Embracing Critique
Refining the Project Idea
We set out with a project idea and a pitch deck, ready to wow Richard Banks. We presented our approach, workshop findings, and final project concepts – all steeped in exploration and anti-solutionist strategies. To our delight, Richard loved it! He appreciated our speculative and playful design methods, and how we delved into the needs of the farm community using our participatory design workshop.
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But then came the "but." Richard pointed out that as we neared the project's end and brainstormed solutions, we strayed from our initial goal of moving beyond technology-focused ideas. We envisioned holographic animals and tech-infused keychains – not quite like our initial intention to explore beyond conventional technological solutions! Our ideas, while exciting, felt more like near-future tech company pitches than answers to the question: "What else could a smart city be?" They didn't challenge the brief or offer a truly alternative vision.
After thanking Richard for his invaluable time and feedback, we regrouped as a team. Though his critique challenged our initial direction, it was a necessary wake-up call. We were so immersed in the ideation process, we missed the bigger picture and overlooked the core objective. Rather than viewing the feedback as a setback, we embraced it as an opportunity for introspection and refinement. Inspired by Richard's suggestion to adopt a critical design perspective, we shifted our focus from presenting a tech-infused world to inviting debate and dialogue around it.
As we’d learnt in one of our Speculative Design lectures and from one of the readings (Dunne & Raby, 2013), speculative design can be a way to look at futures from a perspective of critique. “It is an expression or manifestation of our sceptical fascination with technology, a way of unpicking the different hopes, fears, promises, delusions, and nightmares of technological development and change.”
Drawing from these insights, we reconceptualised our project as a platform for critical discourse. One team member would introduce the "farm of the future(?)", followed by a lively back-and-forth from two internal groups – one for, one against. The audience would then be the ultimate judge, casting their votes in a fun, interactive finale! This new approach not only addressed Richard's critique but also promised a more engaging experience for our audience.
There was still one thing we were not completely sure about, the final voting process. We couldn't decide whether the audience voting should be:
an anonymous ballot that creates suspense and then we have a final count in front of everyone,
oran interactive board which would allow the audience to put stickers to their preferred side of "for" or "against"
We hoped to get more clarity on this and some feedback on the entire idea from the in-class design crit. This session was conducted by our module leader, Sara, and the other two groups in the module. The feedback our group received was great and everyone seemed to love the process and the idea! We even got guidance on how the voting could be done on the day of the presentation, based on the logistical preparations.
One thing that threw a minor spanner in the works was that we were asked to create something visual to go along with the mainly verbal presentation that we had prepared. While we had initially planned to make a video acting out the scenarios from the original tech-heavy idea, we abandoned that thought since our final idea was to leave it open-ended to the audience and conduct a vote. With only a few days left to make this visual representation, we thought our best bet would be to get some help from AI images and create our presentation around those. With help from Djey, we got pictures of Spitalfields City Farm. Later, Shreyas used a few AI image generation tools to show what our idea would look like in the farm!
With this shift in perspective, we're excited to dive into the final design and development phase with the presentation coming up next week!
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