Speculative Design Toolkit: Speculative Practice Architectures

Speculative design is sometimes called critical design or design fiction which requires zooming out beyond user-centred design and asks what the effects of the designs could be on future societies. It’s concerned with possibilities, not probabilities, pushing people to consider their preferences over a set of possible futures and the ways in which objects are designed, help or hinder their attempts to build those futures.

The Speculative Design Toolkit: Speculative Practice Architectures are developed from years of teaching, co-designed knowledge from SWISP Lab Hackathons underpinned by 'Critical Design' theories, 'Speculative Design' and 'Theories of Practice Architectures' (Kemmis). Speculative Design is one of the most exciting ways for designers to practice problem solving by design. Critical design is critical thought translated into materiality. It is about thinking through design rather than through words and using the language and structure of design to engage people. When intertwined and folded within each other they offer new ways of doing, knowing and being.

The Speculative Design Toolkit: Speculative Practice Architectures include:

1. Scenario building
2. Backcasting - Futurecasting
3. Artefacts form the Future
4. Futures Tanglegramming
5. Fictional Narratives