Companies, labs and institutions hire the whatif team because we are happy thorn-finder!
We run unusual creative workshops based on provocation, speculation, and debate in order to disentangle, together, complex issues emerging from contemporary phenomenons – often linked to intersections between society and technology.
A BIT MORE DETAILS:
◊ Contemporary occidental societies meet multifaceted issues – from climate change to the digitalisation and shortage of general medicine. Addressing them needs bringing as many views around the table (companies, institutions, or families). But how getting people to challenge dominant visions of these problems and talk thoroughly through alternative ones? Whatif workshops can help.
◊ Our team-work sessions involve “provocative scenarios”, to allow participants to challenge dominant visions of the world, to project-in alternatives and thoroughly share opinions on divergent ways for co-habiting in society. Here, design products are not meant to be sold, but to question if we really want them. Hence, this approach – often labelled as Design Fiction or Speculative Design – is comparable to an ‘ethical consulting’, a ‘critical forecasting’, or a ‘risk-demining’ process. The reports we deliver address societal, ethical and political issues. They are often linked to technologies topics but can also find applications with policy makers, research lab ethics advisory boards, social design projects, within a small local or a larger systemic scale.
◊ Previous topics we covered include:
- digital social bond in face-to-face telepresence (self driven + Orange collaboration);
- big data, DNA sequencing and GMOs (INRA);
- neurologic degenerative diseases (EREMAND), including a mapping and its publication;
- machine-learning algorithms for personnalisation & prediction in the health-care system (EREIDF – work in progress);
- predictive biology in agriculture (INRA – work in progress)
- other short term consulting with Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, EDF and Marie-Claire.
◊ Whatif‘s projects serve as material for a parallel research, driven by Max Mollon. The initiative is now independent but started as a field-investigation part of Max Mollon’s Ph.D. thanks to Muriel Mambrini Doudet and Annie Gentes (respectively ex-head of research at Institut National de Recherche en Agronomie (INRA) and head of Telecom ParisTech/ Codesign & Media Studies Lab. Find more about Max Mollon here: about.me/maxmollon.
“Whatif” est une initiative de concertation social et de conseil en innovation raisonnée. Nous proposons des scénarios et objets prospectifs d’innovation, créés en collaboration avec des acteurs d’un domaine, pour donner matière à discussion sur les implications sociétales des phénomènes émergents contemporains – ex. entre sciences, technologies et société.
Ces discussions impliquent des experts des sciences et des problématiques de société (politiques, distributeurs, industriels, etc.), sur des questions précises, représentatives des enjeux d’un sujet polémique. Elles tentent d’impliquer d’autres acteurs habituellement laissés à la marge (familles, commerçants, juristes, etc.).
Ces projets utilisent le design non pas pour résoudre les problèmes de notre quotidien mais, explorer ceux de demain, afin de donner un autre regard sur des questions parfois dépréciées, omniprésentes ou inédites.
Les projets de Whatif servent de matière à une recherche parallèle, conduite par Max Mollon. L’initiative, à présent indépendante, a démarré en tant qu’étude de terrain lors du doctorat de Max Mollon – grâce au généreux concours de Muriel Mambrini Doudet et Annie Gentes (respectivement ex-directrice de la recherche à l’Institut National de Recherche en Agronomie (INRA) and directrice du Codesign & Media Studies Lab deTelecom ParisTech. Plus d’informations sur Max Mollon ici: about.me/maxmollon.
Contact = bonjourwhatif@gmail.com
