Critical thinking critiques do not always have to be In the field of design, dark design is a critical approach In this article,
In this article, the authors start with the introduction
In the mid-19th, Dunne and Raby first defined
Critical design as a design that “uses speculative
design proposals to challenge narrow assumptions,
preconceptions, and givens about the role products play in
everyday life.” They also referred to it as an attitude and a
position. After a period of time in which their defined term
started losing its popularity, it started making its way back
to the mainstream press recently. However, it has become a
label or a style, rather than an activity or an approach as Dunn
and Raby have expected. This is when they decided to review
the critical design and give it an updated view to adapt to
recent design research. Dunn and Raby have newly defined
critical design as “critical thought translated into materiali-
ty”. They also claim that critical design aims to help designers
identify shortcomings and help replace them with
better versions. They believe that “all good critical
design offers an alternative to how things are” and it is a
positive approach because it encourages possible changes
which make things better.
Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. Speculative Everything : Design, Fiction, and Social
Dreaming. Erscheinungsort Nicht Ermittelbar: Mit Press, 2013. https://readings.design/PDF/
speculative-everything.pdf.
WHAT IS CRITICAL DESIGN?
negative. Instead, they can be used as an effective way
of expressing desires or wishful thinking. Critiques not
only offer alternatives that highlight weaknesses within
existing structures and ideas but also involve carefully
examining and analyzing to expose their positive, neg-
ative, and potential for improvement. It leads to pro-
moting progress, innovation, and creative solutions
to complex problems. As a result, individuals can be
helped to develop a better understanding of their own
beliefs and values. Designers can critically design their
products to directly or indirectly highlight the weak-
nesses of the existing products or ideas. Sometimes
people cannot see their own mistakes by themselves,
so we can help guide them to figure out what they have
done incorrectly or what they can improve. As a result,
the existing complicated issues can be solved by inno-
vative and creative critical design thinking.
Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. Speculative Everything : Design,
Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Erscheinungsort Nicht Ermittelbar:
Mit Press, 2013. https://readings.design/PDF/speculative-every-
thing.pdf.
CRITICAL THINKING
In Bardzell’s research in 2013, they have revealed their
findings that many researchers do not know how to
apply critical design in their work as there have been
many general confusions around this design, prevent-
ing designers from effectively using it. For this reason,
Dunn and Raby have had to clarify any misconcep-
tions surrounding their critical design theory. They
have also suggested that the critical design used in HCI
is relatively weak showing, which discourages other re-
searchers from using it. From my point of view, I think
the research point when the study of Dunne and Rabby
mostly focuses on theory and principles with a lack of
case studies. As a result, many designers might find it
hard to apply this in their future designs.
Bardzell, Jeffrey, and Shaowen Bardzell. 2013. “What Is ‘Critical’
about Critical Design?” Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference
on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’13. https://doi.
org/10.1145/2470654.2466451.
ALTERNATIVE VIEWPOINTS
that is used to challenge a whole different range of
emotions and psychological experiences rather than
just “nice things”. It is used to free designers’ limitation
to only “nice things” and allow them to fully engage
with human nature. Dunne and Raby believe dark
design can be used for warning to any scary
possibility; thus, it is using negativity in a positive way.
Irony used in critical design can often be interpreted as
cynicism, therefore, it requires effort put in by the viewer to
accept that “appearances can be deceptive and similar
to other cultural products”. Overall, the dark design
aims to enhance the traditional design paradigm by
critiquing emotional and psychological experiences.
This is an interesting part focusing on the other side
of critical design. Realistically, life is not only have
positive things, but also neutral and negative. Dark
design will bring a great value and supports for specific
audiences.
Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. Speculative Everything : Design,
Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Erscheinungsort Nicht Ermittelbar:
Mit Press, 2013. https://readings.design/PDF/speculative-every-
thing.pdf.
DARK DESIGN
The article by Jakobsone in 2017 argued that even
though DunnE and Raby’s critical design has
received increasing criticism due to its ambiguous
nature, to some extent it still provides some benefits and
purposeful applications. Although it has been men-
tioned in the research that others have criticised critical
design as an egocentric and useless practice and there
has not been any reliable data collected, still believe that
critical design has been acknowledged by many design-
ers for affecting their professional evolution. While I
already stated that the research of Dunne and Rabby
is not clarify enough for practical application, it is true
that every research has its own contribution to the de-
sign field.
Jakobsone, Liene. “Critical Design as Approach to next Thinking.”
The Design Journal 20, no. sup1 (July 28, 2017): S4253–62. https://
doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2017.1352923.
ALTERNATIVE VIEWPOINTS
of how humans interact with AI technology through
the term Human-AI Interaction (HAII). They conduct
research to determine the critical parameters that can
affect users’ satisfaction with the intelligent system
through Voice User Interface (VUI). Finally, they claim
that users’ satisfaction with VUI is subjective to verbal
responses by many divergent procedures; moreover,
heart rate, facial expression, and many other non-ver-
bal assessments need to be studied in order to support
the verbal assessment of users’ interaction. I agree with
the authors on the point that verbal and non-verbal
assessment should be conducted in further research
because evaluating the verbal responses is not enough
to get high accuracy of the users’ satisfaction on the
VUI. People can falsify their surveys or answers for
many reasons to give higher satisfaction, but the
presence of non-verbal assessment can aid to provide
higher accuracy.
Shin, J G, Kim, J B, & Kim, S H. (2019). A Framework to Identify
Critical Design Parameters for Enhancing User’s Satisfaction in Hu-
man-AI Interactions. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1284(1),
12036. https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1284/1/012036
ALTERNATIVE VIEWPOINTS
In Malpass’s study, it has been mentioned that other
designers have challenged critical design’s narrow
definition and Malpass’s perspective is that it can be
further differentiated into three: associative design,
speculative design, and critical design. As discussed
above, critical design is too narrow, Malpass suggests
we should explore more fully the critical turn in crit-
ical design as well as identify critical design in more
aspects, referring to disciplinary, scientific, or social
concerns. As a designer, I totally agree with Malpass.
To be specific, when researching about critical de-
sign, I found out that there are limited studies related
to critical design as well as speculative design. Thus,
the existing data might be a difficulty for designers
who are planning to apply critical design in their own
work.
Malpass, Matt. “Between Wit and Reason: Defining Associative,
Speculative, and Critical Design in Practice.” Design and Culture 5,
no. 3 (November 2013): 333–56. https://doi.org/10.2752/17547081
ALTERNATIVE VIEWPOINTS