The designers interviewed all seemed quite united on the idea that design is becoming increasingly hard to categorise and designers themselves are having to become more versatile and involved with all areas of design instead of specialising in one.
With globalisation and the mass of information and design that is now available to us at all times, design has to fight harder now to be seen and appreciated.
I think Sam Winston’s point that we are living in an ‘Attention economy’ is very interesting. We are constantly being bombarded with information, advertising, things that we are told to buy, or way we are told our lives should look. As an example of this, while watching a rugby match I managed to count over 20 different brands competing for our attention while we are simply trying to watch a sports match. This fight for our attention is making us better at ignoring design, so design has to do more to capture it.
He also said that we are tied to technology and how it’s now the responsibility of young designers to shape the future of design. I want to explore both of these things further in my design.
Despite this unbreakable connection to technology, Regular practise believe that this makes people value beauty and well crafted objects more than ever.
Mazair Raein believes that design can be used as a political tool to do good in societies, but this can only be achieved with collaboration. If experts from different fields come together, we can achieve incredible results. We can’t be specialists in everything, so it is important to collaborate and bring in expert knowledge from other fields in our designs.
Designers seem inherently to care about the world they live in. “We are in the optimism business”. We believe we can make the world better, and through experimental work we can toy with these ideas and work out how to create the future we want.
Dunne and Raby do this in their work. They use design to stimulate discussion about the social, cultural and ethical implications of technology. In their book ‘Speculative Everything’ they discuss how speculative design allows designers to explore possible futures, to better understand the present and to open up discussion about the kind of future we want. They believe that designers normally create things to make people consume more, but speculative design differs from that and instead imagines what could be. (Dunne and Raby 2014)
“It strives to overcome the invisible wall separating dreams and imagination from everyday life”
(Dunne and Raby 2014)
Anab Jain draws on similar issues in her talk. Her designs allow her to imagine different futures and also to get people to experience them. In a world so bombarded with design, I think this kind of experiential design has more impact in trying to spark empathy in the viewer and inspire them to act as well to create the future they want.
“One of the most powerful ways of affecting change, is when people can tangibly and emotionally experience some future consequences of their actions today”
Anab Jain
This bridges the disconnect between today and future. (Jain 2017)
‘Forensic architecture’ is the name of an emergent academic field developed at Goldsmiths to investigate state and corporate violence, human rights violations and environmental destruction all over the world. They use cutting edge technology to push boundaries, give people all over the world a voice and to push for a better more transparent future. (Forensic Architecture 2019)
Speculative design tries to imagine what it would be like to design without the current limitations of technology, culture, and politics in mind. (Ho Tran 2019) I think the idea of designing for the future you want to see is very interesting, and something that feel very important to me. I have a strong belief that the power of design should we used carefully and all decisions should be looked at to see how sustainable they are.
Thinking about the future is important for all brands, as if they want to succeed and stay relevant they need to aware of where the world is going and willing to adapt to it.
I asked myself what I wanted to see in the future. I want to see greater care for the environment and less focus on mass consumption. I want to see more focus placed on how we can use technology and knowledge to create green energy, alternatives to plastic and how design can make the planet and the people living on it healthier. I want to see a shift towards a more open conversation about mental health and more attention and care to be given to the elderly.
When you shift the context of design you can see things in a different light and it can give things a completely different meaning. It seems just placing something in an exhibition can elevate it to the status of art, something Marcel Duchamp was thinking about as early as 1917. The Prada Maya store in the middle of the Texas desert is another example of this. It becomes interesting just because of where it’s placed. These things are pushing boundaries of art and design, and thats what seems to spark peoples imagination. Maybe because of all the mass information and advertising that we are bombarded with, things that push boundaries are better at grabbing our attention.
As another way to break through the noise around us, I wanted to explore Anab Jain’s idea of an experience making people more emotionally invested in a cause. This also reminds me of Roman Krznaric’s idea of empathy museums that I explored earlier in the module.
The D&AD awards had some great examples of this:
https://www.dandad.org/awards/professional/2020/231902/in-someone-elses-shoes/
This experiential design by Santander bank is placed within a busy shopping centre and allows people to gain more understanding of what domestic abuse is like. People can walk around the house, looking at and hearing things that explain the difficulties in leaving an abusive relationship. Placing them within a home makes it easier for people to relate and imagine what it might feel like, it put you in someone else shoes and creates a more emotional response.
https://www.dandad.org/awards/professional/2020/231781/sickkids-airbnb/
Another example of this is the Sick Kids hospital’s project with Airbnb. They created a replica children’s hospital where people could actually stay and filled it full of actors so guests could actually experience what it would be like to stay at the hospital and the bad condition it is in. It allowed them to understand the need for investment and therefore care more, increasing donations. Sometimes people just need to experience something to care about it.
I played with the idea of sparking empathy by immersing people into a situation in my design and looked at the possibility of creating a ‘house of the future’ that allowed people toe experience some of the consequences of our current actions as a planet that may be our future such as floods, blackouts, earthquakes. I imagined a house on the street that would be adapted as an experience where people learn about environmental problems that are on our horizon if we don’t change. The idea is that experiencing this would allow them to feel more emotionally involved in it, and feel more inspired to change in their lives today to stop this future becoming a reality.
However, this experience seemed quite a negative one, without a solid end point or point. Instead of giving people an upsetting experience that ended with little hope, I wanted to create a way we could do better for the future. I want to imagine a better future and create a small way of creeping closer to this goal.
I was inspired by something written in Dunne and Raby’s book ‘Speculative everything’ that said designers put their energy into changing the world, rather than changing the ideas and attitudes in our heads that shape the world. I wanted to see what I could create that tries to change our way of thinking.
This drew me towards looking at the power of social media. Since its creation, Instagram has attracted over 1 billion users and for many come to take over their lives. (Tait 2020) The pursuit of perfection and an ‘instagrammable’ life has caused multiple mental health issues, seen a rise in plastic surgery and caused people to go into debt whilst trying to keep up the guise of a perfect life.
“Does Instagram create or reflect our values?”
(Tait 2020)
Instagram has forced its users to make their lives more ‘worthy of posting about’. It started as a photo sharing app, but has evolved into the perfect place to sell. Whether you are selling a product or the idea of your life, now influence is constantly in our pockets. (Tait 2020)
About 90% of young people use social media (BBC 2017) and peoples identities are now bound up with it. (Spalter 2019)
Social media in general has become so integral to peoples lives, and the lives of the younger generation in particular. I believe these are the perfect people to target when trying to change thinking. They are scared of how the future might be, they are more accepting of differences in race, gender and sexuality than ever before, and they are also determined to still push for change. If social media really can create our values, what if we tried to push people in a sustainable direction and away from mass production, frequent travel and impossible beauty goals.
I believe people are already receptive to a change in how social media is used. Recently Instagram has become more political alongside Black Lives Matter protests, the platform has been used for widespread conversations about racism and how to combat it. (Stewart 2020)
“It’s not surprising that Instagram is becoming more political if you think about who’s using it. It’s generational. The past couple of years, the main people who have been protesting and organising — millennials and Gen Z — they’re on Instagram.”
Nicole Carty (Stewart 2020)
This has all made the think that social media seems to be here to stay for the imminent future, but as the younger generation are so keen for change, maybe it could be used for good?
People compete for likes and followers on instagram. People show and illusion of their perfect lives and even pick holiday destinations that will look best on their instagram. The way everyone else is acting is the way everyone wants to act. What if we could harness the influential power of instagram?
I started to design an idea for a greener instagram. Removing the followers and replacing it with a “sustainability score”. This score would be calculated in a similar way to our credit scores. Your carbon footprint from holidays, purchases and ways of travelling would be logged and presented on your account. The number would be updated in real time, so each purchase and decision you make would be reflected in the number.
The idea is this would harness instagrams power to influence and create a competition with people trying to get their score the lowest. A flight to the Maldives for the perfect instagram holiday photos would now negatively affect their score, so is it worth it? While a beach clean might bring the score down. This public display of your affect on the planet might just push people to change the way they are living. It would tap into the generation that already care about the environment and their future, while giving them a concrete way of seeing the effect they have. If 90% of young people were thinking about their sustainability on a daily basis, this would filter through society, affecting businesses and political decisions. This one small change in the way people are thinking would have the possibility to create massive change.
I based the design on Instagram as it has lasted as one of the most popular social medias. Social media has moved to become much more image and video based than text based, so I believe this format is likely to survive longer.
The design shows your sustainability score as the most prominent feature, with an arrow that shows if your score has been increasing or decreasing. The up arrow is green showing its a good thing, and the down arrow is red showing its not. People like the goal setting and immediate rewards that come with this kind of thing. (Spalter 2019)
Ive made the design green and created a small tree logo, as it seems the colour green and the idea of planting trees is a very universal link to sustainability and the environment.
The design also incorporates a few extra features, such as the option to watch adverts in return for trees being planted. In Netflix’s the social dilemma, they say “if you are not paying for the product then you are the product”. This way you are owning the fact you are the product, but demanding some good be done for them using your attention.
I’ve also got rid of the mention of followers, as this is known to have a negative affect on peoples mental health. I would also include a warning that came up when you’d been on the app for a long time. This idea is supported by 70% of young people surveyed by the BBC. If negative or worrying things were searched, the app would also offer up a chat with a mental health professional.
Mental health and sustainability are incredibly important issues, and I think social media needs to be more supportive of both these things going forwards.
Reflection
I found the ideas put forwards this week incredibly interesting. I love the idea that we have the power to design the future we want. Designers like to solve problems, but many of the problems the world faces are too big for us to compete with alone. By joining forces with experts from all different fields, really incredible things can be achieved. Combing science and design can create new materials and more sustainable ways of building houses or going about our daily tasks. Combing with other creative fields such as theatre, can create engaging experiences that spark empathy and inspire people to change. Combing with tech companies can harness the overwhelming and growing power of technology and media and try and push it towards joining the fight for a more sustainable future.
In my design this week I have tried to create this union and use it to help better support the mental health of users and create a more sustainable future.
References
BBC. 2017. “Instagram ‘Worst for Young Mental Health.’” BBC News, 18 May [online]. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-39955295 [accessed 9 Dec 2020].
DUNNE & RABY. 2017. “Dunne & Raby.” Dunneandraby.co.uk [online]. Available at: http://dunneandraby.co.uk/content/projects [accessed 9 Dec 2020].
DUNNE, Anthony and Fiona RABY. 2014. Speculative Everything : Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Erscheinungsort Nicht Ermittelbar: Mit Press.
FORENSIC ARCHITECTURE. 2019. “Forensic Architecture.” Forensic-architecture.org [online]. Available at: https://forensic-architecture.org/about/agency [accessed 9 Dec 2020].
JAIN, Anab. 2017. “Why We Need to Imagine Different Futures.” TED. Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/anab_jain_why_we_need_to_imagine_different_futures [accessed 9 Dec 2020].
SPALTER, Ian. 2019. Abstract: The Art of Design, Ian Spalter: Digital Product Design 5 [TV series episode]. Netflix, 2019.
STEWART, Emily. 2020. “It’s Not Just Your Feed. Political Content Has Taken over Instagram.” Vox [online]. Available at: https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/6/24/21300631/instagram-black-lives-matter-politics-blackout-tuesday [accessed 9 Dec 2020].
TAIT, Amelia. 2020. “How Instagram Changed Our World.” The Guardian, 3 May [online]. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/may/03/how-instagram-changed-our-world [accessed 9 Dec 2020].
HO TRAN, Tony. 2019. “Speculative Design: 3 Examples of Design Fiction | Inside Design Blog.” Invisionapp.com [online]. Available at: https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/speculative-design/ [accessed 9 Dec 2020].
Lizzie Wa Design 
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