I participated in the symposium on Monday and totally agree on what the others had to say about design fiction. I guess we all came up with a conclusion that design fiction sets up conditions for experimenting and prototyping of possible features in design practice and research for the future. Elliot raised a question during the discussion comparing the difference between design fiction and design scientific research. Can one co exist and function together when coming up with methods to restructure this world that we live in? While design fiction is known to be a creative practice, is it constructive and practical enough for the use of design fiction in interpreting scientific research and experiments?

Design fiction and design research share with engineering a fundamental interest in focusing on the world as it could be, on the imagination and realization of possible futures, as well of the disclosure of new worlds. Whilst coming up with a creative idea is imperative, there is an importance of improvisation and experimentation during the research practice. It implies that design could be used as a productive approach to conceptualize scientific research itself as a design practice, while on the other hand, design scientific research has it hard facts on explaining the world as it is.

To me everything just feels so similar. It’s hard to tell which comes first?  All I can make out of this is that Design can’t function without science, but science can function without design. Design fiction and thinking is relatively imperative for us, especially in the advertising/design/media field. There are dreamers and there are realists in this world. You’d think the dreamers would find the dreamers and the realists would find the realists, but more often than not, the opposite is true.  You see, the dreamers need the realist to keep them from soaring too close to the sun. And the realists? Well, without the dreamers, they might not ever get off the ground.

Check out Marley’s post on how she related travel to design fiction!