Assembling Tomorrow with Scott Doorley & Carissa Carter from the Stanford d.school
Dec 18, 2024
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Carissa Carter and Scott Doorley are professors at the Stanford d.school and co-authors of 'Assembling Tomorrow.' They discuss how design transcends mere products, focusing on experiences and systemic impacts. The duo introduces 'Runaway Design,' highlighting the unpredictability of technology's evolution. They reflect on the relationship between design and AI, exploring its implications on creativity. Their narrative blends fiction and nonfiction to address ethical design, urging society to envision what meaningful change looks like.
The concept of runaway design highlights the unpredictability of modern materials and the need for designers to understand their broader implications.
Carissa and Scott encourage embracing awkwardness as a creative signal that reveals opportunities for innovation and deeper insights in design.
Deep dives
Inspiration Behind 'Assembling Tomorrow'
The authors explore the unsettling nature of modern design, particularly due to rapidly changing technologies and their unpredictable behaviors. They emphasize the emergence of materials such as artificial intelligence and synthetic biology, which can alter their functionality after launch, making them seem 'runaway' and difficult to control. Despite this chaos, they advocate for designers to maintain a sense of agency and responsibility, using their experiences in classrooms to create activities that help students navigate these complexities and envision a better future. Their motivation to write 'Assembling Tomorrow' stems from the desire to guide current and future designers in understanding and adapting to these transformative challenges in technology.
Understanding Runaway Design
Runaway design refers to the idea that contemporary design materials, particularly digital algorithms and genetic code, often exceed the designers' control or understanding once they are set in motion. The speakers compare tangible materials like paper and wood, where designers can anticipate the material's behavior, to the invisible nature of algorithms, which can evolve unpredictably. They stress the importance of recognizing the broader implications of design choices, including production, distribution, and social impact, which often remain hidden beneath the surface. This notion of runaway design highlights the need for designers to embrace a holistic perspective, aware of the interconnected systems their work influences.
The Value of Speculative Storytelling in Design
The podcast discusses the unique structure of 'Assembling Tomorrow,' blending fiction with non-fiction to explore potential futures in design. This approach allows readers to imagine scenarios in which design interacts with technology in ways that provoke thought about ethical implications and human experiences. For instance, one story involves AI recreating deceased loved ones, prompting questions about memory and relationships, which ultimately reflect on real-world technological developments. By creating these speculative narratives, the authors aim to engage others in the exploration of possibilities and the ripple effects of design decisions in an increasingly complex world.
Embracing Awkwardness as a Design Insight
The conversation highlights the role of awkwardness in design as a signal for noticing gaps between expectations and realities. The authors suggest that feeling awkward can reveal opportunities for innovation and improvement, particularly among neurodiverse individuals who may perceive the world differently. They emphasize the importance of deliberate disorientation as a practice that fosters creativity, encouraging designers to actively seek out and engage with these feelings to gain fresh insights. Ultimately, embracing awkwardness can lead to greater awareness and the identification of unique solutions that challenge conventional norms.
In the second episode of this season of the AIGA Design Podcast, hosts Lee-Sean Huang and Giulia Donatello interview Scott Doorley and Carissa Carter, professors at the Stanford d.school, discussing their career and their new book Assembling Tomorrow.
Their motivation to write the book came from the feeling of how unsettling they believe the world is right now and the belief we can craft a better tomorrow. Carissa believes Design is not just about the products we create but the experiences that create and the system that we live in.
In the book, they introduce the concept of Runaway Design and the unpredictability of technology's evolution. They delve into our interactions with materials, physical and digital, and explore the implications that might arise from it.
Their book navigates in a fiction and non-fiction space and tackles speculative design methods. Scott and Carissa argue that design begins as fiction since everything is imagined before it’s created. Scott reflects on the fact that society is changing things but challenges listeners by asking: What do we actually want to change?
The conversation also touches on their evolving relationships with AI tools and how this is part of their creative process in an exploratory way. They share how some of their students are exploring AI’s limitations in the physical world and reflecting on how this highlights the depth of human knowledge. They believe their work is bringing visibility to the invisibility brought by technology.
What about you? How are you shaping the future you believe in?
