SOCIAL MOBILES AND SPEAKING CHAIRS :
APPLYING CRITICAL DESIGN TO DISRUPTION, DISCOURSE AND DISABILITY

The role of critical design is to ask questions rather than to propose solutions. It is being applied to different issues relating to disorder and used to provoke discourse. Provocation is valuable because thinking may be stifled by the overwhelming complexity or sensitivity of such issues; questions are appropriate because simple solutions are unlikely in these contexts. Two examples are described and compared:

Social Mobiles applied critical design to the disruption caused by people using mobile phones in public places, to the disorder arising from the side-effects of this technology. It did this through five extreme concept phones, each of which modified its user's behaviour to make it less socially disruptive. This challenged the perspective of user-centred design by prioritising the people around the user for a change, a fresh perspective within an industry obsessed with self-expression. Social Mobiles successfully generated international publicity and cross-cultural debate and the extent to which this publicity has translated into discernable influence is discussed.

Speaking Chairs is applying critical design to communication aids for people with speech and language impairment, 'disorders' affecting their discourse with others. This is an area in which thinking has been inhibited by the genuine sensitivity of the issues surrounding disability. But current assistive devices are themselves not a neutral technology: a lack of emotion in Text-To-Speech technology can give listeners a false impression that the person using it is not only speech-impaired but also emotionally or even cognitively impaired. This project is exploring radically different ways to control not only what is said, but how this is said - the intonation and prosody of the generated speech. In order to be more provocative, working prototypes will be built not as conventional devices, but as chairs, which also opens up new questions for interaction design and social interaction.

Critical design has to strike an interesting balance. Obvious exaggeration and over-simplification can be employed to signal the limited role that design can play and to acknowledge that design is never enough on its own, given the complexity of a social and cultural, even economic and political context. Yet the discussion that a memorable piece can provoke underlines the serious intent behind this apparent levity. And at the same time, using design to give an iconic presence to an intangible issue serves to remind designers and non-designers alike that design and design thinking could be playing a wider and more influential role.