Design Fiction as Fact

Elyse Sanchez, Friday, February 23, 2007 @ 2:56 pm

Influenced no doubt by his experience as a conceptual design leader at IDEO, branko Lucik has created the “non object idea/philosophy/point of view/[and soon-to-be published] book” in what is touted as “the new genre of Design Fiction.” Lucik asks us to take the leap into a design environment free not only of the constraints and boundaries of factual design processes, but even the techniques most of us have come to rely on for guidance and inspiration.

The book’s website features a preview application of Design Fiction, the CUin5 telephone. The philosophy and product are showcased in a slick, very-nearly-sincere presentation which incorporates virtually every content and visual cliché currently available to today’s marketers. The manifesto preceding the product’s glamour reveal is stark and faux-provocative. The phone itself, whose image is zoomed upon and examined from every angle as though it were an inanimate subject of the paparazzi, is simultaneously plausible and ridiculous in design.

This ambiguity of product concept is subtly underscored by the rationale offered in explanation for the CUin5. The product, explains Lucik, pushes a typical set of product specifications “to the level of absurdity.” The rectangular handset features a keypad, microphone and speakers on each of its six planes, enabling users to access the device from any side without first needing to orient it properly. Imagine grabbing it quickly, Lucik muses—from inside your bag, from off a shelf, from under a car seat –-and freely interacting with it without needing to turn it over or align it right side up?

The operative fiction here—which, unfortunately, is too often fact in the world of our practical work—is the unchallenged assumption that product specs drive design exclusively; that, in fact, users are clamoring for a grab-and-go phone that is patently unusable. It would appear that the worlds are inverted—that in real life, bowing to the influences of poorly conceived business and technical requirements, we create artifacts of fiction.

user experience design

Comments: 1 so far

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1. 

   Thank you for comment on nonobject - Design Fiction book. You really hit the nail in the head!

   My hope is that the book will inspire all of us who create, to start designing not based on technology driven ideas, or power point presentation brief; how most of the products are designed today… rather base our design efforts on what we would really like to have. to add good amount of imagination, theatrical elements, drama, intrigue.

   Until now it is about the object, designers are focused on objects and what the object can do within given parameters. What i would like to explore is the space between you and the object, the non material space, your mind.

   If i can achieve the level of excitement in any of designs i create to be on the same level as how you feel after watching great movie i accomplished my goal. That is very hard mountain to climb, but the start is here, now.

   This is not going to the Next level but going to the New level.

   You will be able to see more once the book comes out. Thank you again and feel free to contact me. This has nothing to do with the new BUZZ word jargon, nonobject Design Fiction is simply free of any constraints.

   branko Lukic

   Comment by branko Lukic, Friday, February 23, 2007 @ 5:36 pm

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