Chapter 2:

The freedom of creating and designing without constraints, Speculative Everything advocates "[stepping] away from industrial production and the marketplace we enter the realm of the unreal, the fictional, or what we prefer to think of as conceptual design—design about ideas". When we can let our imaginations run wild, countless really amazing concept designs and aesthetic explorations that wouldn't have existed unless we break the constraints reality puts on us. 

"This potential to use the language of design to pose questions, provoke, and inspire is conceptual design’s defining feature".

Many people think we need to accept reality because there is a good chance reality won't meet the same expectations as the utopia we all dream of. A beautifully stated counter to this from the moral philosopher Susan Neiman (whom Speculative Everything quoted):  “Ideals are not measured by whether they conform to reality; reality is judged by whether it lives up to ideals. Reason’s task is to deny that the claims of experience are final—and to push us to widen the horizon of our experience by providing ideas that experience ought to obey.”

New designs that challenge the status quo of traditional design can also be used to spread a message. " In the 1980s, Katherine Hamnett made protest t-shirts fashionable with her infamous slogan t-shirts such as 'NUCLEAR BAN NOW,' 'PRESERVE THE RAINFORESTS,' 'SAVE THE WORLD,' and 'EDUCATION NOT MISSILES.'"

Conceptual designs for cars and architecture have been 2 hobbies of mine since I was into LEGOs. Although not always practical, it is interesting to see what our minds can come up with to shape our world into a more interesting and culturally rich one. Rather than a world ruled by reality. 

I enjoyed reading about Philips design creation of the Microbial Home (and of course all the other creative speculative designs). Human waste is such a huge world problem, creating a whole ecosystem built within a home. 

Chapter 3:

Conceptual design can take on many forms: "socially engaged design for raising awareness; satire and critique; inspiration, reflection, highbrow entertainment; aesthetic explorations; speculation about possible futures; and as a catalyst for change." All of which are features we need to see more of in the world we live in today. We have gotten so fixated on the mass production way of producing that we forget to ask ourselves how we want to put emotion and originality into the world around us. - as stated better by Speculative Everything,  "to question, critique, and challenge the way technologies enter our lives and the limitations they place on people through their narrow definition of what it means to be human". This is referred to as "critical design" which can be described as a suggested alternative to the norm that shows the weaknesses within the existing product/creation. A point I thought was important is the aspect of critical design that separates it from criticism. While criticism points out flaws and shortcomings, critical design also illustrates an alternative in which the space between what exists and the ideal fiction can be discussed. This sparks a conversation instead of just saying what something is doing wrong. 

I found the "statistical clock" a brilliant conception. It forces us to think of the lives around us and just how fragile they are. While no one really wants to be reminded of this, it is a controversial and never-before-seen product that sparks conversation and curiosity into the world of critical design.

Sometimes, we feel we have no power over our own realities, we buy products given to us, we watch as our government gets slowly taken over by those who value their own success over our wellbeing. However, as consumers, we have more power than we believe: "The most threatening act of protest for a capitalist system would be for its citizens to refuse to consume". This also works in reverse when we support the businesses that we want to flourish. We have more control over our reality than we think we do, not just physical or cultural reality, but the psychological, ethical, and behavioral aspects of our reality we hold power in changing.

I was struck by the similarity of the line "For a critical design to be successful viewers need to make up their own mind" and Kyle Cooper's approach to design. He has stated that (via to Gestalt psychology) work that has a concept that people can understand and put together, is therefore more memorable than work that is just purely beautiful. This idea of sending a message to include the viewer in your process is used all the time in art and adds a lot more depth to a piece than was originally there.

​