In a four-week project, students in the first year Digital Prototyping course engaged with the UN Sustainability Goals and notions of speculative design, discursive design and design fiction.
The goal was to generate knowledge in and through a speculative design approach, utilising digital materials and prototyping techniques around a chosen theme of sustainable development. People outside the design process were also engaged with, to evaluate how the designed artifacts were “working” as discursive design.
Students were asked to avoid:
- One-liners: projects which hinge on a simplistic or superficial perspective of sustainability
- Black Mirror rejects: dramatic, dystopian futures lacking subtlety or openness for questioning/interpretation
- A better mousetrap: the concepts and artifacts produced in the design work are not supposed to embody a solution
Greta: A little sound leads to great action
Aziza Bahadiddinova, Andrei Băjeu, Mounika Damera, Kim Sundnér, Simon Ulvsand
Greta proposes a shoulder-mounted audio shroud which gives constant audio feedback on the sustainability impact of products around you. Reflecting that sustainability is multi-dimensional and individuals care about different factors, an app allows the user to change a filter. For example, distinguishing products by how far away they were produced, their total carbon footprint and so on.
Strawmore
Fariborz Ghardir, Monica Posmaesi, Denisa Bucuroiu, Weronika Wierzba, Cathrine Jarting
Strawmore recasts cheap, disposable plastic straws as luxury goods. Straws bought for conspicuous consumption and collecting and made of exotic materials. Physical mock-ups were made alongside an online shopping experience.
Fix-A-Fruit
Tirsa Ramos-Pedersen, Josefine Lagerstedt, Malin Benson, Victor Frederiksen, Nefeli Alushi
Drawing on the face ‘fixing’ functions in selfie photography and social media, Fix-a-Fruit applies this to an imagined social network for sharing blemish-free fruit.
Swipedream
Melika Ljutovic, Farbod Hashemian, Bahr Srebrenica, Simon Ståhl
Swipe Dream as a critical design project intends to provoke discussions about the importance of donating through organizations with transparent and monitored systems.
The project includes an app that enables direct donations to people in need of help based on the user’s personal preferences such as religion, race, sexuality and needs while by-passing administrative costs.
Having the possibility to select who to not help makes users question their moral values. The points system and leader board made users doubt intentions of donating, it is about doing good and not about competition.
CoralCooler
Richard Soto, Kornélia Papp, Zakiya Pierre, Viviana Pohl, Julija Rukanskaite, Therese Persson
CoralCooler speculates on ice-creams that nourish and colour coral. Each kind of ice-cream is packed with different nuggets that are complete with nutrients and a colouring agent. After enjoying your ice-cream at the beach, simply toss it into the ocean.
The project comments on the futility of ‘fixing’ an ecosystem as complex as coral reefs, and the human desire for nature to be managed and conform to visual standards.
Pollinationist
Jovan Bakic, Lin Johnsson, Mihhail Korot, Klara Törnquist, Martin Wibom, Christoffer Zackheden
Pollinationist: the job of tomorrow is a speculative design project created to through provocation raise awareness about UN:s sustainable development goal 13: Climate action. The project is an interpretation on resilience and the ability to adapt to the heat waves Malmö, Sweden been experiencing 2018. If butterflies, bees and birds would come to harm due to this climate change, what could it look like when human tries to replace their work with their own efforts? To further generate knowledge and to raise questions, we have created an app and a prop that are showcased in a video.