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.