Boundaries of human-centred design – speculative design and the post-human state

Date: 2022.12.14

A book entitled Boundaries of human-centred design – speculative design and the post-human state by teacher of MOME’s Institute for Theoretical Studies Ákos Schneider was published by Typotex.

The book is searching for alternative starting points for contemporary design culture, and seeks to speculatively recalibrate the temporal and spatial dimensions of design in an inescapable situation that blurs the lines between the natural and the artificial.

“We comfortably exist as strangers in our own world – this is the essential design problem the book reflects on”, writes the author, who attempts to offer a critique of human-centred design from the perspective of the ecological crisis and network technology in order to open up new vistas for a broader design culture. Man as “the measure of everything” is becoming less and less of a constant as we live entangled in posthuman systems, while the internal mechanisms of devices are obscured by the handy, well-designed interfaces. User experiences and friendly interfaces can lead to misunderstanding of ourselves, and “good design” can help put a human face on a world that exceeds the human scale. The book is searching for alternative starting points for contemporary design culture, and seeks to speculatively recalibrate the temporal and spatial dimensions of design in an inescapable situation that blurs the lines between the natural and the artificial.

The book can be ordered from the publisher’s website at https://www.typotex.hu/book/12822/az_emberkozpontu_tervezes_hatarai

The original version is also available here open access.

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