Critical Design is not only producing design products which is aim to improve people's live or making more convenient in daily life but uses speculative design proposals to challenge narrow assumptions, preconceptions and givens about the role products play in everyday life. It is more of an attitude than anything else, a position rather than a method. There are many people doing this who have never heard of the term critical design and who have their own way of describing what they do.
In the course J-P introduced some examples I was interested in. The first one is Huggable Atomic Mushrooms which is made by Dunne & Raby / Michael Anastassiades. When we talk about nuclear bomb, no one can forget what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. It was so horrible that people know the nuclear weapon should not be used again. The designers transferred this horrible event to cute and amiable fabric chairs to approach children and let them understand about atomic bombs and think deeper about meaning of war and human being. I like this critical design product because it has both function and meaning and people can think more and deeper about the topic.
Besides, J-P also introduced Noam Toran's artifacts called "Accessories for Lonely Man"
There are 8 products called "Sheet Thief/ Cold Feet/ Heavy Breather/ Hair Alarm Clock/ Chest Hair Curler/ Shared Cigarette/ Plate Thrower/ Silhouette Light" in this series. All of them remind people that people usually ignore their important companionship and present how lonely the modern people are. It also said that people can alleviate the loneliness in their life with these products. However, I think these products are a little annoyed and will make people feel more lonely when they have them in daily life. Just imagining, when you sleep alone, the sheet thief scrambles and you for sheet. No matter you win or lose in the end, you are still single and alone. The situation of people can not really improve by the sheet thief. In my opinion, with the wifi technology improvement, I think this product can connect with another one by wifi. When you grab your sheet, it will send signal to another machine and grab someone's sheet. With this modification, you can scramble for sheet with a real person you may or may not know and alleviate your loneliness.
Compared with critical designs which usually functional-less but makes people think more, I prefer it can have some actual function even it may not be very useful. Such as this wine glass made by Sebastian Popa who is also an industrial designer.
This product can make people think about not only drunk driving issue but also alcoholic issue which are serious in lots of countries. If people drink wine with these glass, they will be reminded not to drink too much and drive vehicle. Besides, I think the glass has a spring in neck also makes itself funny and humorous.
After J-P's course and reading some materials searched on internet, I understand that critical design wants to transmit a thought about critical issues that people should know and think about more than make products with useful functions, but I still think the critical design products without function are more like art crafts.
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