vision of the future to be centered on the needs and desires of Black people. One example is the “Sankofa City” participatory design project with the predominantly Black community of Leimert Park in South Los Angeles, the Leimert Phone Company, and the University of Southern California [4]. Over the course of 12 weeks, residents, university students, and members of the Leimert Phone Company designed emerging technologies rooted in cultural practices resulting in a video and Facebook page.

An overview of contemporary speculative practice

For example, Black youth envisioning speech-based interfaces such as Apple's Siri or the Google Assistant as being more than vocal personal assistants that give information about the weather or upcoming calendar events [81] re-imagine how speech-based interfaces are devoid of racism. Here, the utopian element is that these systems are able to parse Black language and respond appropriately rather than treating mainstream English as the default setting for designing speech-based interfaces. In these scenarios, systems can function as “digital othermothers” who help them to work towards achieving their life goals, affirming their racial identity and culture while reminding them of their greatness. While HCI and the CHI community more specifically have begun to engage with the works of Black futurists such as Octavia Butler [14, 31, 41], there is an entire literary catalogue of writers and futurists such as N.K. Jemisin and Ytasha Womack who should be considered foundational to technology speculation and design futuring as precedence for considering alternate futures laden with Black imaginative elements. Second, the HCI community needs to expand how we recognize the contributions of Black women, trans, and gender variant folks in defining and constructing their futures.

A HISTORY OF RADICAL FUTURING IN BLACK COMMUNITIES

By asking tough questions and envisioning different futures, we can help create a better world for all of us. The provocation of questioning limits and generating “radically different systemic possibilities that challenge what we think is possible” [46] perhaps summarizes the popularity of speculative design as a form of futuring in the HCI and design space. The relatively recent works of Dunne and Raby coined the term “speculative design”, introducing this concept as a way to tackle bigger societal issues beyond the scope of traditional design [37]. Similarly, the concept of “futuring” within this field emerged as a response to the need to consider sustainability in design, but also as a way to explore futures through a lens of design while also commenting on the present [44, 63]. While futuring has remained rather fluid in terms of formal definitions, speculative design within the space of HCI has become established as a critical orientation of design, with scholars shaping this field by their interrogations of interpretations, aspirations, and contributions. Among the earliest mentions of HCI methods which consider the future use of and interaction with a system is Jack Carroll's introduction of “scenario-based design” [24, 25].

In the end we will draw some conclusions about the most salient characteristics of Speculative Design approaches and about the tools that are available, and about the ways in which Speculative Design can be included in education processes. From the modernist perspective, design has been primarily regarded as a problem-solving practice, usually dealing with problems detected by other professions. In this sense, the mission of design is closely linked to the needs of the industry or, in a broader sense, the creation of a better living standard. From such modernist perspective, design is seen as a service activity that primarily addresses clients’ needs. However, as graphic designer and publicist Dejan Kršić points out, design has always been a signifying practice that generates, analyses, distributes, mediates and reproduces social meaning, especially nowadays, in the context of the new social, technological, media and economic conditions.

L.A. looks at eliminating up to 2,000 vacant positions as the city’s budget outlook worsens

Our practice involves working closely with creative, thoughtful experts within various domains of work depending on the needs of any particular project. Our associations with a wide network of well-respected and accomplished practitioners makes it possible to work from concept development to construction of unique digital designs. It is not that speculative design is something far removed from our lives either. An example is Charlie Brooker’s science fiction anthology TV series Black Mirror, which examines the possible unanticipated consequences technology may have on modern societies.

What can a UX designer learn from speculative design concepts?

Latino recruits were over-represented compared with the city’s population makeup, while Asian American and white officers were under-represented, according to the analysis. Class sizes are up slightly from the preceding 10-month period, when the department graduated about 29 officers, the analysis showed. “I think if we had about 12,000, we would be well-staffed,” Choi said, echoing a number that former Chief William J. Bratton cited in 2002 as the minimum the department needs to properly patrol the city. But the statistics indicate that increasing the size of the force from its current 8,832 sworn officers to 9,500 is unlikely to happen soon. During the ramp up to Thursday, the most popular potential trade partner for the Chargers has been Minnesota, which has a need at quarterback and holds two first-round picks — Nos. 11 and 23. She also said that she finds hair — in any style — powerful and an important part of self-expression, especially for Black people, whose hair has been the subject of legislation, scrutiny and celebration.

During the six-month academy, rookie officers get 912 hours of training in areas such as firing weapons, defensive driving and de-escalation techniques. The application process requires a lengthy background check, which adds another challenge to staffing up, officials say. “There are a number of things that officers respond to that civilians could respond to, that clinicians or social workers could respond to, trained medical professionals could respond to,” he said. Interim Chief Dominic Choi acknowledged those struggles in an interview this week with NBC Nightly News, saying larger workloads have contributed to low officer morale and forced residents to wait longer for police services.

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Commission President Erroll Southers told The Times that the department’s informational sessions for prospective recruits are always well attended. If anything, he said, the half-filled classes are more a sign of the department’s high standards than a waning interest in people wanting to join the LAPD. The smaller-than-hoped-for classes — coupled with the number of experienced officers who are retiring or leaving for other jobs — have fueled speculation around City Hall and LAPD headquarters about whether Bass will reevaluate the department’s staffing needs in her new budget proposal, due Monday. The ultra-private “Cowboy Carter” crooner hopped on the viral haircare trend and posted a nearly two-minute clip taking followers through the multistep process of caring for her color-treated tresses. In it, she explained how she maintains her textured blond hair with her seven-product regimen (and other tools) and subtly flexed about her “long and healthy” hair.

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Unlike artists who work in the interior space of individual curiosities and personal interests, designers collaborate in the exterior space of solving real-world business problems. First, through informed extrapolations of existing product lineages, ‘speculative futures’ imagine and present near-future products, systems and services. These are intended to act like a cultural litmus paper, testing and examining the implications of an emerging technology before we commit to specific applications or research directions. In the following sections we will first analyse the interviews that we have collected, then compare the toolkits and methods that have been made available by design practitioners.

Speculation can be visualized simply through sketches, as Italian architect Ettore Sottsass has done in series of drawings, Preliminary Project for Microenvironment (1971), where he proposes what a nonmaterialistic household can look like. His drawings illustrate alternative living spaces where inhabitants are uninterested in furniture as precious fashionable objects to possess. Instead, furniture is reduced to material and aesthetic neutrality, shifting its focus to address possibilities of multi-functionality and use as communal assets shared in communal living spaces. If you have seen Black Mirror, you know that the true horror of these stories lies in their resemblance to the world we currently live in. With a few wrong turns, we can imagine these scenarios becoming true in the near future.