Authored by Tony Feng
Created on Sept 11th, 2022
Last Modified on Sept 11th, 2022
Intro
This sereis of posts contains a summary of materials and readings from the course CSCI 1951C Design Humanity Centered Technology that I’ve taken @ Brown University. The class aims to explore creative strategies for the prototyping and critique of emerging and speculative technologies. I posted these “Notes” (what I’ve learnt) for study and review only.
Content
The development of design as a discipline is iterative and ongoing. The following is an incomplete taxonomy of interrelated design strategies.
Design Thinking
It could be characterized as the scientific method applied to the creative process from the abstract to the concrete through iterative prototyping.
- Empathize
- Define the problem
- Ideate
- Prototype
- Test
Human Centered Design
It focuses on cultivating empathy with the user. Methods, like visual thinking and storytelling, are especially important for this collaborative process.
Participatory Design
It attempts to engage all stakeholders by developing outcomes that benefit everyone, blurring the differences between the designer, the engineer, and the user.
Critical Design
Affirmative design is problem solving that provides answers, while critical design, on the other hand, is problem finding that proposes questions.
| Critical Design | Affirmative Design |
|---|---|
| problem finding | problem solving |
| design as medium | design as process |
| asks questions | provides answers |
| for how the world could be | how the world is |
| social fiction | science fiction |
| parallel worlds | futures |
| functional fictions | fictional functions |
| change us to suit the world | change the world to suit us |
| narratives of consumption | narratives of production |
| applied art | anti-art |
| research through design | research for design |
| implications | applications |
| design for debate | design for production |
| satire | fun |
| conceptual design | concept design |
| citizen | consumer |
| person | user |
| education | training |
| makes us think | makes us buy |
| provocation | innovation |
| rhetoric | ergonomics |
Discursive Design
It is closely related to Critical Design. It implies that the function of the object is secondary to how it makes us think about the context. It often brings the viewer a new awareness of the social context in which it exists.
Speculative Design
It is also related to Critical Design and Discursive Design. However, it is explicitly oriented towards future scenarios that allow us to imagine things not as they are, but as they might be.
- What does the object do?
- For whom?
- Where does it do it?
- When?
- How does the object do it?
- Why?
Design Fiction
It draws on the power of storytelling for making speculations concrete. In this way, the prototype creates affordances for the behavior of the characters in the story, and responding to the context of which they are a part.
Positive Sum Design
It involves with empathetic engagement with all stakeholders to design affordances for win/win outcomes, and to eschew zero sum bias. It borrows the tools of game theory and behavioral economics to help designers consider the motivations and behaviors of players/users.