Reflections on teaching design fiction as world-building

Coulton, Paul (2020) Reflections on teaching design fiction as world-building. In: Speculative and Critical Design in Education: Practice and Perspectives, 2020-07-08 - 2020-07-09, online.

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Abstract

Over the last 3 years I have the pleasure of teaching a final year undergraduate design studio in which students are required to consider the potential futures of emerging technologies. In particular they are expected to approach this as an exercise in design fiction as world-building. The emphasis of the approach is to render the future mundane in that the artefacts produced are not expected to adopt the elaborate, and oft dystopian, exhibition orientated approach of critical design, but rather to subvert the formats and tropes of the technology industry. Further the approach seeks to avoids the polarization of utopian or dystopian but instead embraces the messiness of our lived realities. I not seeking to offer any disambiguation of what design fiction is or how it should be done but merely offering my reflections on research led teaching which might be useful to others.