Audrey, design researcher, discussed with us her autobiographical design and how she began being interested in her design research work and what led her down that path. She had been actively involved in a project where she was building out a van and documenting it, a home technology on wheels as she described it. She posted videos on instructables which she said had reached a fairly large audience. It’s interesting to think about how a research project, which is seemingly done just with yourself or a small number of other people, has the potential to be much bigger than the project itself. This proves that documenting has a lot of power for the person doing the project, but beyond that all of the people that can gain access to it. As with so many self-driven design research projects, and like Audrey stated, the project of her van is always unfinished and constantly changing. One of the projects I like that she highlighted was called Soft Fading. The project had to do with fabric, lights, and shadows, observing how the sun faded a piece of cloth on a rotating cylinder depending on the time of day and year. The outcomes that Audrey discussed were interesting, from how they expected the piece of cloth to look to what presumptions and observations they had for why the cloth faded the way that it did. She also discussed a project called Baking Data. I found it quite funny that the project itself involved baking. She discussed how it was documented, and it reminded me of when we discussed documenting our own research during the living with your own ideas seminar, whether the way we were documenting was honest and truthful or not. By documenting in multiple ways, data and observation from research can be better triangulated. I appreciated the tips she gave us at the end of the session as well. Some of the most meaningful one for me were: continuously check in with yourself and others, set a timeframe (but be flexible), find co-conspirators, and our bodies are our research instruments.
I found the last tip of the first future talk, that our bodies are research instruments, the perfect segway to the topic for the following future talk. Laura’s project is entitled Automated: A Memoir for Design Otherwise. With it, she had a focus on living and experimenting with having diabetes, and documenting her experimentation and the effect it had on her. She called herself a human cyborg, because she lives with and has to interact with technology for her health every day. She discussed theories of the posthuman which I had never heard about before. One point she made that I found poignant that we should focus on asking more questions instead of just finding design solutions. It does make sense to ask questions, and more of them, before we jump to or focus on just finding solutions. In design studio the following week, we discussed the major talking points from Laura. These included the value of design theory and how they may be the future of design practice, tensions within the post-human turn, and collapse between the researcher and researched. I found the final point was the one that remained with me the most after Laura’s talk. Disabled people continue to be experimental subjects for AI systems. It raises the question; why are they not more involved in the design of the devices they need? Laura said that she found the greatest sense of community in how to use her devices with a page on Facebook. Design seems that it can be really removed from the groups of people that are part of the intended user group. People like Laura, living with a disability, should not have to experiment the way she is without having a strong impact with the input she is directly providing by using her own body as a test subject. I like how she positioned herself as part of the larger system and was able to see how important she could be in creating a new framework where designers can more frequently include the people that will directly be interacting with the output of designs.
Sergio Uruena, researcher in sociology and politics, presented us with a future talk entitled “quest for responsible innovation”. We discussed how we can shape technologies better for the future, and how science, technology, and innovation play a significant role in social change and ordering. Sergio explained to us different knowledge bodies including technological determinism, where tech determines what society will be, social constructionism where society shapes technology. Both ways of thinking have their flaws because they don’t acknowledge that they are intertwined and hide social agency and materiality impact of technology respectively. I see validity in both, but feel that it is in fact impossible to separate the two since society and technology grow and develop together. How technology is developed is based on what society needs, but then we are greatly shaped by the effects it has on us and the cycle continues. Sergio then discussed how our views on responsibility have changed over time, with today’s theory being sociotechnical innovation with(in) society since 2014. This makes sense to me, as in reality everything is all interconnected and interdependent, not being able to be separated from one another. Responsible research innovation can be defined as “taking care of the future through collective stewardship of science and innovation in the present”. Sergio showed us a framework with reflective questions about our projects. The class was quiet when it came to answering the questions he was posing. I feel that this was because the questions were quite deep and took a lot of thinking on levels we maybe hadn’t thought about when it came to our projects. However, I think it was important that Sergio pushed us to think about and answer these questions, as responsibility in design is so vital and the truth is that there are always actors that benefit and others that are disadvantaged. The quest for responsible innovation is a hard one, and one that has no clear path, especially when they are interdependent. Approaching STI with a systematic and horizontal approach however, one that is more holistic, is a better way to think about those relationships and build tech going forward and assess how we interact with it.
Before getting an interesting presentation from Saul, we got a tour of the city of L’Hospitalet. I was extremely surprised to know how many people live there, and how dense the city is. It is right outside of Barcelona, yet I didn’t know how big it was as an independent node apart from Barcelona. We visited the studio of some previous MDEF students, including Dafni. I believe that Saul worked and lived in the studio above. He talked to us about many different projects and groups he was part of including Visions By, Does-Work, and Understanding Design. From the Does-Work website, it is “a design and consultancy agency exploring the potentials of digital and functional identities in different scales and media. DOES is a design and consultancy agency exploring the potentials of digital and functional identities in different scales and media”. Many of the projects revolved around technology and the body, intertwining the two and seeing how they play off of each other. Saul explained to us his projects using masks for changed identities. When he told us about how he wore a knitted mask both in the factory he was at and then for an extended period of time and outside in public, it made me think a lot about others’ perceptions when someone decides to take a decision like that that alters their identity. I don’t think I would have the confidence to test a project like that on myself, although we did do something similar with living with your own ideas. The prosthetics he created to trick Apple recognition systems was some type of genius and I found it quite funny imagining people wearing them to hack the system. In a world where facial recognition softwares are scanning us at moments that we don’t even realize, using things like this may become a reality. The projects also reminded me of an exhibit I saw about a month ago at CCCB called la màscara mai menteix, “the mask never lies”. The exhibition was about the impacts of masks throughout time and cultures, being able to act as political statements, be an instrument in movements, and stand as symbols. Recently, I also saw something on social media using face paint/makeup in certain shapes to trick facial recognition softwares. Sauls work with the body and technology (for example the work with wigs) how technology and the body can work directly together. I appreciate how Saul does it in a playful way, without seemingly thinking too much about the outcome before he starts projects yet they end up being profound. He had a humble and adventurous attitude which I would like to mirror in my own design practice.