Critical Design in Context: History, Theory, and Practice

by Matt Malpass

The Near Future Laboratory designers’, Julian Bleecker and Nicolas Nova, Slow Messenger (2009) offers another example of discursive commentary through design intervention and playful experiment. Through the design of the world’s slowest instant messenger, the designers explore how in a digitally networked era contact is perpetual and ubiquitous. The device delivers a message through a deliberately primitive text display that turns the torrent into a trickle and the user has to wait for the message to reveal. Implemented as hardware, it uses a 96×64 pixel display; the design questions how our connectivity often results in meaningless communiqués and dispatches. Another example of discursive design is