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Critical Design Methods Course Projects

The pieces below were submitted as final projects for Dr. Marcel O’Gorman’s ENGL701 Critical Design Methods Fall 2020 and Fall 2021 classes. Despite the challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, students used a variety of media and materials to engage with the question “What is critical design?” The range of projects, some of which are presented here with their designers’ statements, drew from critical theory and a variety of research-creation practices such as speculative design, critical making, discursive design, and applied media theory to critically engage with the socio-cultural implications of technology. The results, some speculative, others provocative, offer critical and sometimes playful interventions into contemporary technoculture.

DePendant, Giuseppe Femia

This product was created by the Metaverse in the year 2054 and has been mandated by the government as a form of mental health maintenance. The advertisements for it read as such, “When all the workplace anxiety builds up and you can’t take the burnout any longer, simply vent all your frustrations into DePendant, and it will do the rest. Using state of the art microwave technology, the pendant will instantly alleviate your stress and turn your worries in its own mass, growing in size. Has your partner been having an affair? Is your child choosing the wrong career path? Does your neighbour leave his lawn trimmings all over your driveway? Well, now you don’t have to worry about losing sleep over these minor inconveniences with the power of DePendant.”

Upon turning twelve, each individual is mandated to keep their DePendant on them at all times, in the form of a pendant, to cope with the stress of the world. Employees are expected to use these devices on their own time to keep up with workplace demands. The Metaverse in turn uses DePendant to collect information on their customers to further increase the accuracy of their algorithms. The information gathered is used much to the same effect as algorithms when they are given data on search history and social media engagement. That is to say, the data is put towards targeted advertisements for the user.

Designer: Giuseppe Femia, PhD Student, English Language and Literature

Exclusimon, Jelena Vulic

Exclusimon is a small deck of cards I created to help designers consider the able-bodied biases they may have unconsciously integrated into their products, thus making them exclusionary of the disabled community. Similarly to the Tarot of Tech, it is meant to be used in a meeting setting, where designers should read – or in some cases, struggle to read – the cards carefully and ask themselves if their products share characteristics with any of the cards, and what they should do to change that.


Each card is designed to embody an accessibility issue that are common barriers for the visually impaired, the neurodivergent, and/or people with motor disabilities. For example, Condorluted (The Purple Prose Exclusimon) is a card meant to represent how complicated language can cause confusion for some members of the neurodivergent community, and achieves this by using overtly convoluted words, such as “labyrinthine” and “versifiers”. As well, some cards contain common blunders made by designers who have attempted to be inclusive in their creation process, but for various reasons fall short.


In making Exclusimon however, I have to recognize that even my own biases are evident in its design – I am visually impaired myself, and am more knowledgeable on the barriers felt by that group, hence why Exclusimon has more cards focused on them in comparison to neurodivergent and/or motor disability barriers. As well, I have to stress that it is not my intention that this deck would theoretically replace consulting a disabled demographic when designing a product. Rather, it should persuade designers to be conscientious about accessibility and expand their own toolkits to help combat exclusionary design.

Designer: Jelena Vulic, MA student, Experimental Digital Media

SOS – The Resistor Case, Lisa Brackenridge

SOS – The resistor case is an interpretation of the resistor case workshop from Marcel O’Gorman’s book Making Media Theory. Using a resistor case kit, with some adjustments and additions, my interpretation of this critical design artifact is a thought experiment about digital abstinence and making media theory. Somewhere between passive usage reports on our digital devices and more stringent lock boxes and cases (like the K-Safe orYondr pouch), the SOS uses sounds and images to encourage thought about the conversations and human interactions we may be missing, or at least limiting, when using our digital devices.

Designer: Lisa Brackenridge, MA student, Experimental Digital Media (XDM)

Knotsomuch, Carolyn Eckert

Inspired by digital ritual and devotion, PhD student Carolyn Eckert’s KnotSoMuch is an object-to-think-with that examines our digital device devotion, in reference to mindfulness and the idea of wasted time. When she discovered that over a six-day period of time she had spent twenty-five hours scrolling aimlessly through social media, texts and emails on a mobile phone, she knew that something had to change.

The Macrame KnotSoMuch project is a visual representation and a reminder that time and attention are precious and not simply for the commoditization of our digital distractions. KnotSoMuch offers alternatives, such as prayer beads, the Rosary and an iPod with recorded music, meditations and prayers with the intention to digitally disconnect in order to connect with the self. For Jenny Odell this is a form of creative “nothing” that acts as a “political resistance to the attention economy” that allows time for solitude, observation and enjoyment of life as it unfolds, but without the capitalist commoditization (Odell 12).

A visual representation of alternatives to digital device devotion that offers creative mindfulness and rejuvenation of the self. This piece also highlights craft-making as an alternative to technological productivity and as a way to manage or find balance from the distractions of our devices.

Designer: Carolyn Eckert, PhD Student, English Language and Literature

Exercises in Critical Making, Heather Eustace

Exercises in Critical Making: The following projects are taken from Making Media Theory, by Marcel O’Gorman. They are exercises in Critical Making a DIY approach to Critical Design. These projects use the assemblage of small circuits, coding and other more historical practises of making to bring up issues around technology.  These projects are critically informed, active and often interactive objects meant to provoke thought. The tactile nature of the work involved in producing these projects engages the mind with the bodily experience of the materials and opens different channels for exploration through problem solving. This type of work involves a great amount of focused attention. To sustain attention cell phone notifications were silenced when making. The final product is not meant to stand alone to communicate the ideas uncovered through the building process, rather it is the process itself that is valuable.

  1. Smartphone Basket/ Codependent Relationship: This project involves the meditative historical process of weaving a basket. This is juxtaposed with the act of programing a digital screen that attached to the basket. The contrasting types of labour involved in making this project led to contemplation on technology and its effects on body and mind. When a cell phone is placed in the basket the screen quips needy messages to the phone’s owner highlighting a codependent relationship.
  2. Conductive Dough/ Monstrous Hands: This project uses the insulating quality of salty playdough and the resistive quality of sweet playdough to complete a circuit illuminating 2 LED lights. The dough was sculpted into hands initially to evoke making with the hands. The crudeness of the sculpted hands at once brought to mind Dr. Frankenstein’s monster an idea that was accentuated by the electrical current running through them. The connection to Frankenstein raises many issues associated with creating in one’s image: whose image? – For one, and also the short comings of human centric thinking, especially in regards to our current climate crisis.
  3. The Useless Box: This project involved assembling an electronic kit of a box whose sole purpose is to turn itself off. This clever comment on technological abstinence is both humorous and poignant. The drawings on the outside of the box boost its punch line with warning labels calling on the myth of Pandora’s Box. It highlights human curiosity and temptation as well as the notion of the taboo.
  4. The Anxiety of Resisting: The purpose of this project is to create a case for your cell phone that makes it difficult to access. During the process of constructing this case the cell phone was measured to be sure it would fit neatly inside. Handling the phone during construction highlights the impulse to respond to incoming notifications. This condition led to a breach in technological abstinence due to worry and anxiety over missing something important. This breach is ironic in the context of the project and illustrates the challenges of unplugging.

Prometheus, Aleksander Franiczek

Prometheus is a “Discourse Reflection Game” designed to encourage engineers to reflect on the potential social and ethical consequences of tech designs. It’s a narratively-driven, text-based game with gameplay that requires players to make discursively engaged dialogue choices with three different characters from a diverse set of backgrounds. By immersing players in the role of a fictional engineer, the game is intended to function as a reflective tool that demands an engagement with design that is less concerned about commercial value and optimization and more focused on recognizing how tech designs shape human experience.

With Prometheus, I didn’t want to make a game that is overtly didactic. At the same time that it is supposed to prompt critical reflection, it is also supposed to be enjoyable to converse with the characters. The player can express themselves in a variety of ways which will have different impacts on the conversations, and each of these outcomes provides alternative perspectives on the discursive implications of tech design and the characters’ perspectives on the practice.

Designer: Aleksander Franiczek, English Language and Literature PhD Student

EarthBand, Christopher Rogers

This was a “Black Mirror” style critical design project that attempted to highlight how disconnected we are to the world around us. In this fictional scenario, EarthBand is a wearable device developed in collaboration between a big tech company (FriendlyTech) and an environmentalist working at a national park. EarthBand’s main goal is to help users connect with ‘nonhumans’ by heightening our natural senses and dulling our phone notifications.  

The wearable device has a number of components that let users experience their connections to nature differently. The hope is to help people become more aware of their entanglements with the world around them, and to cultivate a better sense of shared responsibility for the planet (especially in the face of climate change). This all seems well and good, but things don’t go according to plan. During the launch event, national parks and precious natural habitats are destroyed by the very people supposedly interested in EarthBand’s benefits.  

This speculative scenario is presented through the environmentalist’s personal blog, including videos, protype sketches, and fictional news clippings: A Blog in the Park

Earthband video sample: https://youtu.be/qb9gCeM8mxU 

Designer: Christopher Rogers, MA Student, MA student, Experimental Digital Media (XDM)

A Program for Posthuman Fitness

By Andy Myles, MA XDM
Transcending the limits of our fleshy husks: this attitude – that the fitness and wellness industry uses to target you – has a lot to do with how we got into this mess in the first place. But that’s not what this guide means by “posthuman.” Rather, it’s about understanding the consequences (for individuals, each other, and the world) that we’ve inherited through traditional ideas about humanity. The guide proceeds by reading a series of terms common to exercise science and philosophy against each other, to critique the subjects, attitudes, and tools that make up modern fitness. A series of vlogs supplements these readings, speculating on how such ideas can be put into movement. Anxious attachments felt towards exercise – judging every passerby on whether they even lift, counting every rep and calorie, pursuing thicc bootygains – How did we get here? What is worth leaving behind? And how might we imagine things differently? #canstopmightstop #doyouevenreflect?

Infrastructural 8-bit Games

For ENGL 799, Winter 2019: Critical Media Infrastructures, students submitted mini projects composed of several parts: they selected old pieces of media or technology that are no longer in use, created miniature Bitsy games that highlight aspects of the selected device’s infrastructural histories, subjects, or contexts. Sid Heeg, Farming Evolved “Farming Evolved” is an exploration of how the dairy farm landscape has changed in the past century with changes in technology. From the traditional milk can to the robotic milkers, discover how work demands on the farm have changed by exploring three different dairy farm layouts. AC Atienza, Directional Input Museum
Many people assume that new tech is strictly better than old tech, but is this always the case? The first game is a test of two ways of inputting directions, while the second is an exploratory museum. These games celebrate the different ways we’ve historically selected directions in videogames, and asks what kind of economy, social system, user demographic, etc may encourage the revival of tech we thought were “old”. Could your next project benefit from re-adopting one of these systems?
Play part two here. Emily Acton, Pokemon Junk Drawer Pokémon Junk Drawer explores the problems of planned obsolescence in videogame hardware. Drawing from the central “catch ’em all” ethos of the iconic Pokémon Red, players embark on a quest to repair the protagonist’s old gaming console, collecting electronic “junk” along the way. “Pokémon Junk Drawer” seeks to ask: how long can the owner of a videogame enjoy their property before it dies? And, once it breaks, how far will the player have to go to sustain their former experience? Lia Black, No Print Media No Print Media! interrogates the transition from print to digital forms and the invisibility of digital forms’ underlying infrastructure. While digital forms avoid the deforestation and oil consumption in the production of print media, they are not devoid of environmental implications. No Print Media! draws the player’s attention to these implications, not to make a statement about whether print or digital forms are preferable, but rather to raise consumer awareness of the underlying processes behind these digital forms. Brian Freiter, Museum of Typewriter History Learn about technologies that culminate in the form of the modern keyboard. See what worked and what did not.

Technically Buddhist

By Megan Honsberger, XDM MA Graduate.
From the state which pioneered Zen Buddhism, California’s Silicon Valley has a new spiritual beacon: mindfulness. Technically Buddhist calls attention to the curious instances of technical products and experiences seeking to remedy the ‘disconnect’ of technoculture using decontextualized Buddhist philosophy and digital technology itself. For this installation, an augmented reality app, 3D modelled Buddha, and traditional elements of a Japanese dry landscape garden embody the profound juxtaposition of situating the sacred within our screens. The interactive environment asks the user to respond using a variety of tools and devices, including and especially their own body/mind. As a technique, this project invites the user to find “Buddha in the Machine” (Williams) and reflect on their own digital rituals. Special thanks to Swanson’s Home Hardware and Stone Landscapes for graciously donating materials for this project.

Waterloo Region Cyborgs

By Miraya Groot, XDM MA Graduate.

  • Click for full image.
How do pedestrians’ behaviours differ when they pass through Victoria Park versus Charles Street Terminal? Sitting in eighteen outdoor locations across Waterloo Region’s three cities, I observed over 50 paths where cyborgs revealed themselves. The resulting speculative data enables the comparison of digital technology usage in various urban environments. Ultimately, Waterloo Region Cyborgs aims not to answer whether we should be using our devices in urban space, but to philosophically explore how human subjectivity changes as we are increasingly defined as “users” – of both digital technology and city space.   https://waterlooregioncyborgs.wordpress.com

mindflUX

By Megan Honsberger, XDM MA Graduate.

With the advent of wearable technology like fitness trackers, XDM student Megan Honsberger’s mindflUX explores what it means to be online and continuously connected. mindflUX combines a capacitive touch sensor bracelet with visualizations from neopixels which show how often and when an individual uses their device.