Present/Future Objects: Creating Material Knowledge in Speculative Design
Nancy Smith · 2024
Critical making practices often involve engaging with tangible objects to generate new knowledge, or what Matt Ratto calls “thinking with your hands” [13]. This paper explores the pedagogical goals and outcomes for an assignment created for a graduate course in speculative design called “present/future objects.” In this assignment, students are asked to take an everyday object, break it apart, and rebuild it into an imagined future object. The goal is not to build a better or futuristic version of the object they broke apart but rather to imagine something entirely new with the pieces they have. This assignment engages students in both critical and creative practice, while also challenging them to think about the physical affordances and material effects of the individual parts in their creation, as well as the way these pieces support the development of a whole new design concept. In speculative design, tangible, physical objects are often the most evocative way to demonstrate something about a future world because they offer concrete representations that generate new forms of knowledge about possible future worlds. This project helps HCI and interaction design students to move away from digital space, screens, and designing web experiences, and toward working and thinking with their hands, making playful tangible objects, and grappling with the possibilities and limitations of the materials they choose to work with and how they might represent different futures.