Speculative Design – Educational Resource Toolkit Erasmus Project

Project Title

Speculative Design – Educational Resource Toolkit

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Creativity and culture; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The main aim of this project was to strengthen speculative design education by collecting and exchanging existing knowledge and experience whilst developing new methods in this emerging design field. By creating a transnational strategic partnership, built on different contexts and experiences across Europe, we have created a framework for the exchange of ideas and approaches and developed a Toolkit of resources for speculative design education. Supporting “new designers” who acts on the borders of traditionally defined disciplines, blurring the distinctions between them. In their research, these new designers engage with diverse fields of science, primarily computer sciences and engineering, sociology, psychology, architecture, biotechnology, nanotechnology, etc., with the goal of critically reflecting on the development and role of technology in society. Speculative design is the most significant example of these new design practices focused on “problem finding” rather than “problem solving”. It is a discursive practice, based on critical thinking and dialogue, which questions the practice of design. However, a speculative design approach takes critical practice one step further; towards new future imaginaries or alternative possible trajectories. Via a range of speculative methods, designers re-think alternative products, systems and worlds. Through its imagination and radical approach, speculative design forces one to think – raises awareness, provokes action, initiates discussions and perhaps even offers some alternatives that are essential for the world of today, and more importantly, the world of tomorrow.

Our main target audiences were educational institutions and PhD and master students (also bachelor) which are interested in investigating relationships between people, society and technology. However, speculative practice has a broader reach and influence. Namely, speculative design could be seen as a tool for society related practices which are important in raising awareness, initiating discussions but also taking actions, outside exclusively design context. On the other hand, there is a growing interest in speculative approaches within the wider design community that reveals the need for new designers in the industrial sector, i.e., in companies employing designers to consider scenarios for future trends and research into the adoption of emerging technologies.

We have conducted a number of activities in order to produce our 3 intellectual outputs: State of Speculative Design Study, a collection of best practices and case-studies; Speculative Design Textbook, a textbook for students and practitioners; and Speculative Design Open Toolkit, an open access online repository.

We have collected, exchanged, reflected upon and developed and advanced existed educational practices in the area of speculative design. Moreover, we created new (and upgraded existing) partnerships and created strong community in the field of speculative design education with particular emphasis on forging interactions between designers and experts from related disciplines. Also, we promoted speculative design as educational approach and mode of critical thinking (to academic and broader audience). All partners (and target audience, associate partners) started to implement results in our/their curriculum.

We have reached broad public, including non only experts, but more general public and newcomers in this field, on local/regional, European and even international level (from Murska Sobota in Slovenia to Curitiba in Brazil). Interest for all of our events was over all expectations. More then 120 people attented our live events, more then 400 our virtual events, if we add all extra activities organized with the name SpeculativeEdu and not covered from Erasmus+ budget, in partnership with associated partners, we could talk about few thousands of people who got in touch with this project.

To sum, project is leaving a strong contribution to the speculative design education and design (in general), with a series of educational resources that we hope will provide newcomers with a thorough introduction to the past, present and future of speculative design and related approaches. Experienced practitioners will have a chance to check in and learn more about diverse approaches, methods and tools, as well as case studies; some of which – due to the radical heterogeneity and interdisciplinarity of the field – they may not previously have been aware. Educators will find a wealth of guidelines, tools, case studies and other sources of inspiration, while students will benefit from a comprehensive and multifaceted overview of the speculative design landscape, across Europe and beyond.

Produced resources are available in Beneficiary Project Details web portal.

Project Website

http://speculativeedu.eu

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 266870,75 Eur

Project Coordinator

SVEUCILISTE U SPLITU & Country: HR

Project Partners

• GOLDSMITHS’ COLLEGE
• Human Ecosystems Relazioni s.r.l.
• MITI – MADEIRA INTERACTIVE TECHNOLOGIES INSTITUTE – ASSOCIACAO
• EDINBURGH NAPIER UNIVERSITY
• INSTITUT ZA TRANSMEDIJSKI DIZAJN – ZAVOD ZA UMETNISKO USTVARJANJE