Public defence: Tiina Kymäläinen
Science Fiction Prototypes as Design Outcome of Research
Doctoral candidate: MA Tiina Kymäläinen
Opponent: Professor Victor Callaghan
February 4th at 12
Location: Aalto ARTS Sampo-sali, Hämeentie 135 C, Helsinki
In a public defence Tiina Kymäläinen will defend her dissertation that discusses how experience design findings of emerging technology research may be harnessed for the construction material of future-oriented science fiction short stories. As evidence the dissertation introduces four case studies and three reflecting science fiction publications that offer a well-founded innovative leap to the future.
The case studies have investigated how to encourage people to employ Internet of Things technologies in a do-it-yourself fashion. By the means of design-oriented research, the cases have aimed at solving important societal challenges: finding means to react to demographic challenges, discovering meaningful activities for the well-being of the aged and people with severe paralysis, and encouraging social innovation of enthusiastic amateur designers.
As a reflective design outcome, the dissertation presents science fiction short stories as research-oriented design artefacts. The introduced science fiction stories lean firmly on the Science Fiction Prototyping (SFP) method introduced by Intel’s futurist, B. D. Johnson (2011). The dissertation presents the method to the design discipline, and considers how it may be used as radical, reflecting design approach. The dissertation implies that SFPs as design artefacts have the potential to contribute more than self-governing science fiction literature or customary science fact outcomes (academic publications and proof-of-concept prototypes). The particularities of the dissertation’s Science Fiction Prototypes relate to the manner by how they engage experience design findings profoundly to the process, and how they illustrate aesthetic, positive experiences – the latter recently being remarked as a quality that has been severely neglected by the literature genre of science fiction.