Counterfactual and alternative histories as design practice

Abstract

The version of design that was shaped and perfected during the 20th Century played a huge role in the making of the modern (global northern) world. Whilst design’s potential as a contributor to the making of worlds is clear, its methods, metrics and purposes have led to a world that is increasingly revealed as fragile, broken and unsustainable. In other words, design today is complicit in the breaking of the world – this essay describes a practice-based design research approach to the making of other worlds. Borrowing from the literary approaches of counterfactual and alternative histories and imaginative fiction, it aims to facilitate the development of new approaches to design, informed through alternative ideologies, methods and motivations. The counterfactual approach allows us to imagine other ways to be, in this case through the application of alternative value systems, a non-additive approach to technology and a removal of the constraints imposed by history. The approach can be summed up as follows: • Definition of the theme followed by a broad mapping of its related systems. • The creation of a counterfactual timeline based on a different outcome of one or more of the events identified on the real timeline. • The design of things along the new timeline: hypothetical products, advertising campaigns, images, texts – evidence of the new value system in action. The most vital use of counterfactuals in design is to allow different voices to emerge that were silenced by the dominant, hegemonic or “standard” narrative(s). As we argue in this essay, illustrated with examples from past and current student projects, alternative histories can open up valuable future paths and create space for rich new imaginaries to flourish.

Keywords

• Design pedagogy
• speculative design
• critical design
• counterfactual history
• alternative history