Critical design
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Critical design, popularized by Tony Dunne and Fiona Raby, uses designed artifacts as an embodied critique or commentary on consumer culture. Both the designed artifact (and subsequent use) and the process of designing such an artifact causes reflection on existing values, mores, and practices in a culture. A critical design will often challenge its audiences preconceptions and expectations thereby provoking new ways of thinking about the object, its use, and the surrounding environment. An iconic example of critical design is Dunne and Raby's Pillow, an inflatable pillow that acts as a type of radio transmitting changes in the local radio frequency climate, such as a mobile phone or a fax machine operating nearby. The pillow form suggests this passing electroclimate is harmless, yet it also causes reflection on the energy moving through one's home without one's awareness. The fact that such a device can easily make the invisible visible also raises questions about privacy - if one can easily monitor activity occurring outside one's home, how easy is it for others to monitor what's happening inside one's home from the outside?
Critical designs may be built and intended for use or they may act as a form of speculative design, where the idea or conceptual intent of the object itself is enough to cause reflection. When implemented as a speculative design, the audience for reflection is generally other designers as opposed to users, and the intent is to illustrate potentially new design spaces. An example of a speculative design is the series of value fictions designed by Bill Gaver and Heather Martin. As opposed to science fiction, which assumes existing or familiar values (e.g. the sanctity of the family unit) but projects technology into the future (e.g. a space ship family car), a value fiction assumes familiar or exiting technology and proposes alternate values. As a specific example, by Gaver and Martin, is a bird feeder that classically conditions birds to sing your favorite songs, from Britney Spears to Beethoven. In this case, the value of human dominance over animals is embodied in a personal, living music box. The extremity of this design provokes reflection on our existing practices of domination over nature and the role of technology in this drive.
