Design Interactions Show 2011

Dreams are powerful. They are repositories of our desire. They animate the entertainment industry and drive consumption. They can blind people to reality and provide cover for political horror. But they can also inspire us to imagine that things could be radically different than they are today, and then believe we can progress toward that imaginary world.

— Stephen Duncombe, Dream: Re-imaging Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy

It is hard to say what today's dreams are, it seems they have been downgraded to hopes — hope that we will not allow ourselves to become extinct, hope that we can feed the starving, hope that there will be room for us all on this tiny planet.
There are no more visions. We don't know how to fix the planet and ensure our survival. We are just hopeful.

As Fredric Jameson once remarked, it is now easier for us to imagine the end of the world than an alternative to capitalism. Yet alternatives are exactly what we need. We need to dream new dreams for the twenty-first century as those of the twentieth century rapidly fade. But what role can design play?

When people think of design, most believe it is about problem solving; even the more expressive forms of design are about solving aesthetic problems. Faced with huge challenges such as overpopulation, water shortages and climate change, designers feel an overpowering urge to work together to fix them, as though they can be broken down, quantified and solved. Design's inherent optimism leaves no alternative. But it is becoming clear that many of the challenges we face today are unfixable and that the only way to overcome them is by changing our values, attitudes and behaviour. Although essential most of the time, design's inbuilt optimism can also greatly complicate things, first, as a form of denial that the problems we face are more serious than they appear, and second, by channelling energy and resources into fiddling with the world out there rather than the ideas and attitudes inside our heads that shape the world out there.

Rather than throwing the towel in altogether, though, there are other possibilities for design.

One is to use it as a means of speculating on how things could be — speculative design. This form of design thrives on imagination and aims to open up new perspectives on what are sometimes called 'wicked problems', to create spaces for discussion and debate about alternative ways of being, and to inspire and encourage people's imaginations to flow freely. Design speculations can act as a catalyst for collectively redefining our relationship to reality.

To find inspiration for speculating through design we need to look beyond design to the methodological play-grounds of cinema, literature, science, ethics, politics and art; to explore, hybridise, borrow and embrace the many tools available for crafting not only things, but ideas — fictional worlds, cautionary tales, what-if scenarios, thought experiments, counterfactuals, reductio ad absurdum experiments, prefigurative futures and so on.

The application of methods like these to design can lead to wild and extreme speculations, but behind them are solid processes applicable to the extremely challenging conditions facing designers today and in the coming years. The projects on this website are vehicles for students to develop strong, individual visions about the role and place of technology in everyday life. They are the by-product of the final stages of a two-year journey towards becoming imaginative and rigorous thinkers adept at translating complex ideas and narratives into well-crafted tangible outcomes that engage the intellect as well as appealing to the imagination.

As you browse through these projects, I hope you feel reality gently loosen its grip on your imagination and begin to find yourself speculating on your own alternatives, or maybe even dreaming...

— Professor Anthony Dunne, Head of Department, Design Interactions