Speculative Design

Dr Will Kurlinkus
What jobs do English
Majors get in design?

š Information design
š Communication design
š Design research
š User Experience
Information & Communication Design
What’s Your Favorite
Speculative Fiction?
“An unfortunate shortcoming of technology
assessment is that it tends to see technological
change as a "cause" and everything that follows as
an ‘effects’ or ‘impact.’ The role of the researcher
is to identify, observe, and explain these effects.
This approach assumes that the causes have
already occurred or are bound to do so in the
normal course of events. Social research boldly
enters the scene to study the ‘consequences’ of
the change. After the bulldozer has rolled over us,
we can pick ourselves up and carefully measure
the treadmarks.”
—Langdon Winner, The Whale and the Reactor
What is Speculative
Design? What if…?
“Combining science fiction world-building techniques
with design to discover unseen potential futures….
Speculative Design combines Design Thinking methods
with the story-telling and future-world-building
techniques of speculative fiction to produce
prototypes of future products or experiences”
—Damien Lutz
“Using the idea of possible futures as a way to “better
understand the present and to discuss the kind of
future people want, and, of course, one people do
not want. For us futures are not a destination or
something to be strived for but a medium to aid in
imaginative thought—to speculate with.”
—Anthony Dunne and Fionna Raby
Speculative Design Provo-types

š Diagetic prototypes: sci-fi stories that attempt to produce dialog about possible futures.
Avoiding an info-dump about a thing but instead imbedding the design possibility in a day
to day story.
š Speculative designs are based in information/data/research not totally from nowhere.
They start from a well-researched current trend, problem, ideal. You’ll start your
speculative design with a “statement of need.”
š Speculative designs should consider bad actors: that is, how might a design/system by
hacked, co-opted, warped into the future.
š Speculative designs explore best, worst, and in-between scenarios.
What if…DNA collection,
testing, and eventual
pregnancy were the norm?
What if…death were
thought of in more
natural and
environmentally-
friendly ways?
What if…energy was
radically rethought as
powered by the
humans who use it?
Blood drinking
machines?
What if…rather than speed and change, technological innovation
embraced aging with grace and repair?
Sample RSA Briefs:
Group Choose 1
š Working Well: Design a vision and business case
for a way to promote greater wellbeing when
people are at work, wherever that work takes
place, that will contribute to higher productivity
and better overall mental health.
š Sleep Matters: Design a product, service or
system to improve health and wellbeing by
encouraging and/or enabling better sleep.
š Eat, Share, Live: Design an inclusive and
accessible and multi-generational kitchen
space or kitchen component that works for all
ages, as well as for disabled and non-disabled
family members, so they can prepare, cook
and serve food, entertain, engage in hobbies
or work and enjoy life together.
Choose a speculative
design topic for your
future career. What if…