Kiki Meiland
Speculative Social Designer
I believe speculative and participatory design can inspire
imagination and exchange, and empower people
to make the change they want to see.
I believe speculative and participatory design can inspire
imagination and exchange, and empower people
to make the change they want to see.
My graduation project, Spread the Bread, proposes engraved toast as a speculative alternative to Big Tech-managed communication. With the design, Kiki aims to raise awareness of its shortcomings and implications while triggering discussion and imagination to come up with more creative alternatives.
The project has been presented at various exhibitions and in an interactive workshop. Serving as a great eye-catcher, interactive experience or conversation tool.
Interested in having Spread the Bread at your exhibition, opening, workshop session, or other event? Don’t hesitate to reach out!
Individual Design Research Project
Coached by Caroline Hummels
A design research into the agency of young adults in the climate crisis through Magic Machine workshops.
With increased negative news on the climate crisis comes increased worries in young adults related to the subject.
The term climate anxiety pops up more and more. But what is it that shapes this anxiety? A lack of agency in the climate crisis could be related.
I set out to find how young adults formulate their agency in the climate crisis through creative workshops based on the Magic Machine workshops by Kristina Andersen. The workshops’ lighthearted, creative and personal nature lends itself perfectly to gaining deep insight into people’s values, hopes and dreams related to the climate crisis and their agency. While making things concrete, fostering open conversation and discussion and guiding participants away from a counterproductive dark or negative mindset.
“De Melksalon” is a project by Sietske Klooster, where she focused on achieving systemic change in the milk industry. This project has been going on for 7 years and has led to insights which are worth sharing in order to educate and inspire systemic change.
We designed the Itineration Station for to help her on that regard. It can help her shape the workshops about her experiences and knowledge to increase engagement and comprehension. Where the itineration station assissts in preparing, facilitating and documenting the workshops. Overall, this kit focuses on an embodiment approach as this was also used by Sietske during de Melksalon.
My bachelor graduation project focused on designing for commoning practices and facilitating trans-disciplinary collaborations. The project goal can be said to align with the goals of the NWA consortium and the EIT C&C Strategic Topic Group, which aim to develop new ways of working to address complex multi-actor challenges. Both networks explore the concept of commoning, which involves collaborative exploration, open-endedness, and creativity to find new conceptual horizons. The minor key, characterized by its focus on continuous exploration and unpredictability, is employed to tackle the challenges of our rapidly evolving world.
The created product output is the toolkit that aims to support the developed workshop. Each toolkit can host a workshop for a group of up to 8 participants. The box consists of 8 prefilled embroidery hoops, 8 thin and 8 thick punch needles, 8 needle threaders and one pair of scissors to share. On the inside lid is a written manual explaining how to do the punch needling, supplemented by visual clarifications of the needle threading process, since this has been found to be a pain point.
Additionally, there is a QR code linking to a video tutorial to give a more communicative and visual explanation of how to go about the method.
Participants get 15 to 20 minutes to create their personal tokens aiming to have this be a representation of them as individuals. Apart from using the time to create the actual token, they can utilize it for self-reflection, group discussion and getting to know each other. The workshop aims to provoke an embodied, situated and creative mindset in participants. In order to facilitate the goal of the project, helping people participate in commoning practices.
