Dundee Science Centre Sensation is celebrating its 10th anniversary this month. It has hosted a competition among Tayside schools asking children to predict the technological developments to shape our future and Dr Jon Rogers of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design judged the entries.
“We are calling on the young minds in and around the City of Discovery . . .” read the letter from Dundee Science Centre to local primary schools, ” . . . to consider the breakthroughs of the past decade and tell us what they think will be the next big thing to shake up the world of science. Is it ice cream that doesn’t melt; shoes that grow with your feet or a car that is powered by animal poo?”
Dundee’s young minds were quick to take up the challenge, sending in their drawings and descriptions of their ideas for the future of technology.
“Effectively, they were being early-stage designers,” says Jon (pictured below right), programme director of Innovative Product Design at Duncan of Jordanstone in Dundee.
“There was anything from robots who do their homework to automatic fish feeders, to cars that can fly.”
What he was looking for when judging the entries was originality, Jon says.
“The thing that gets missed out a lot in technology is sensitivity. So I was looking for something that wasn’t about a car that could turn into a robot that could turn into a gun, and thinking about what is culturally relevant now.
“Certainly, when I was a kid in the seventies, I had all the thoughts about a robot that could do my homework, or a car that could hover, or a skateboard that could do tricks, or boots that could make you fly, and all those kind of fancy technologies.
“So I was looking for something a little bit more domestic and a little bit more thoughtful things that were maybe potentially a bit more ‘blue-sky’; something that was a really clever idea, that if you brought in someone who was an expert in technology, they could probably make it.
“So we immediately discounted cars, robots and flying things they’re great, all of them, but they’re not going to happen now.”
The standard of the designs was impressive, and there was one gadget amongst them that, on the day of judging, made Jon wish he had one of his own at home, he admits.
“Some of the stuff was really sweet, and one that stood out was the perfect fish tank it had TV for the fish to watch, but the really nice bit was that you click your fingers and it feeds the fish for you, which I quite liked you could imagine an automatic fish feeder like that becoming a product.
“Sadly, our goldfish, which my seven-year-old had named Sushi, had died that morning. We had been feeding it; it had been very well looked after!
“We’d had the burial and all the kids around it, and there was something really nice in seeing the design and thinking, maybe we should have had that, and that might have made the fish a bit happier!”
A number of the entries focused on the future of television though not for fish.”
“There was a TV that could become 3D, which had some interesting aspects. I think there’s a lot of debate now about what TV’s going to become.
“People don’t really realise how radically it has changed in the last three years . . . You’re not limited to just broadcast, you can get it through your phone, through your laptop, through your Wii that’s connected to your TV.
“So that whole future is a really interesting thing, and it was interesting to see Primary four students picking up on that.
“Some of it was a bit fancy you could reach into your TV and get what was on the advert, which was again, quite sweet, and one of the things that people probably wouldn’t have thought of in the 70s or 80s when I was a kid.”
The winning entry came from Jessie Delatousche from class P6M at the Community School of Auchterarder, winning family passes for Sensation for the entire class, for her Fashion in a Box design.
“It was about making your own clothes and accessories automatically,” Jon explains.
“It was really beautifully drawn and all the details were in there, even down to folding the clothes and delivering them to you.”
A machine that ‘prints’ out three-dimensional objects on demand may seem almost impossibly futuristic, but the technology exists right now, says Jon, and machines like the one Jessie designed really are the future.
“EBay can turn any of us into shopkeepers you could become a shopkeeper online, selling whatever you wanted today.
“And what this student is tapping into is the fact that anybody can become a manufacturer. And you can already buy this kit!
“In 10 years? We’ll all have it. So actually thinking, ‘I could be a fashion designer and manufacturer and retailer from my bedroom’, is fantastic.
“I don’t think she knows quite how close she is to the kind of technology that is available.
“Eventually, high-end manufacturing machines that print out your plastics and metal and fabrics could actually become domestic machines.
It’s happened in all areas in the building industry everyone’s now got a power drill. Specialisms in tools 30 years ago have now become daily objects everyone has.
“So a lot of that’s happening, and it’s really nice to see primary school kids, maybe not directly knowing about it, but starting to pick up on that.”
The real surprise was that the range of designs the children came up with was so similar to the types of design found amongst professional designers, says Jon.
“There’s a show, a series of six programmes on the BBC, called The Genius of Design, which, if anyone hasn’t watched they should watch, because it’s fantastic.
“And looking at the first episode, in particular, they showed your classic, boy racer, designer for Ford. And then they also spoke to a domestic, utilitarian designer for the home, called Dieter Rams.
“The guy who was the boy racer was talking about things being beautiful, and fast and making people look wonderful, whereas Dieter Rams, who’s now in his 80s and is known for bringing a lot of domestic stuff into the home and making high-end design affordable, was talking about making things honest and having integrity and being humble in the home.
“So it was really interesting seeing the range of the kids’ work. It’s the same story as professionally, where you have designers who are humble and domestic and honest and want to improve lives in a subtle way, and then you have designers who want to make things beautiful and bling and expensive and shiny.
“You find the same range with my students some really want to be bling designers and some want to be more domestic.
“It was the same with the primary school kids. You saw the robot car, the death, destruction, and bling and then you saw sensitivity and domestic things for the home.
“So I’d say the kids were thinking just like design professionals. And, as ever, most people are attracted to the bling, but the things that stood out for me as a designer were the socially relevant things. It’s all about using technology so that you don’t know you’ve got technology. If you can make technology invisible, then that’s good design.”