Abstract
This paper proposes Speculative design as a methodology to cultivate criticality and self-awareness in design students. It introduces a course assignment and discusses a range of approaches that have enabled the achievement of the anticipated learning outcomes. As part of this account, students’ difficulties to question the prevailing economic and socio-political system is presented, along with a proposal to overcome this issue. The method is based on the Speculative design project ‘United Micro Kingdoms’ by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. The ideological framework developed within this project is adopted for pedagogical purposes. This framework, depicted as a coordinate plane with an intersection between two dimensions of values, is employed to challenge the students' understanding of the prevailing political and economic conditions. As a metodological tool, it has proved to be helpful in allowing students to move beyond the narrow problem-solving mindset and to embrace the social, economic, political, and ideological complexity of our world.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drslxd.2025.115
Citation
Jakobsone, L.(2025) Methodological tools for informed and critical alienation, in Clemente, V., Gomes, G., Reis, M., Félix, S., Ala, S., Jones, D. (eds.), Learn X Design 2025, 22-24 September 2025, Aveiro, Portugal. https://doi.org/10.21606/drslxd.2025.115
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Statement of Pedagogy
Methodological tools for informed and critical alienation
This paper proposes Speculative design as a methodology to cultivate criticality and self-awareness in design students. It introduces a course assignment and discusses a range of approaches that have enabled the achievement of the anticipated learning outcomes. As part of this account, students’ difficulties to question the prevailing economic and socio-political system is presented, along with a proposal to overcome this issue. The method is based on the Speculative design project ‘United Micro Kingdoms’ by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. The ideological framework developed within this project is adopted for pedagogical purposes. This framework, depicted as a coordinate plane with an intersection between two dimensions of values, is employed to challenge the students' understanding of the prevailing political and economic conditions. As a metodological tool, it has proved to be helpful in allowing students to move beyond the narrow problem-solving mindset and to embrace the social, economic, political, and ideological complexity of our world.