Happy Society
Speculative design x Bio design
Happy Society
3rd semester project 2021 (M.A.)
5 weeks
Team work* (Linda Kraft, Romy Koppert)
*Each individual worked on this project equally.
Being emotionally naked
The concept was created in the setting of “Speculative Design” combined with “Bio Design”. The course focused on co-creation. The process was accompanied particularly by scientists from the microbiology department of Umea University.
Scientists are more proof driven, and designers push forwards the threshold of what could be possible. We needed to open up the discussion, understand their way of thinking and find a common language.
Together with the scientists, we created different scenarios that paved our way to our final concept, which revolves around the key term: “being emotionally naked”. Emotions are often associated with vulnerability, with which a certain power comes with. It is one’s individual decision how, when and if one wants to share this very personal property.
What would a world look like where everyone had to expose their feelings and had no control over exposing their deepest truths?
With our video we aim to raise the question of ethics, emotions, privacy and social ranking systems.
The world we created tells the story of a dystopian future where emotions are being subjected to a ranking system. Every person wears a tracking-patch that measures feelings by analysing the composition in the sweat. Through this patch the emotional state of each and everyone is monitored and translated into a score system. The happier the person the better the score and with happiness come certain privileges, that allow the person access to certain activities, such as entering special buildings, coffee shops etc.
The real-time data is owned by and only accessible to the state and state funded companies. The people subjected to the system only get to hear their score once a day, in the morning, by the radio.
This is a world that would do anything for ranking up in happiness, even if it means disconnecting relations with friends and family.
Creating the scenario
Creating the scenario, we got deeply sucked into many discussions imagining living in a world we created. We presented this dystopian world scenario to our mentor and assigned scientist Teresa Frisan, whose words were: “If you wanted to do provocation – this is a bomb!”
We had an inspiring discussion with her and realised how close this created world is to our real world and we grew more motivation to continue our path.
In a last co-creation session, we invited all our fellow students, scientists and teachers to map out their thoughts about the video. The discussion that was created was more than a proof of concept.
Thoughts
Working with biomaterials made me realise that I am not able to force or assign a certain role to the material. It needs to be nurtured and given time to show its full potential. So giving up a bit of control as a designer in this context might be a good thing.
Regarding co-creation, it was nice knowing that our assigned scientist, Teresa, was fully open towards the story we wanted to tell, after we opened the door to our world by making the concept more tangible. The beautiful outcome was the conversation flowing naturally. I really enjoyed the different viewpoints coming together. This is one of the main things that keeps the motivation going.
Understanding someone’s way of thinking, being empathetic and finding a common language is of major importance.
Design is not a static process, and a shift might happen along the way. For me speculative design is a major starting point for raising awareness and pointing out possible consequences and keeping in mind how a certain design that was initially created with good intention could have a fatal outturn and be abused. In this context, a concept like ours could be potentially dangerous if understood incorrectly. As designer it is important to question our responsibility and how we can create methods to prevent possible dangerous outcomes.
