“It’s really more about logic than imagination” Massimo Vagnelli, 2007

At the heart of my practice is an exploration of how design can act as a catalyst for curiosity and critical engagement with topics like human perception, memory, culture, and identity. Speculative and interactive design play a key role in transforming abstract ideas into tangible, participatory experiences—whether through immersive installations, coding, or creative storytelling.

This writing will explore how I bring these ideas to life, focusing on the interplay of functionality and speculation in my works, Piece of Home and From the Other Side. These projects reflect my ongoing exploration of how design can serve as a space for curiosity, dialogue and reflection, examining our relationship with symbols and societal narratives. This writing focuses on the themes I explore in my practice, matters such as audience are addressed in my Unit 6 portfolio.

A central pillar of my approach is engaging the audience through interaction—turning them into active participants who experience and reshape the work. Through these projects, I explore how design can inspire new ways of perceiving and engaging with the world around us, offering fresh opportunities for connection and understanding.

Historically, design has been closely tied to meeting capitalist demands (Woodham, 1997). While some progress has been made, graphic design is still often viewed primarily as a problem-solving tool for consumer society. Cameron Tonkinwise (Degl’Innocenti, 2021) argues for a broader perspective—one that considers the ethical and systemic implications of design beyond its immediate functionality.

I believe multi-sensory design offers a pathway to address these concerns. Here I draw from Speculative design’s foundational mindset: an openness to new ideas and a willingness to experiment. This aligns with my focus on interactivity and multi-sensory design, where each project becomes an opportunity to push boundaries. Whether through interactive coding, data visualization, or reinterpreting historical narratives, I aim to create work that resonates on the visual, haptic and contextual level. I resonate with the philosophy of IDEO, which emphasizes the importance of designers having a distinctive approach rather than a defined style (Tim Brown, 2024). This flexibility allows me to explore and express ideas across various mediums, cementing my identity as a multidisciplinary designer.

Engaging multiple senses with purpose is central to my practice, as I believe it creates deeper connections and makes design more akin to natural human experiences. Influences like Jinsop Lee’s talk Design for the 5 Senses (TED, 2024), which highlights the importance of engaging multiple senses in design to create richer, more stimulating experiences, have shaped my thinking about how people could interact with and perceive design. Similarly, FIELD.IO’s experimental data visualizations combine art, technology, and storytelling to convey complex information in visually compelling ways.

An interesting example of this is their project Sensing Spaces for Google (Fig1.1). The project recorded visitors' neuroaesthetic responses to different interiors to explore the question: Can we measure the impact of design on our wellbeing? (Field.io, 2019) The project not only produced a compelling visual representation of the data collected but also prompted the participants to rethink the impact of their surroundings on themselves. The experience proved to people that design matters and affects you. "It's scientific proof that design is important." said Ivy Ross (Hitti , 2019) This project made me realise how design can be strategically used to raise points while engaging the audience and also how the data itself can feed our design. I am inspired to further explore how interactivity and data can work together to communicate diverse narratives effectively. These ideas converge in projects like Piece of Home, where interactivity acts as both a narrative tool to highlight the positive impact of immigration in London and a means to visualise cultural diversity.

My project Piece of Home (Fig 1.2) reimagines London’s culinary landscape as a reactive map. Living in London has taught me that the traditional British stereotype often conceals the true diversity of life here. To capture this idea, the project uses the metaphor of british food plates flipping to reveal immigrant cuisines, symbolizing how appearances can be deceiving. This flipping action, triggered by the viewer’s movement, mirrors the role of human migration in shaping modern London. Speculative design has allowed me to envision displays that actively engage their environment and audience. I incorporated interactivity, as it is more effective in capturing attention and fostering a personal connection to the stories of immigration and its impact.

I use food as a relatable yet profound symbol to showcase how immigration reshapes culture. This recontextualisation invites audiences to see what they often overlook and challenges them to reconsider their own preconceptions about cultural exchange.

This project highlights the relational aspect of my work. I aim to create moments that linger in the audience’s mind by evoking a visceral response and invite further contemplation on topics that might get normalised in the viewers’ busy life. For instance the gradual flipping of British dishes into immigrant cuisines prompts a reflective pause, inviting audiences to consider the layers of cultural influence in everyday experiences as casual as eating.

Phenomenology, a concept introduced by Edmund Husserl, deeply resonates with my practice of intertwining perception and interactivity (Husserl, 1913). In Piece of Home, viewer interaction transforms abstract knowledge into a lived experience.

The reactive installation goes beyond documenting cultural narratives, making them physically and emotionally perceptible and aligning with phenomenology’s focus on the connection between consciousness and environment. Cartesian thinking prioritises objective understanding, but I find phenomenology more compelling for its ability to highlight the interconnectedness between individuals and their environments. By acknowledging how our senses and emotions shape interpretation, phenomenology shifts the focus from meaning as an intrinsic property to meaning as a dynamic relationship with consciousness (Heidegger, 1962).

This perspective echoes Surrealism’s ability of disrupting the familiar to provoke emotional responses, which informs my practice as I design experiences that prompt reflection and reinterpretation of everyday concepts. This lens guides projects that aim to encourage viewers to see common moments—like a simple airport poster about the connection between food and culture—in unexpected ways by disrupting reality. Likewise, systems thinking—a mid-20th-century concept—feeds my work by emphasizing interconnectedness.

“Surrealism aims to revolutionise human experience.” (Tate, 2023)

Similarly, Studio Mischer'traxler blends craftsmanship and technology to create designs that inspire and provoke thought. Based in Vienna, the studio focuses on experimentation, context, and storytelling through products, furniture, and installations. Their work envisions systems and interactive pieces that demonstrate that design can be both functional and meaningful, extending beyond objects to the ideas they represent (mischertraxler, n.d.).

Collective Works (Fig 1.3) is an installation that showcases a unique production process reliant entirely on audience interaction to function. I admire how the piece seamlessly integrates data collection while sparking a broader conversation about production driven by market demand.

This duality of purpose highlights the connection between participation and creation, making the audience an active contributor to the process. What stands out to me is how the installation uses curiosity as a catalyst, compelling viewers to engage deeply to uncover its full purpose.

Ephemera (Fig 1.4) is an installation composed of “three interactive kinetic furniture pieces that represent the dialogue between mankind and nature”(mischertraxler, n.d.). As viewers approach, the plants integrated into the pieces hide, creating a moment of intentional retreat. This interaction emphasizes the purposeful need for audience movement within the concept, by showcasing its impact within a controlled environment.

The installation challenges audiences to reconsider their relationship with nature, suggesting that maintaining a respectful distance will allow it to thrive undisturbed. By flourishing in isolation, the plants highlight the beauty and vitality of nature when left unimpeded, provoking reflection on how human proximity can disrupt this balance. Similarly, my work, Piece of Home, utilizes viewer movement to physically mirror the experience of immigration.

“An object has to be functional but it has to be fun” Oki Sato, 2019

As mentioned earlier design has always been seen as a problem solving tool but what does functionality mean? Are there ways to measure it?

In the TED Talk Design for the 5 Senses, Jinsop Lee’s example of a clock that tells time through scent is a compelling reinterpretation of functionality. Not only does the clock fulfill its purpose but it also extends it by making the design more accessible and functional. This concept resonates deeply with my approach to design, where I consistently ask: Does my work serve a purpose? I believe that design should either introduce a new purpose or transform an existing one, creating experiences that engage and connect with audiences on a deeper intellectual level by expressing themes unconventionally.

Naoto Fukasa is a designer who’s approach to design resonates with mine. He looks into the relation between things, people and the environment. These ideas manifest in many ways in his work. His Juice Skin (Fig. 2) tetra-pack packaging showcases functionality in a simple yet profound way rooted in his ideology of ‘no thought’. He says, “When you drink water, for example, you don’t think about the glass. You drink from it” (InLee, 2015). By mimicking the texture and appearance of the fruit it contains, the design creates an intuitive connection between product and user, blending practicality with sensory engagement. These juice boxes show us how versatile a simple object can be without changing its geometry while also making the user experience better.

Oki Sato’s Cabbage Chair is another example of intrigue coexisting with functionality and purpose. It reimagines the concept of a chair, demonstrating how a shift in perspective can transform the way we design and construct everyday objects. The result is a piece that remains both practical and engaging, blending usability with a sense of curiosity and innovation.

The utility of my current work lies in its ability to provoke thought, encourage engagement, and offer new perspectives on simple topics that might have strong existing notions. For example, the interactivity within my projects, like the Piece of Home installation, allows the audience to experience the design through active participation, something unexpected from the airport poster. The function of the design is as much about the conversation it generates as the physical interaction it invites. It becomes a medium through which people can explore complex narratives of identity, culture, and migration.

While I strive for usefulness in my work, speculative design has taught me that utility can take many forms. Speculative Design invites us to explore possibilities, futures, and "what-ifs" (Neeley, 2024). But how is that useful to us now? Its value lies in its ability to inspire debate and critical thinking. While design is often seen as a tool for problem-solving, it is equally powerful as a medium for posing questions that challenge assumptions and reveal hidden realities (TEDxTalks, 2023). Designers like Dunne & Raby also emphasize this approach, arguing that design's purpose extends beyond providing solutions to sparking dialogue and encouraging reflection (Dunne and Raby, 2013).

In my practice, speculative design allows me to turn abstract concepts into tangible experiences, inviting audiences to reconsider their understanding of identity, space, and meaning.

For example, as a response to the brief asking us to create a flag, I moved away from the traditional representation of national identity and instead explored the idea of how flags could represent a place or concept differently depending on the viewer's perspective. My project, ‘From the Other Side’ (Fig 3.1), challenges the viewer to consider how symbols, like flags, could have multiple interpretations based on their vantage point—prompting reflection on how meaning is constructed, if something as simple as the direction you look from can change this meaning.

I designed two transparent flags for the Moon's near and far sides, creating overlapping visuals and narratives that invite the audience to walk around and view them from different angles.

The designs prioritize materiality and function, relying on tensile structures to withstand the Moon’s extreme conditions without wind.

This exploration extended further by speculating on the needs of a nascent civilization. The concept evolved to include a numeral system and a timekeeper (Fig 3.2) inspired by lunar diurnal rhythms, questioning how these elements could redefine practical and symbolic tools in a new context. These designs blur the lines between representation and depiction, questioning the role of flags. They challenge viewers to rethink flags as symbols, offering new perspectives on identity, place, and the evolving connection between humans and their environment.

Ultimately, speculative design provides a framework to imagine alternative futures and provoke critical thought, encouraging us to reconsider how design shapes and reflects human experiences.

Apple’s ‘Knowledge Navigator’ video (Fig 3.3), released in 1987 (Youtube, 2012), envisioned a future where technologies like the internet, tablets, and voice recognition, which were not yet commonplace, would become central to our daily lives. While such concepts seemed far-off, the video acted as a speculative piece that not only imagined these innovations but also hinted at the experiences they could create.

Today, many of these technologies are ubiquitous, demonstrating how speculative design can inspire real-world advancements. More than a fictional vision, the video acted as a catalyst for these emerging ideas, influencing the design of the devices we now rely on. It shows how speculative design can serve as an aspirational end goal.

Similarly, the 2012 Google Glass "One Day" walkthrough video (Fig 3.4) (MarioCon, 2012) introduced the vision of a world seamlessly integrated with augmented reality. It showcased glasses equipped with a camera that could assist with tasks in real time and share your perspective as it happened. In a TED Talk (TED, 2013), Sergey Brin described the glasses as a tool for accessing information on demand while freeing your hands, eyes, and ears from dependence on a mobile phone.

Since then, numerous AR glasses and headsets have been released, including recent advancements like Apple’s Vision Pro. These devices continue to push the boundaries of augmented and mixed reality, offering immersive experiences. However, most remain tethered to smartphones, displaying information primarily sent through mobile devices. A pivotal missing element has been the ability to analyze the world in real time using a camera—something Google began addressing with the launch of Google Lens in 2017. Identifying text to translate or copy. Detecting objects and finding related matches. Accessing directions and information displayed directly in front of our eyes.

The Vision Pro demonstrates the industry's ambition to create highly capable AR devices, but the journey to fully autonomous, real-time AR glasses remains ongoing. Google Lens represents a significant step toward realizing this vision, offering foundational technologies that could pave the way for the next generation of AR products. The original Google Glass concept video not only inspired the public to imagine a new way of navigating the world but also set an aspirational benchmark for the industry, influencing the development of products. Without this foundational vision, the advancements we see today might not have been possible. Navigation existed back then but Google aimed to discover new ways of navigating, which I do with Flags in From the Other Side as it speculates how they might adapt in form and meaning.

As mentioned earlier, while speculative design pushes the boundaries of what design can represent, I also value functionality—ensuring that a design serves a meaningful purpose within its context. When combined with speculative design, functionality in my work extends beyond practicality to create experiences that resonate on both a personal and emotional level. By focusing on how my work interacts with its audience—through tactile interaction, visual exploration, or conceptual provocation—I ensure that they serve as both functional objects and vehicles for deeper thought.

Speculative design's true utility lies in its capacity to broaden perspectives, challenge the status quo, and inspire new ways of thinking about the past, present and future.

Putting together this report has helped me understand that I comprehend design better when people speak about their work. It is through listening to others and reflecting on my own practice that I’ve come to realise that I see projects as opportunities to learn—both about the themes they explore and the skills required to execute them.

Design has the potential to inspire new ways of thinking. By embracing speculative approaches and multi-sensory experiences, I aim to create work that goes beyond functionality, fostering connections with themes and sparking dialogue about reimagining symbols like flags. Piece of Home exemplifies this, using interactivity to make the concept of immigration tangible and meaningful.

Reflecting on the past year, I’ve transitioned from viewing design as transactional, to recognising its ability to inspire reflection, foster curiosity, and imagine alternative futures. My current practice blends these speculative frameworks with a commitment to functionality, ensuring that my specified project serves as either a tool to present information while encouraging a conversation about the impacts of immigration responding to functionality or a conversation about what flags represent responding to speculation.

“Art changes people's minds and people change the world.” Shamsia Hassani, 2024