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Speculative design as research method
Published in Gretchen Coombs, Andrew McNamara, Gavin Sade, Undesign, 2018
Anne Galloway, Catherine Caudwell
Design fiction is another label given to works of design that imagine, speculate on, and represent alternate visions of design and the worlds it inhabits. In 2009, American designer Julian Bleecker and science fiction author Bruce Sterling separately wrote essays on the concept of design fiction. For Bleecker (2009), design fiction was a way of describing design prototypes that aim to tell stories about the near future. To Sterling (2009), design fiction was essentially science fiction in which the science and objects adhere to design principles and practices, allowing them to offer a grounded critique, or, as Sterling had previously expressed, to move “much closer to the glowing heat of technosocial conflict” (2005, p. 30). Much like Dunne and Raby’s critical and speculative design, design fiction grapples with the cultural, social, and ethical impact of technology, but makes fewer claims to sparking debate or encouraging change. However, design fiction likewise remains more a genre of – or an interpretive framework for – design-in-the-world, than a practice or method for actually doing design.
Futures of digital public space
Published in Naomi Jacobs, Rachel Cooper, Living in Digital Worlds, 2018
Such literary and fictional imaginings are, as noted, an important avenue for discussing and shaping the future. But such speculation can also be a more direct tool in design. In Chapter 9 we will discuss how digital public space is an emergent phenomenon and an uncertain design space. Speculative design and design fiction are tools which we can use to imagine future objects and explore their implications, leading to insights which can be applied to design in the present. Design fiction, as opposed to traditional design methods, is focused not specifically on problem solving, but on identifying these problems in the first place: creating designed prototypes or ‘products’ which are not intended to be functional, but rather which prompt discussion and debate. Through this lens, plausible futures can be identified as well as ethical and social dilemmas arising from them. These findings can then inform the design of more implementable outcomes. If this speculative design is done in a participatory fashion and includes insight and input from a wide range of people, it can provide perspectives that a designer coming from a unique background could not alone consider. Speculative design is developing as an important field in current design research. Dunne and Raby are leaders in this field, and many examples can be found in their 2013 book Speculative Everything. Fictional design pieces have even been presented at major technology conferences.2
Narrative design thinking
Published in Tania Allen, Solving Critical Design Problems, 2019
Otherwise known as speculative design, design fiction uses principles of science fiction to imagine future scenarios and how design might respond to these real-world problems. Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby are pioneers in this field—often working with science fiction writers like Bruce Sterling to bring tangible proposals to what are intangible and imaginative problems. The real power of design fiction is the freedom from the limitations of immediate practicality. In Speculative Everything (2013), Dunne and Raby argue that “Design speculation can act as a catalyst for collectively redefining our relationship with reality” (2). What does this mean? It means breaking free from the assumptions in which current beliefs and values are anchored. This could mean changing our perspective on what capitalism is, or should be; or what political systems encourage innovation and quality of life; or where energy comes from; or any other aspect of life that we rest our design decisions upon. Often, design fiction starts out with an extreme scenario—the world cannot produce enough food to feed the population; an epidemic has made it so humans can no longer travel over 20 miles per hour without severe nausea and vertigo; or globalization has forced everyone in the world to adopt a common written and spoken language. These scenarios are then used as starting points to imagine what the outcomes of this scenario might mean and how design might intervene or react. What new symbology could graphic designers create that draws from a multiplicity of written languages to create universal images of communication? How would such a dictate influence culture and communication overall? Much like science fiction, design fiction uses this speculation not to imagine the future (though it does that) but to teach us about today, and to open up new possibilities for how we design our world. Design fiction is “the idea of possible futures and using them as tools to better understand the present, and to discuss the future that people want, and of course, the futures that people do not want” (2).
Exploring homeostatic value of space to prevent maladaptive behaviours of people living with dementia: a narrative study
Published in Architectural Science Review, 2021
Design fiction is usually employed as a medium to open up a space for discussion and to elaborate future design concepts (Lindley, 2015). Describing the scene of a contextual analogue can reveal an interesting way to understand how spaces trigger maladaptive behaviours. Thus, to reflect characteristics of ‘average care facilities’ for people living with dementia, the analogue must refer to a setting in which two categories of people prevail in the social environment: central users (PwD) that are passive and central to the existence of the setting, and staff that are active, peripheral but without whom the setting cannot operate. To fit organizational analogy of care facilities, peripheral actors are preferably task oriented. Spatial characteristics need to include the necessity of an enclosed and secure environment in order to prevent central users from getting into danger. Security of central users will also justify an organizational setting functioning on strict protocols. Finally, central users must be perceived as a common broad impersonal category, as for PwD when named ‘Alzheimer’s’, in order to be evocative of a social representation majorly composed of stereotypes. For such a demonstration and in order to elaborate a realistic analogue, grounds of fiction and speculations are inspired from real life events.
Workshops of the eighth international brain–computer interface meeting: BCIs: the next frontier
Published in Brain-Computer Interfaces, 2022
Jane E. Huggins, Dean Krusienski, Mariska J. Vansteensel, Davide Valeriani, Antonia Thelen, Sergey Stavisky, James J.S. Norton, Anton Nijholt, Gernot Müller-Putz, Nataliya Kosmyna, Louis Korczowski, Christoph Kapeller, Christian Herff, Sebastian Halder, Christoph Guger, Moritz Grosse-Wentrup, Robert Gaunt, Aliceson Nicole Dusang, Pierre Clisson, Ricardo Chavarriaga, Charles W. Anderson, Brendan Allison, Tetiana Aksenova, Erik Aarnoutse
In neurotheatre and neurocinema research [366,367], new media art and neurotechnologies allow for co-creation between actors, director, and audience to shape a performance by emotional experiences using BCI and other sensors and multisensory actuators. From a research perspective, neurotheatre can be seen as a novel integrative research environment for prototyping and exploring new social neuroscience paradigms, like collective decision-making or shared affective experiences. From a societal perspective, the fusion of science, technology, and arts allows for so-called design fiction, a design practice aiming at exploring and criticizing possible futures by creating speculative, and often provocative, scenarios narrated through designed artifacts.
Futures labs: a space for pedagogies of responsible innovation
Published in Journal of Responsible Innovation, 2023
Shannon N. Conley, Brad Tabas, Emily York
York and Conley originally conceptualized the Lab as a site of critical participation at the intersection of research and pedagogy, which would engage undergraduate students in STS-inflected research (York 2018, York and Conley 2019). Participating in the Futures Lab is technically considered a class by the institution, however in practice it is an ongoing experiment with formal weekly lab meetings and significant and ongoing non-scheduled student and teacher presence and engagement. Many students enroll in the Futures Lab for multiple semesters. The students engage in independent STS-inflected research and they participate in the research led by the Lab faculty that engages studies of expertise and interdisciplinarity, responsible innovation, and the societal dimensions of emerging technologies. A key methodology used in this Futures Lab is Creative Anticipatory Ethical Reasoning (CAER) – a blend of scenario analysis, design fiction, and ethical reasoning designed to cultivate students’ capacities for responsible innovation (York and Conley 2020).5 Design fiction is a blend of narrative and material making that facilitates visualizing and collective thinking about potential future forms of life related to a selected scenario (Bleecker 2009). CAER is likewise a research methodology used in an ongoing workshop series, ‘Co-Imagining Futures.’ As part of this series experts from different disciplines are invited to critically imagine and interrogate plausible future trajectories connected to their own research (see York et al. 2019). It is also incorporated into a new NSF research project in the Lab called ‘Collaborative Research and Education Architecture for Transformative Engagement with STS (CREATE/STS)’.6 The space of the Futures Lab is an important component in supporting the lab’s objectives of cultivating community, exploring the intersections between pedagogy and research, and facilitating ‘serious play’ as a means to develop what Johnson calls moral imagination (1994, 2014).