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Imagine it’s 2035. Estonia is an AI-powered innovation machine. Tech education is free, human-value programs are expensive, and products are churned out without care. Designers? Undervalued, depressed, and left to fix the mess.
This is the world we created in Innovation Without Design — a speculative project where we asked: What happens if innovation runs wild without design? The result was a video and speculative object exposing the absurdity of such a future.
Year: 2023
Type: Speculative Design course, EKA
Team: Anette Jaaniso, Kaisa Uik, Marie Soosaar, Karolin Eks
Mentors: Mert Oktay, Liene Jākobsone
CONTEXT
The brief: speculate on the future of Estonian higher design education in 2035.
Speculative design uses imagination and storytelling to explore possible futures, not to predict them but to question today’s choices. It exaggerates trends, creates artefacts, and makes us reflect on values we might otherwise overlook.
SKILLS
Speculative design and futures thinking
Worldbuilding and storytelling
Scenario mapping (Futures Wheel diagram, STEEP analysis)
Deep research (interviews, desk research)
Video editing (Adobe Premiere Pro)
RESEARCH
METHODS
FigJam
Desk research
STEEP analysis
8 half-structured interviews
STEEP ANALYSIS
We gathered the information from our desk research and interviews to the STEEP table (social, technological, economical, environmental, political) and placed it either in the past, present or future.
KEY FINDINGS
Design credibility needs structure.
Designers are often seen as “makers, not thinkers,” with roles hidden under other titles. Certification and national support could raise their status.
Designers in Estonia are often stereotyped as “makers, not thinkers.”
In big companies, design roles are hidden under titles like business development or account manager.
Unlike in other countries, the word “designer” in Estonia still carries associations with craft rather than strategy.
A national commission (similar to those in visual arts) and stronger certification systems could raise credibility and accelerate implementation.
Digital Society Development Plan 2030 vision.
Estonia aims to be the world’s leading AI-powered society, with digital solutions as the core of its economy.
Estonia aims to be the world’s leading user of AI in public services.
Digital solutions are framed as the engine of the national economy.
The country positions itself as a “smart innovation-driven village of the world”.
This focus reflects Estonia’s small size, lack of industrial base, and the desire to distance itself from the Soviet past.
Design is slow, but E-Estonia is fast.
Education and design take time, while capitalism and digital policy push for instant results, creating a mismatch.
One interviewee described higher education as “taking time off.”
Design processes are inherently slower, while capitalism and the Estonian push for e-governance demand speed.
Digital Society Development Plan 2030 emphasizes instant, seamless services:
“The services work exactly according to my needs and reach me when I need them and in the way I want them.”
Schools and businesses should collaborate more closely, but the lack of immediate results makes clients hesitant to work with students.
The need for balance.
Efficiency alone isn’t enough; human values like empathy and emotional intelligence must not be lost.
If technological progress dominates unchecked, society may come to value only efficiency and productivity.
Human qualities like empathy, emotional intelligence, and personal connection risk being neglected.
QUOTES FROM INTERVIEWS
“In Finland there is design pride. I have my Marimekko sheets and Iitala cups. They (Finns) embrace and are proud of their design heritage. We also have this heritage in Estonia, but it is stagnant. And because Finns understand design as applied art, they are more open to design as a problem solver.”
Lõmaš Kama
"Of course, there are these ethical problems (about AI), that I don't know if humanity is even capable of dealing with, given that people are greedy, greedy for power, greedy for money, and that causes all good wishes to be left behind."
Sirje Runge
“The world is built for the purpose of making a profit, for the most part. It cannot be changed."
“Our profession is born purely out of capitalism, formed over decades to serve it. It is inevitable, because nothing happens for free in the world. But we can still create value. ... We can influence the direction in which things move.”
Tanel Kärp
“Consumption will always be trendy.”
Õnne Paulus
PROCESS
BOOTLEGGING
Next we used bootlegging as a brainstorming technique which helped us to turn our research data into unexpected directions.
On the yellow sticky notes we wrote current and emerging values,
on the orange ones activities
and on the blue ones technological trends.
After that we blindly put together trios and chose one to take as a starting point to brainstorm further ideas for our "what if?" question.
FUTURES WHEEL DIAGRAM
Our initial question was: "What if there will be a division into technological VS human-value teaching?".
We placed the question in the center and started building multiple layers of consequences around that. We came to realize our original "what if?" question was too broad so we narrowed it to:
What if there is innovation without design?
OUTCOME
INNOVATION IS A TREND THAT CREATES AN OVERABUNDANCE OF POORLY DESIGNED PRODUCTS.
The world is full of unnecessary innovations, because no one is asking if we need the innovation in the first place. Products do not make sense, because there is little design input and innovation happens based on available technology not human needs.
WORLDBUILDING
The year is 2035. E-Estonia has gotten out of hand, with innovation being the main value across the whole country. Ten years ago, when AI was still a new phenomenon, Estonia decided not to limit its usage. Development is very fast with the technology field having its best years: tech education is funded by the government, while design and human value programs have high tuition fees. Many people with motivation and talent can’t study in the field they want. AI helps everyone produce useless products fast, false information is widely spread and everything is uncertain.
Designers are highly undervalued, their job has been replaced by AI as it works faster. Designers, being critical thinkers, see the world as it really is - full of overconsumption and overproduction. Products and services have doubtable ethical values and usability issues. Design students feel the pressure of wanting to change things, but there is just too much to fix and lack opportunities.
EKA works to oppose the trends in our society, thus design projects are only about redesigning existing things, as creating something new is not sustainable. Lectures are depressing, focusing on what’s wrong with Estonia and the world. EKA as a community is closer than ever - people stand by the same values and the feeling of mission. Designers collect ideas into an archive in the hope of having the opportunity to change something in the near future.
Click and Cut is an example of a product, created by non-designers, which an EKA product design student redesigns.
SPECULATIVE OBJECT
For the narrative we came up with a badly designed product that the future design student could redesign. I crafted the controller knife.
THE VIDEO
We turned our storyboard and narrative into a video. Kaisa Uik did the illustrations and I did the voice-overs and editing.
THE MESSAGE
Designers are not replaceable
Being a designer is not easy
Designers must have a sense of mission
A lot of responsibility falls onto the designer
REFLECTION
This project was my first real deep dive into speculative design — and it quickly became one of my favorites. It gave me a way to merge two things I already loved, writing and storytelling, with design itself, and suddenly my obsession with sci-fi films and series started to feel like an actual design skill. Working with methods like the futures wheel and STEEP helped me see how trends connect, how information can be shaped into systems, and, most importantly, how to build worlds that don’t just feel imaginative but also believable, step by step.
Our project at the Tallinn Design Festival
Google Sites
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