A design is the concept of or proposal for an object, process, or system. The word design refers to something that is or has been intentionally created by a thinking agent, and is sometimes used to refer to the inherent nature of something – its design. The verb to design expresses the process of developing a design. In some cases, the direct construction of an object without an explicit prior plan may also be considered to be a design. A design is expected to have a purpose within a certain context, usually having to satisfy certain goals and constraints and to take into account aesthetic, functional, economic, environmental, or socio-political considerations. Traditional examples of designs include architectural and engineering drawings, circuit diagrams, sewing patterns, and less tangible artefacts such as business process models.
The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It offers postgraduate degrees in art and design to students from over 60 countries.
Interaction design, often abbreviated as IxD, is "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services." While interaction design has an interest in form, its main area of focus rests on behavior. Rather than analyzing how things are, interaction design synthesizes and imagines things as they could be. This element of interaction design is what characterizes IxD as a design field, as opposed to a science or engineering field.
Ron Burnett is an author, professor and the President Emeritus and Research Director for the new Centre for Transdisciplinary Studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.
Sue Coe is an English artist and illustrator working primarily in drawing, printmaking, and in the form of illustrated books and comics. Her work is in the tradition of social protest art and is highly political. Coe's work often includes animal rights commentary, though she also creates work that centralizes the rights of marginalized peoples and criticizes capitalism. Her commentary on political events and social injustice are published in newspapers, magazines and books. Her work has been shown internationally in both solo and group exhibitions and has been collected by various international museums. She lives in Upstate New York.
Critical design uses design fiction and speculative design proposals to challenge assumptions and conceptions about the role objects play in everyday life. Critical design plays a similar role to product design, but does not emphasize an object's commercial purpose or physical utility. It is mainly used to share a critical perspective or inspire debate, while increasing awareness of social, cultural, or ethical issues in the eyes of the public. Critical design was popularized by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby through their firm, Dunne & Raby.
Paola Antonelli is an Italian architect, curator, author, editor, and educator. Antonelli is the Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, where she also serves as the founding Director of Research and Development. She has been described as "one of the 25 most incisive design visionaries in the world" by TIME magazine.
Dunne & Raby is a London-based design studio established 1994.
Julia Lohmann is a multidisciplinary designer, educator and researcher living and working in Helsinki, Finland. She is an Associate Professor of Contemporary Design at Aalto University.
Lise Anne Couture is a Canadian architect and educator. She is the co-founder of Asymptote Architecture, in partnership with Hani Rashid. She is based in Brooklyn, New York.
Neri Oxman is an Israeli-American designer and former professor known for art that combines design, biology, computing, and materials engineering. She coined the phrase "material ecology" to define her work.
Sascha Pohflepp was a German artist, designer, and writer whose work focused on the role of technology’s influence on the environment, often collaborating with scientists and other artists to explore this theme.
Adrian Margaret Smith Piper is an American conceptual artist and Kantian philosopher. Her work addresses how and why those involved in more than one discipline may experience professional ostracism, otherness, racial passing, and racism by using various traditional and non-traditional media to provoke self-analysis. She uses reflection on her own career as an example.
Hiromi Marissa Ozaki, better known by her pseudonym Sputniko!, is a Japanese artist, designer and entrepreneur. She specializes in the field of speculative and critical design. She is known for her films and multimedia installation works inspired by emerging technologies’ possible impact on society and values – with a focus on gender issues.
Joep van Lieshout, is a Dutch artist and sculptor born in Ravenstein, Netherlands, and founder of Atelier Van Lieshout (AVL).
Design fiction is a design practice aiming at exploring and criticising possible futures by creating speculative, and often provocative, scenarios narrated through designed artifacts. It is a way to facilitate and foster debates, as explained by futurist Scott Smith: "... design fiction as a communication and social object creates interactions and dialogues around futures that were missing before. It helps make it real enough for people that you can have a meaningful conversation with".
Anthony Dunne is a critical designer, educator and founder of the art group Dunne and Raby. He runs the studio with his long term partner and collaborator Fiona Raby.
Susan Cianciolo is a fashion designer and artist.
Cathrine Maclennan Kramer is a Norwegian artist, designer and curator.
Speculative design is a design practice concerned with future design proposals of a critical nature. The term was popularised by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby as a subsidiary of critical design. The aim is not to present commercially-driven design proposals but to design proposals that identify and debate crucial issues that might happen in the future. Speculative design is concerned with future consequences and implications of the relationship between science, technology, and humans. It problematizes this relation by proposing provocative future design scenarios where technology and design implications are accentuated. These design proposals are meant to trigger debates about the future rather than marketing products.
