Design Fiction

A few weeks ago I attended a talk at OCAD with Scott Smith from the Changeist. It was very interesting. He was talking about design fiction as a new kind of design and I learned that my thesis project falls into this category. To do what I propose to do with the new zoo still doesn’t have the technology to support it. Well, most of it does, but the price of making the New Zoo as is, will be so extraordinarily costly that it is an undertaking for the future. A lot of resources will have to put into developing the software and technology needed. In two areas we are behind;

1 The scale of the project is enourmous. Screen technology to support this is still in the labs of the big screen giants. The same goes for projections, resolutions and performance is nowhere near what it needs to be to give a hyper realistic experience.  3D proposes a clear potential, but here we are even further away to achieve scale and resolution successfully.

2. Perceptive pixels; how you’d execute the myriads of customizable journeys through the structures is still a headache not solved sufficiently.

Nevertheless is this the new kind of zoo that I strongly feel we need to have. And as Scott Smith said: “It’s not about what the future will do to you, it’s what you will do to the future”

In my interaction design training at CIID, I was heavily exposed to technology and tinkering. I found this to be a great inspiration and it opened my eyes to a lot of new possibilities. In playing around with electronics and hacking toys, I discovered how you can get into intense detail with a simple function or action, and I was very inspired to see how my co-students could push the technology and come up with brilliant projects, some pure research some just downright silly and a lot of fun. In this environment of constant tech chat and mutual sharing of knowledge on the newest and latest stuff and ideas out there,  I learned that my approach was taking its starting point in the use, the value and the actual meaning of a concept and a design solution. As a kid I read all the sfi-fi books I could get my hands on and I was often preoccupied with writing and drawing my own future scenarios. At one point I actually thought I, myself, was from the future which then, in my mind, was in a different  dimension (to my excuse I was around 6 – and a very early reader. I remember I had to get the older kids to borrow books for me at the library since the librarian thought I was to young to digest the novels I wanted to read – and he was probably right since I thought what I did!!) ) To this day I have always loved to dream up the future and imagine “what if”  In both my bachelor project and master thesis, this is exactly what I did. I dreamt up a scenario based on a need and a wanted experience, and described what I wanted the technology to be able to do. In some cases it was possible, in other, not possible yet.

So, my point of view as an interaction designer dealing with technology on a daily basis, is that I’m interested in what technology can do for us and not the other way round. I respect my fellow geeks profusely in how they explore the technology and find projects and solutions through tinkering and hacking. It’s just very clear to me that my starting point is the experience, solution and/or emotion in that moment I want to design for, “what exactly will you experience, what do you do,what is around you, what do you see, touch, feel, hear, think, smell, learn” and how and why does that add value to your life and how does it solve a problem. Then the design builds up to that moment.

So I think there could be a lot more design fiction in my future. At least now I know what it’s called!

Thesis reflections

Doing the thesis certainly became a tour de force in the massive ethical dilemmas a designer can run into. Who do you stay more true to, your cause or your client?

If you really want to create change, do you then not have to go after your findings in your research and exploration and develop solutions based on the most valuable outcome?

In this case of making a thesis and still being a student, I of course had the luxury of idealism. The choice of moving away from being safe and instead taking a big chance felt necessary and obligatory. It complete disrupted any planning I had, but it was also far more interesting and challenging to go for the unknown.

I have now posted my thesis paper/project report, with a full process description and a design sketch for the New Zoo is included at the end.

Update

A year has passed since I did my thesis project and the project is still brewing in my mind, more relevant for every day that passes. I recently picked up a book called “Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat – Why It’s So Hard To Think Straight About Animals” by Hal Herzog. I saw it in my favorite cookbook store in Toronto of all places. Even if I’m only a few chapters into it, I’m learning new things for every page I’m turning, feeling inspired and very exited to see how Hal Herzog is taking on this massive subject of the human-animal relationship that I feel so passionate about. And he is doing it in such an approachable manner, still respecting how deeply complex this subject is. Great book so far, can’t wait to read the rest of it.

Making the Zoo Manifesto I took a strong stand against the zoo’s. I basically want them gone and replaced with awe-driven all-digital learning centers where you get to experience the animal in its real habitat without keeping the actual animal hostage.  Nothing I’ve read or learned since I made the project has changed my mind, it’s has only verified and solidified how imperative it is that we humans start understanding exactly how much out of whack the eco-balance is and how we desperately need to change it!

That said, I know the subject of the human animal relationship evokes a lot of feelings in a lot of people. And it is a relationship that affects us all everyday, whether we eat dogs or pet them, whether we look at the lion in the zoo or hunt her in the wild (well, actually in my book this would be the same..) Some are vegetarians because of animal welfare issues but buy leather shoes. Or won’t eat meat but they eat fish. Or myself who feel strongly about all things sustainable but still buy pepperoni pizza once in a while… It’s all full of contradictions and most people probably feel it’s a battle lost in advance which make them stop bothering and even trying to make active choices against the corporations and institutions that undermine a healthy globe.

I wish as a designer to take this challenge on. It’s massive and we need to work together to come up with solutions where we offer better choices to the public. It’s (almost) that simple. Let me make an example: Why is coke so big?  Certainly not because it taste good, it’s actually pretty horrible, try not to drink it for a while and then have some – I find it extremely sweet and just wrong tasting. It’s not because it’s cool to drink it either – we are no longer in the 80ies when people actually were susceptible to the cool factor in ad-campaigns. It’s because it’s there!! That’s the point. It’s available everywhere, even in the most remote regions of the world and this kind of massive distribution makes the intake of coke so massive.

But what if we were to present people with better choices? It is not that simple, I do know that, but we need to give people the opportunity to make informed choices in a manner that can compete with a visit to the zoo, with buying a 99cent breakfast, with throwing batteries in the trash….

How can we rally to participate in creating alternatives?