ASSIGNMENT 4

Plan the attack!

Paragraph 1 – Research Statement

I’m going to ask “How does critical design make us think about the role of technology in everyday life?” Nowadays, in a very-called “hi-tech” age, people seem to know that technology is important. Despite many means of communication as TV, movies, literature, etc. make technology more acknowledged, design also contributes to the approach. Critical design is one of uprising design movements, significantly changes people’s consideration about technology in everyday life.

Paragraph 2 –Role of modern technology in everyday life.

Technology is important in everyday life. In the talk The accelerating power of technology, Ray Kurzweil talks about how fast the world is adopting new technologies (Ray Kurzweil, 2013). We are now improving our technology in acceleration. Ray (2013) states “The actual paradigm-shift rate, the rate of adopting new ideas, is doubling every decade, according to our models.” In the text The role of technology. Ceramic Industry, Carl Frahme states that how beneficial technology is in Ceramic industry (Carl Frahme, 2005). In the text The role of technology. America's Community Banker shows examples how significant technology is changing the whole Mortgage Lending Industry and Banking. Also the effects of mobile technology to human society in Cell phone culture: mobile technology in everyday life (Gerrard Goggin, 2006).

Paragraph 3 – What is Critical Design?

In this paragraph, I am going to use Dunne and Raby’s website to define critical design. “It is more of an attitude than anything else, a position rather than a method.” (Dunne and Raby, 2013) Critical design is about improving life because it implies messages make people consider what we have. “Mainly to make us think. But also raising awareness, exposing assumptions, provoking action, sparking debate, even entertaining in an intellectual sort of way, like literature or film.” (Dunne and Raby, 2013). In Domesticating the Revolution: Information and Communication Technologies and Everyday Life, Roger Silverstone (1993) states critical design is an approach to designing for change, also acting with critical theory to improve our ability to change. This reinforces to define critical design.

Paragraph 4 – Example 1 of a Critical Design

The exhibition Between Reality and The Impossible conducts “speculating, imagining, and even dreaming, to create and facilitate reflection on the kind of technologically mediated world we wish to live in. Ideally, one that reflects the complex, troubled people we are, rather than the easily satisfied consumers and users we are supposed to be.” (Biennale, 2010). I will use the text Profile: Dunne & Raby to describe more about the work. The exhibition used four different contexts depict unreal emerging where certain viable technologies, cause society to change. (Profile: Dunne and Raby, 2010).

Paragraph 5 – Example 2 of a Critical Design

I am using the book Design noir: the secret life of electronic objects to describe another example. Another Dunne and Raby’s project, “Placebo”, is designed to initiate debates about our environment is full of electromagnetic. “Designers cannot always solve problems, we cannot switch off the vast electromagnetic networks surrounding us all. Although we cannot change reality, we can change people's perception of it.” (Dunne and Raby, 2001). Dunne and Raby chose critical design as a mean of communication toward the electromagnetic issues, so they created “Placebo”. Moreover, I am going to use the journal Furniture of the future (Sharon McCord, 2001) to describe more on their “Placebo” project. Going through different prototypes of “Placebo”, Sharon (2001) analyses how they alert the people to the invisible world of electromagnetic.

Paragraph 6 – Evaluate Critical Design

Why critical design is good to make us think about the role of technology? “Mainly to make us think. But also raising awareness, exposing assumptions, provoking action, sparking debate, even entertaining in an intellectual sort of way, like literature or film.” (Dunne and Raby, 2013) Critical design acts a medium to change people’s perceptions. “Critical Design is one of many mutations design is undergoing in an effort to remain relevant to the complex technological, political, economic and social changes we are experiencing at the beginning of the 21c.” (Dunne and Raby, 2013)

Why Critical design is bad? I am going to use the article Critical design and critical theory: the challenge of designing for provocation (2012). “Critical design literature defines critical design and offers dozens of examples of it, but it says much less about how to do it.” (2012) “If critical design is a form of design research and not only a form of design practice, then one might expect it to feature a set of described methods and practices that allow others to pursue a similar approach.” (2012). Limitations of critical design in term of strict framework which hard to pursue, instead of better supporting them with more specific question, problem.

Paragraph 7 – Conclusion

I will conclude critical design is great to encourage us to think about technology in everyday life. In hi-tech age we are in, critical design is an approach to designing for change, hence that it sparks debates and discourses on technology.

Reference:

Ray Kurzweil: The accelerating power of technology | Video on TED.com. (n.d.). TED: Ideas worth spreading. Retrieved May 20, 2013, from http://www.ted.com/talks/ray_kurzweil_on_how_technology_will_transform_us.html

Frahme, C. E. (2005). The role of technology. Ceramic Industry, 155(4), 23-24. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/198535238?accountid=14782

Bush, V. (1997). The role of technology. America's Community Banker, 6(10), 37-42+. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/195158343?accountid=14782

Goggin, G. (2006). Cell phone culture: mobile technology in everyday life. London: Routledge.

Raby, D. &. (n.d.). Dunne & Raby. Dunne & Raby. Retrieved May 21, 2013, from http://www.dunneandraby.co.uk/content/bydandr/13/0

Silverstone, R. (1993). Domesticating The Revolution: Information And Communication Technologies And Everyday Life. Aslib Proceedings, 45(9), 227-233.

Biennale 2010 / Exhibitions / Between reality and the impossible. (n.d.). Biennale 2010 / Accueil_. Retrieved May 21, 2013, from http://www.biennale2010.citedudesign.com/GB_expo_between_reality_and_the_impossible.php

PROFILE: Dunne & raby. (2010). Design Week, 25(43), 13-n/a. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/761025566?accountid=14782

McCord, S. (2001, Nov 25). Furniture of the future. Scotland on Sunday. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/326534148?accountid=14782

Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2001). Design noir: the secret life of electronic objects. London: August

Shaowen Bardzell, Jeffrey Bardzell, Jodi Forlizzi, John Zimmerman, and John Antanitis. 2012. Critical design and critical theory: the challenge of designing for provocation. In Proceedings of the Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '12). ACM, New York, NY, USA.