Speculative enactments for urban digital twins & public participation

Cities want to give birth to their own twins, on a computer.<br/><br/>The urban digital twin is a digital copy of the city constructed from heaps of data rather than concrete, and it is being heralded as the driver for Smart Cities: by collecting more and more data and processing it in more and more sophisticated models we would monitor, predict...

From Oil to Soil: Time-space speculations for ecological regeneration in operational landscapes

Extractive and productive landscapes are the backbone to contemporary<br/>urban life. However, they are commonly overlooked by the fields of spatial<br/>studies and practices. One amongst many, Cubatão’s petrochemical hub<br/>reveals the systematic ecological degradation resulting from resourceintensive<br/>commodified politics, couched in the...

Blending organic and virtual worlds: Unpacking mutualistic care with DNA data storage in microalgae

In complex and distributed human-made-systems, the intimate co-dependency between humans and non-humans can feel distant and vague. A novel approach for fostering a sense mutual care between people and living organisms can be found within biodesign, where living artefacts provide human users with functional benefits, like lighting, air purifying...

Contestable Camera Cars:: A Speculative Design Exploration of Public AI That Is Open and Responsive to Dispute

Local governments increasingly use artificial intelligence (AI) for automated decision-making. Contestability, making systems responsive to dispute, is a way to ensure they respect human rights to autonomy and dignity. We investigate the design of public urban AI systems for contestability through the example of camera cars: human-driven...

Freedom in creating families: A design speculation about the influences of technology on our reproductive futures and families in 2050

Technologies related to reproduction and fertility follow each other in a rapid tempo as we stand at the start of the biotechnological revolution. How could these technologies which are able to radically alter our evolution alter our families and lives? Big questions with no direct answer. <br/><br/>Within this project speculation and...

Between attraction and aversion: How designers can use the concept of disgust to influence food consumption

Disgust is a strong emotion of aversion. In the context of food, it is often referred to as a guardian of the mouth, preventing close contact with pathogens and the accidental consumption of poisons. However, disgust can also create a certain level of attraction and be part of positive experiences, even in the context of food. In this article,...

Concept Cars as Vehicles for Change in SMEs

Engaging citizens with smart city through dialogues evoked by playful and speculative experience design

With the development of technology, in a city context , the topic of smart city has become more and more popular. Smart city can bring positive changes to citizens' lives but might also cause risk and conflicts. However, in most cases, the development of smart city is a top-down process that rarely involves citizens' opinions. Building upon the...

A Dog's Purpose: Exploring the future human-dog relationship

Dogs and humans have been living in mutualistic symbiosis for centuries. The domestication of dogs was probably initiated over 15,000 years ago, when presumably proto-dogs took advantage of carcasses left behind by our hunter-gatherer ancestors and might have offered protection in return (Thalmann et al., 2013). This has resulted in a...

Speculative (food) design histories: A critical look at the history of (Western) food

In this project I demonstrate how the world could have been different by portraying alternate historical realities, centered around food, to stimulate my audience to think about the choices they have in the present. The objective is to empower my audience to make mindful food choices today. The final outcome of this project is four stories and...

Concept Cars as a design-led futures technique

Innovation forces organizations to think about the future. The many techniques<br/>guiding these explorations are named futures studies, which are inquiries into images of the future and their surrounding elements. Although futures studies help organizations to change, their results are often difficult to interpret, and they frequently fail to...

Vision Concepts within the landscape of design research

In the landscape of design research, several techniques of speculative design -or design about ideas- have been positioned, each with a different time<br/>frame. Design Fiction and Critical Design, for instance, emerged as making activities that explore the near and the speculative future, respectively. We previously defined<br/>Vision Concepts...