Réka and Viki, UX designers, returned for their second participation, while Bálint, Business Consultant also contributed to organizing the sixth IxD Camp hosted by MOME OPEN.
Many aspects were as usual: a bunch of enthusiastic designers, three days, one subject, and zero digital devices. But in terms of the location and theme selection, this year was special.
Sacredness doesn’t naturally arise in our work, and it’s not part of the designer’s toolkit. From another perspective, in our daily work, we always maintain objectivity with the people we design for. We don’t design for ourselves; we are not our own users, so we work to eliminate our own preferences and biases in the design process.
In Pannonhalma, the question arose of whether we can and should maintain this classic designer role in this context or participate more as “private individuals.” Is there a sharp boundary between the designer’s role and the person behind it?
These circumstances led us to work in an experimental way: we broke free from the routine of our daily design tasks. There were no problems that needed immediate solutions; teams discovered their own topics. There were no users; we were the users ourselves. Therefore, there was no need to come up with solutions; instead, questions arose from the teams’ final demos, not satisfying answers.
We typically label this type of work as design research or speculative design. Its value lies in the fact that by stepping out of our usual modus operandi and daily thought frameworks, we collaboratively strive for a deeper understanding of our subject, which in turn allows us to better comprehend the world and our role within it as designers.
Speculative design both contradicts and complements our usual designer’s way of thinking. Designer practices are constantly evolving, including the problems we address, the tools we use, and the roles we play, so the contradictions and complementations also continually shift. In the camp, we undertook important work: we searched for and experienced novel ways that will gradually become part of our daily work.
