Date: 2 July 2015
By: Georgina Voss, Tobias Revell, Justin Pickard
Link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/future-of-ageing-speculative-design-workshops
This report summarises the findings of a series of workshops held in Swansea, Leicester and Manchester to explore people’s reactions to different aspects of an ageing population.
The workshops used ‘speculative design’ techniques as a way of provoking debate. Participants were presented with a series of images, or artefacts, from possible future scenarios in 2040 and asked to discuss their reactions to them.
The events were developed in partnership with Strange Telemetry and the Cabinet Office Policy Lab.
Extract from Gov.uk
Report 1: Outcomes
Report 2: Techniques
Thoughts:
It’s interesting to see how governments are starting to use speculative design as part of their urban planning. Selected participants representing the public could express their opinions and views on the possible future scenarios. This would provide new insights for government institutions and policy planners. It seems like this type of participatory design is happening in Singapore as well but on a smaller scale. One example would be Participate in Design (P!D) where the community are involved in numerous renovation works in the neighbourhoods.