Best Design Fiction 2011

One of the thought leaders in this category Julian Bleecker sums the topic up well in his essay "Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction" with these words:

"I proposed “design fiction” in order to think about how design can tell thoughtful, speculative stories through objects.........I decided on fiction not so much to create objects that are for storytelling, but to create objects that help think through matters-of-concern. I am interested in working through materialized thought experiments. Design fictions are propositions for new, future things done as physical instantiations rather than future project plans done through PowerPoint."

"Smart, creative, imaginative ways of linking ideas to their materialization really do matter, because the future matters, and we will use whatever means possible to do create these better worlds, including the simultaneous deployment of science, fact, fiction and design."

2011 Best Design Fiction

Total Votes: 2428

942

Votes

Song of the Machine
By: Superflux
http://www.superflux.in/work/song-machine
Description: "Song of the Machine explores the possibilities of this new, modified – even enhanced – vision, where wearers adjust for a reduced resolution by tuning into streams of information and [More...]

671

Votes

Urbanflow Helsinki By: Nordkapp.fi and Urbanscale.org
http://helsinki.urbanflow.io/

Description: Urbanflow envisions an operating system for cities. The scenario explored in the video revolves around situated urban screens and their potential uses.

117

Votes

Storytelling Chair

By: Mia Kos
http://www.mia-kos.com/storytellingchair.html

Description: "From technical side it's a small system based on simple electronics and Arduino, which enables the chair to start telling stories or reciting poetry, when pressure is applied on the sitting part. The aim of the project is to explore expressive abilities [More...]

Votes

Skål

http://www.skaal.no/
Description: "Skål is a media player designed for the home that lets you interact with digital media using physical objects. You place objects in a wooden bowl to play back related media on the TV. Skål makes media playful."

Votes

Biophilia - Organ Crafting

By: Veronica Ranner
http://bit.ly/hI9mUx

Description :If genetically modified silk worms could weave the scaffold for your donor heart instead of a machine – what would you prefer?

A newly programmed sericulture would weave biodegradable scaffolds for organs, tissues, biosensors and even products - from ‘hardware’ to novel ‘wetware’. [More...]

Votes

Solar Sinter Project

By: Markus Kayser
http://www.markuskayser.com/

Description: "This project explores the potential of desert manufacturing, where energy and material occur in abundance. In this experiment sunlight and sand are used as raw energy and material to produce glass objects using a 3D printing process, that combines natural energy and material with high-tech [More...]

Votes

TABLEAU: Physical email By: Supermechanical
http://supermechanical.com/tableau/

Description: "Tableau is an refinished heirloom nightstand that stores and retrieves memories using a Twitter account. It acts as a bridge between users of physical and digital media, taking the best parts of [More...]

Votes

Comments (1)

Votes

Artificial Biological Clock

By Revital Cohen
http://www.revitalcohen.com/

Details: The object is fed information from her doctor, therapist and bank manager via an online service and when she is physically, mentally and financially ready to conceive the object awakes, seeking her attention. Acting as a "constant reminder of the temporary and fragile nature [More...]

Votes

Virtual Gravity - the physical weight of data

By: Silke Hilsing
http://www.virtualgravity.de/
Description: "Virtual gravity is an interface between digital and analog world. With the aid of analog carriers, virtual terms can be taken up and transported from a loading screen to an analog scale. The importance and popularity of these terms (data base: [More...]

Votes

Recompose

By: Matthew Blackshaw, Anthony DeVincenzi, David Lakatos
Description: "Recompose is a new system for manipulation of an actuated surface."

Votes

Trust Alarm Clock

Description: "The design brief was simply to make an alarm clock that embodied the principle — an alarm clock that highlighted the idea that trust is a relationship between people......The alarm setting ritual starts when one sets the wake-up time using a dial on the back of the clock. While doing this, the fob timer is configured so that its count down would expire and the fob would [More...]

Votes

SEED: 'the total recall agent'

By:shohei nakamura, moon hwan lee, and oung wook jung
Description: "The target user of the 'total recall agent' seed, is someone who wants to memorize previous experiences, particularly in the case of travelers who want to hold onto vivid memories about their experiences and show them to close friends and family. the device acts as a 'travel agent' in the shape of a flying balloon [More...]

Votes

Squamata headset

Description: "The concept of his headphone was to make an public depiction of one’s frame of mind rather than a set of headphones that just reacted to the hits of every song. Inner atmosphere is communicated through a skin of reflective scales."

Votes

New Needs in an Augmented World

By: Ludwig Zeller
http://www.ludwigzeller.de/project/new-needs.html

Description: The objects INTROSPECTRE, DROMOLUX and OPTOCOUPLER explore the needs of a society predicated on the transfer and consumption of information. How will we change through the symbioses of information technology and human mind?

Votes

Gusho - A Reactive Dress that Responds to RF Radiation

By: Laura Malinverni
http://www.interindisciplinate.eu/

Description: GUSHO is an electro-mechanical dress that reacts to increasing levels of electromagnetic radiation. For example, a call from a mobile phone emitting RF radiation triggers the dress to physically transform. [More...]

Votes