January 10 – Audrey Desjardines
Our first guest speaker for the Future Talks series was Audrey Desjardins, a researcher at the University of Washington. In her talk she gave a bread overview over her past projects, including her PhD thesis, which included converting a Mercedes Sprinter into a DIY camper van. This highlighted the conflict one can encounter when doing auto-ethnographic research: Navigating the border between being researcher, research subject and research experiment designer all at the same time. This for me presented itself as the most interesting insight, because it gave me the sensibility to expect these conflicting roles to emerge in the future when applying first-person research methods.
January 24 – Laura Forlano
In her talk, Laura Forlano highlighted her first-person research progress and insights into what it is like to be a T1 diabetic. Through a pump, which is regulating her insulin levels, she is bound to a piece of technology she cannot actively design or debug. This is why she considers herself a 'disabled cyborg'. My main personal takeaways from her talk was the importance and the potential of journaling first-person insights to later condense them into a auto-ethnographic vignette.
February 07 – Sergio Urueña
Sergio connected from San Sebastián to tell us how technological advances were not pre-determined, but shaped by an interplay of societal and cultural factors. STI, meaning society, technology and innovation is driven by the interdependencies of inclusion, reflexivity , responsiveness and anticipation.
February 14 – Saul Baeza
Saul took us on a two-hour tour through Hospitalet de Llobregat, introducing us to the moved history of the neighborhood, the area of Bellvitge and finally the cultural district in Hospitalet. There, we visited his design studio DOES work alongside the MDEF Design Collective founded by alumnis of MDEF class 20/21 and Daphne. This for me was the most striking inspiration and it showed a clear, viable path for what could come after finishing MDEF.
March 07 – Ron Wakkary
Wrapping up the future talks series, the Canadian professor Ron Wakkary held a lecture on biographies of things and so-called gatherings of non-humans. In his talk he described such a gathering around the lily pond in his backyard involving crows, racoons and gold fish. While this was an interesting in itself, I couldn't stop wondering what would have happened if he just didn't feed all of them and, through that, mess with the urban ecosystem present in his backyard. Food for thought.
Personal Reflection
All of these talks gave a great overview of the state of the young field of first person design research and auto-ethnographic design research. While I agree that design research would benefit from a clearer methodological refinement, none of these approaches shown by the five lecturers presented themselves to me as scientific methods. In fact, they were so far from it that the talk that resonated the most with me was Saul Baeza's – simply because he didn't bother presenting it as anything else then art. This, for me, helped the most in contextualizing these methodologies. Similarly, visiting his and the MDEF 20/21 alumni's studio, opened up a clear vision for what could come after the master studies and how the structures found there could be replicated and continued.