The Role Of Design In Futures Research

Professor Anthony Dunne, Head of the Design Interactions Department at the Royal College of Art in London, gave an interesting description of the role of design in his introductory text for the “Design Interactions show 2010“.

Dunne says that designers can play a significant role in discovering the desirables and undesirables in the future and that they need to interact more with professionals in varied fields such as ethics, philosophy, medicine and economics to imagine alternative possibilities and design for how things could be. In this way, design can challenge current technologies and contribute to futures research.

We need to move beyond designing for the way things are now and begin to design for how things could be, imagining alternative possibilities and different ways of being, and giving tangible form to new values and priorities. Designers cannot do this alone though, and many of the projects here benefit from collaborations, dialogues and consultations with people working in diverse fields such as ethics, philosophy, medicine, political science, fiction, psychiatry, economics, life sciences and biology.

This space of probable, preferable, plausible and possible futures allows designers to challenge design orthodoxy and prevailing technological visions so that fresh perspectives can begin to emerge. It is absolutely not about prediction, but asking what if…, speculating, imagining, and even dreaming in order to encourage debate about the kind of technologically mediated world we wish to live in. Hopefully, one that reflects the complex, troubled people we are, rather than the easily satisfied consumers and users we are supposed to be.

Design Interactions Show 2010 Introduction

Lift Lab: “Challenge design orthodoxy and prevailing technological visions”

Image by jeanbowe