School: Arts and Humanities

This unit information may be updated and amended immediately prior to semester. To ensure you have the correct outline, please check it again at the beginning of semester.

  • Unit Title

    Design Futures
  • Unit Code

    DES3610
  • Year

    2025
  • Enrolment Period

    1
  • Version

    1
  • Credit Points

    15
  • Full Year Unit

    N
  • Mode of Delivery

    On Campus
  • Unit Coordinator

    A/Prof Christopher KUEH

Description

Design Fiction and Speculative Design uses storytelling to explore potential futures. This requires an innovative way of thinking and approaching problems. Design fiction allows designers to provoke discussion and reflect on the implications of emerging social trends or cultural changes – discussions about the role of design in shaping the future. Speculative Design and Design Fiction are currently being applied in healthcare and public sectors to cultivate approaches to people-centred innovations. In this unit, students’ thinking is unleashed to enable experimental, blue-sky thinking, generating possibilities with implications that they then examine through scenario prototyping. Students will be taught Speculative Design and Design Fiction processes and methods. The unit content will empower students to engage with innovation and entrepreneurial initiatives in emerging design practices.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this unit students should be able to:

  1. Examine existing social, cultural, and technological issues to form the foundation of developing alternative futures.
  2. Propose alternative futures, through speculative design and design fiction approaches, to critique current strategies and policies related to issues of social, cultural and/or environmental perspectives, including Indigenous perspectives.
  3. Effectively communicate alternative futures and concepts using a variety of strategies and platforms to engage stakeholders in meaningful dialogues.
  4. Reflect on personal and societal values, biases, and assumptions to deduce their influences on the design process and the creation of speculative futures.

Unit Content

  1. Speculative Design.
  2. Design Fiction.
  3. Use alternative futures to encourage and facilitate conversations on existing social, cultural and technological issues.
  4. Engage design as a discursive tool to generate meaningful conversations in the community.
  5. Devise visual presentations, written narratives, interactive prototypes and multimedia platforms to engage the community in dialogues about a speculative future.

Assessment

GS1 GRADING SCHEMA 1 Used for standard coursework units

Students please note: The marks and grades received by students on assessments may be subject to further moderation. All marks and grades are to be considered provisional until endorsed by the relevant School Progression Panel.

ON CAMPUS
TypeDescriptionValue
PresentationAnalysis of design problem30%
Creative WorkDesign project40%
JournalReflective journal30%

Disability Standards for Education (Commonwealth 2005)

For the purposes of considering a request for Reasonable Adjustments under the Disability Standards for Education (Commonwealth 2005), inherent requirements for this subject are articulated in the Unit Description, Learning Outcomes and Assessment Requirements of this entry. The University is dedicated to provide support to those with special requirements. Further details on the support for students with disabilities or medical conditions can be found at the Access and Inclusion website.

Assessment

Students please note: The marks and grades received by students on assessments may be subject to further moderation. Informal vivas may be conducted as part of an assessment task, where staff require further information to confirm the learning outcomes have been met. All marks and grades are to be considered provisional until endorsed by the relevant School Progression Panel.

Academic Integrity

Integrity is a core value at Edith Cowan University, and it is expected that ECU students complete their assessment tasks honestly and with acknowledgement of other people's work as well as any generative artificial intelligence tools that may have been used. This means that assessment tasks must be completed individually (unless it is an authorised group assessment task) and any sources used must be referenced.

Breaches of academic integrity can include:

Plagiarism

Copying the words, ideas or creative works of other people or generative artificial intelligence tools, without referencing in accordance with stated University requirements. Students need to seek approval from the Unit Coordinator within the first week of study if they intend to use some of their previous work in an assessment task (self-plagiarism).

Unauthorised collaboration (collusion)

Working with other students and submitting the same or substantially similar work or portions of work when an individual submission was required. This includes students knowingly providing others with copies of their own work to use in the same or similar assessment task(s).

Contract cheating

Organising a friend, a family member, another student or an external person or organisation (e.g. through an online website) to complete or substantially edit or refine part or all of an assessment task(s) on their behalf.

Cheating in an exam

Using or having access to unauthorised materials in an exam or test.

Serious outcomes may be imposed if a student is found to have committed one of these breaches, up to and including expulsion from the University for repeated or serious acts.

ECU's policies and more information about academic integrity can be found on the student academic integrity website.

All commencing ECU students are required to complete the Academic Integrity Module.

Assessment Extension

In some circumstances, Students may apply to their Unit Coordinator to extend the due date of their Assessment Task(s) in accordance with ECU's Assessment, Examination and Moderation Procedures - for more information visit https://askus2.ecu.edu.au/s/article/000001386.

Special Consideration

Students may apply for Special Consideration in respect of a final unit grade, where their achievement was affected by Exceptional Circumstances as set out in the Assessment, Examination and Moderation Procedures - for more information visit https://askus2.ecu.edu.au/s/article/000003318.

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