Speculative design/future scenarios Interactive bus stop poster that uses visual language of social media to reconnect the modern generation with the humanit...
Unit 3 Evaluation
“Design today is concerned primarily with commercial and marketing activities but it could operate on a more intellectual level. It could place new technological developments within imaginary but believable everyday situations that would allow us to debate the implications of different technological futures before they happen.”
- Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby
The start of this unit was the most challenging part. I had the freedom to do whatever I wish and it was necessary to understand myself before I give myself a framework for my study. Over the past year most of my projects were about raising awareness so my first instinct was to design something different, something happy but most importantly learn new and polish already existing skills. I looked into different task outlines like navigation and conversation with an aim to produce a design solution that had nothing to do with world problems. Early research was not as inspiring as I expected and I found it hard to stay motivated. Looking back at my portfolio I realized that if the final outcome for this unit would not be about raising awareness the portfolio would simply look weird and out of balance. This unit was an opportunity to really define my style and since I enjoy designing solutions that can make a positive impact on a negative issue I decided to concentrate on raising awareness.
I wanted to produce an editorial piece so my first experiments were series of different books. This was interesting and I was trying to work as fast as possible but the outcomes were not as satisfying as I wanted. I believe this was because I was raising awareness about a serious issue and personally it felt like creating an editorial piece is not the best option so I was loosing motivation. Research gave me large amount of information and knowledge which helped me to brainstorm about new design solutions. At some point I was even planning to host an actual exhibition. Half of the unit I spent in slight confusion. The research was informative but the experimentation was lacking creativity so I had to step up my game. Even more research and new, complex experimentation gave me new options. I was constantly debating between editorial piece or something else until after a positive feedback about an accidental experiment inspired me to fully concentrate on its development.
I decided to pitch a concept for an interactive bus stop poster. The final deliverable would be a presentation and video explaining how the concept of my idea would work. This asked me to go out side multiple times and record different bus stops and I spent many hours by different Adobe editing programs. I was constantly learning and the whole process felt professional. Producing and editing the material on the screen depended a lot on the planning in my note book. The whole process was tedious and slight issue could make me loose many hours of work so it was important to plan everything before hand. Overall I am really happy with the idea and the final concept. The execution has room for improvement, the final video might benefit with some informative text but since I also decided to submit my work in Creative Conscience competition my main aim was to produce a satisfying presentation. In the second unit I was struggling with time management and decision making but in this unit I definitely improved these skill. I had to make crucial decision and planned the creative process well enough to meet not just one but two deadlines. Deciding to submit my work in Creative Conscience was massive boost for development process. It made everything more meaningful and exciting. The outcome also inspired me to look more into speculative design and I realised I have developing interest in future scenarios. Most importantly I learnt that with visual communication I can invent new design solutions that hopefully could make the world a little bit better.