Design and Plural Heritages: Composing Critical Futures

We make theoretical and methodological contributions to the CHI community by introducing comparisons between contemporary Critical Heritage research and some forms of experimental design practice. Beginning by identifying three key approaches in contemporary heritage research: Critical Heritage, Plural Heritages and Future Heritage we introduce these in turn, while exploring their significance for thinking about design, knowledge and diversity. We discuss our efforts to apply ideas integrating Critical Heritage and design through the adoption of known Research through Design techniques in a research project in Istanbul, Turkey describing the design of our study and how this was productive of sensory and speculative reflection on the past. Finally, we reflect on the usefulness of such methods in developing new interactive technologies in heritage contexts and go on to propose a series of recommendations for a future Critical Heritage Design practice.