The A-list is the traditional design approach and the B-list is Dune & Raby’s specific perception about what the aim of design is. Traditional design suggests solutions or ways to improve products or manipulate customers to purchase products. Speculative design challenges the perception of traditional design and considers the implication of design and questions the ethics of design practice to reveal values and agendas. It can be a key to open space between possible and preferable futures, between reality and impossibility as provocations for future design. It addresses a specific issue or phenomena to reveal underlying agendas regarding the perceived provocations of the design (Bardzell, 2012).

 

How can speculative design address child obesity through the 2030 chicken shop?

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Speculative design imagines a possible future, and creating objects presents a way of provoking public debate now about the future. Can exposing the hidden horror of the HFSS diet through the inescapable visual horror of the liposuction burger be enough to wake us all from sleepwalking into a true dystopian nightmare? In my understanding, the meaning of provocation is related to design ethics; what is right for humanity, society and the individual. 

 

I want to think about two points. First, are ethics important when creating provocative artefacts?

 

Even though consuming human fat may be cost effective, under what circumstances could people ever be permitted to do so?

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Below are two documented examples of extreme circumstances leading to cannibalism in Jewish history:

 

“Some time later, Ben Hadad king of Aram mobilised his entire army and marched up and laid siege to Samaria. There was a great famine in the city… As the king of Israel was passing on the wall, a woman cried to him, “Help me my lord the king! This woman said to me, “Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we’ll eat my son.” So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, “Give up your son so we may eat him,” but she had hidden him.” When the king heard the woman’s words, he tore his robes.”

- 2 Kings 6:24-30, NIV, Zondervan, 1985)

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“During the Roman siege of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 A.D., guards inside the city found a woman who seemed to have food. They threatened to cut her throat immediately if she did not show them what food she had obtained. She replied that she had saved a very fine portion of it for them, and withal uncovered what was left of her son.”

- Josephus, Wars of the Jews Vol. 6, Chapter 3:4. 

 

These two stories exemplify the desperation of famine. Mothers killed their own sons for food in order to survive, and there are other similar stories throughout history. This week a father and son were both jailed for 15 years in Ukraine for killing and eating a man for pleasure. - Daily Mail, 2020.  

 

Are there any circumstances in which it is acceptable to eat human flesh? So far in human history there have been none. Will this render the provocation of a liposuction burger meaningless, in that it can never be taken seriously? Since the product is made of the consumer’s own personal fat, it is not exactly cannibalism. The point of the image is to educate consumers by helping them to understand the direct effect of eating HFSS food, to deter them from buying HFSS food that will make them obese and reduce their quality and span of life. However it is also to shock the rest of the population into addressing the problem of child obesity and the circumstances that lead to it.

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Back to the future of the chicken shop. In economic and technology terms, re-using human fat is cost-effective exploratory alternative food technology for disadvantaged groups to provide an accessible and sustainable supply of food. There’s no cannibalism involved (yet). Just recycling unnecessary fat from their own bodies. It could be a new kind of circular economy. 

 

In the Oxford English Dictionary, ethics are “moral principles that govern a person's behaviour or the conducting of an activity.” Many professions have their own vocational ethics. The doctor’s ethic is the Hippocratic Oath - healing patients and saving/preserving life. The commercial company’s responsibility is to protect customer’s private information. For the designer, there is no equivalent to the Hippocratic Oath. Design ethics are influenced by the moral character of the designer and their own notion of duty and virtue. It can be argued that design should not engage or support discrimination of race, sex, religion or disability. Design has large scale influence on how people behave and live in society because it permeates every aspect of existence, therefore consideration must be given to any innate ethical implication. Design ethics is a crucial element of making. 

 

For example, Grenfell Tower, located in one of the most affluent areas in England, was specifically designed as social housing. The 24-storey tower block was designed in 1967, constructed in 1970 and underwent major renovation between 2012 and 2016. Part of the renovation project replaced the cladding to improve the appearance of the building, and it was this cladding that contributed to the extent of the tragic fire in June 2017 that claimed the lives of 71 people. Grenfell Tower was compromised by immoral design ethics arguably inspired by greed and prejudice. The external appearance and the lower working class demographic of the residents were perceived to be at odds with the surrounding environment. Although the renovation included improvements to the heating system, as well as to the outside of the building, the implementation and the results of the work caused years of immeasurable inconvenience and eventually the loss of 71 lives. The example of Grenfell Tower demonstrates the important role of ethics of designers. Should design be utilised as a method of discriminating social class and expressing prejudice? Is design fundamentally moral? Do designers have moral responsibility? I would like to consider the ethics of design, particularly designers’ regard to the individual human consumer, the moral responsibilities of designers to provide better future to people. Nowadays designers have less subjectivity in aim and freedom of design. They face the ongoing challenge of balancing the considerations of personal value judgements and social judgements according to moral obligation, client’s interests and designer’s economic profit. We live in a market economy era. Making profit is important but designers have to consider human value and focus on people who may be forced to consider eating a liposuction burger, considering what they need and how to improve food production, availability and marketing. If we don’t consider ethical responsibilities, the outcome will bring more serious disasters like Grenfell Tower. 

 

Second, speculative design can be a valuable research process. Speculative design is a powerful tool to simulate possible and preferable futures. By creating fictional artefacts such as objects, images, films and texts it extends perspective to explore the implications of new developments across science, technology and politics. (Bassett et al, 2013). The aim of speculative design invites participants to discuss and inform developments. Inviting participants is not about problem solving. It is a way of problem finding. It opens up space so that people can share their feedback and ideas to offer new perspective approaches because they might have different angles to experience new development. Adopting speculative design might not give perfect answers, but it enables us to explore pluralistic futures in advance. Experiencing future design is crucial part because it offers options and warnings. Making food using human fat could be cost effective but on the other hand, it is against societal ethic and design ethic which means no one expects to have it. Adopting speculative design can be good design research process to simulate whether it is ‘good design’ or ‘not’ and offer understanding of feasibility and desirability of services and products.   

 

Conclusion

 

Speculative design can offer unlimited scope for forming design solutions and without the ethical restrictions necessary in practical design. There are so many social problems that have been tolerated for so long that society is in danger of becoming inured or groomed into just accepting them as inevitable, such as homelessness, domestic and child abuse, and also child and adult obesity, but which could be effectively addressed with timely, discerning, informed scenarios. The impact of the Corona virus pandemic on western society has presented us with a unique opportunity to utilise speculative design and initiate whole new positive and hopeful directions for society. Whether or not individuals, especially children, can be persuaded to avoid HFSS food by presenting possible future horrors is debateable, after all, people continue to smoke despite the cost and the images of cancer-ridden lungs on cigarette packets. We need a whole society involvement to change the problems in society.