Speculative design

Origins and early attempts

Anti-design and Italian radical design could be considered as ancestors of speculative design. However, the format of speculative design as we know it today is derived from the critical design practice. Both are connected and use similar approaches. Dunne and Raby described critical design as a practice that “uses speculative design proposals to challenge narrow assumptions, preconceptions, and givens about the role products play in everyday life”. Critical design is a form of design that uses design tools and processes not to solve a problem but to rethink the borders and parameters of a problem from a critical point of view Dunne and Raby explained the term further in their book ‘Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects,’ as “Instead of thinking about appearance, user-friendliness or corporate identity, industrial designers could develop design proposals that challenge conventional values”.

The relationship between speculative design and critical design can be seen from Matt Malpass identification of the current contemporary design practices into three classifications; the first is associative design, the second is speculative design, and the third is critical design. Speculative design is a form of critical design that is concerned with future proposals. It examines future scenarios to ask the question of “what if?”.

Some attempts of the Italian radical design can be considered as speculative design. For instance, Ettore Sottsass worked on “The planet as a festival” in 1973. Speculative design is inspired by the attitude and position of the Italian radical design, yet does not necessarily imitate its format and motivations.

Motivation

Speculative design aims to defy capitalist-driven design directions and showcase their negative impacts on design practice. Dunne and Raby note that hyper-commercialization of design during the 1980s drove this practice. Designers struggled to find a social model to align with outside of the capitalist economy. However, after the financial crash of 2008, the interest in finding other alternatives to the current design models was triggered. In this sense, the role of design is to be a catalyst in producing alternative visions rather than being the source of vision itself.

Speculative designers' motivation is to take a position or an attitude towards the current design practice and propose alternatives. Designers might have different points of view about how they would present a design idea or focal issue. Bruce and Stephanie Tharp identify the different positions designers could take towards their projects; these could be: declarative, suggestive, inquisitive, facilitative, and disruptive.

Auger extends this discussion on explaining what speculative design should do by mentioning aspects for it:

1. " Arrange emerging (not yet available) technological ‘elements’ to hypothesise future products and artefacts, or
2. apply alternative plans, motivations, or ideologies to those currently driving technological development in order to facilitate new arrangements of existing elements, and
3. develop new perspectives on big systems."

Aiming at:

1. " Asking ‘what is a better future (or present)?’
2. Generating a better understanding of the potential implications of a specific (disruptive) technology in various contexts and on multiple scales – with a particular focus on everyday life.
3. Moving design ‘upstream’ – to not simply package technology at the end of the technological journey but to impact and influence that journey from its genesis."

In theory

Speculative design relies on speculation and proposition; its value comes from speculating about future scenarios where design is used in a particular context to showcase a notion or an idea of debate. The most significant aim of speculative design is to enact change rather than conforming to the status quo. According to Johannessen, Keitsch and Pettersen the change aspects can be segmented into three elements:

• Political and social change,
• Product value and user experience change
• Aesthetics

Speculative designers do not suggest what a preferable future is; they let society decide what is a preferable future for them, whereas affirmative design, government, and industries actually decide on their preferable future and create it. It encourages the audience to suggest their preferable future that has no direct relevance with today’s perspective of how the future should be and this raises the awareness for society on how they could influence their choices for the future; the logic of the ‘laws’ of future implies that if we strive for something, we can eventually turn it into reality, even if it seems incredible now.

Speculative design triggers the debate about the actions we take today (in the present) that build future events. It encourages the users to be the change of today. It questions technology at early stages; it is concerned with the domestication of technology and upstream engagement. It poses societal and ethical implications to interrogate them. It questions the role of industrial and product design in delivering new science and technology. Speculative design as a subsidiary of critical design is built on the fundamentals Frankfurt school of criticism. Therefore, critical thinking is an essential aspect of speculative design. Critiquing norms, values and why we design is what motivates speculative designers.

Design is a future-oriented practice by nature. However, the issue lies in the fact that vast majority of designers tend to abide by technological advancements without interrogating them or questioning the implications of such technology. An example of this is the wide adoption of social media and how this affected society (for example, the social dilemma).

Designers, in this case, do not attempt to change the future, but rather they tend to adapt their design towards what they can see as a probable future. In this sense, they see it as something that they cannot change. In this context, speculative design aims to influence change by raising questions and provoking debates by implementing designed objects. Speculative design uses objects or prototypes that do imply implicit meanings about complex social and technological issues.

To highlight the differences between affirmative design and speculative design, Dunne and Raby introduced the A/B Manifesto to contrast their meanings and to highlight what does it mean to be critical or speculative in design.

In practice

Speculative design can be seen as an attitude, stance, or position instead of a process or methodology.

Tactics, methods, and strategies for speculative design have wide variation. It depends on the designer’s intention and the careful management of the outcome of the design project.

Speculative design needs a “perceptual bridge” between what the audience identifies as their reality and the fictional elements in the speculative concept.

Tactics and strategies of speculative design:

• Reductio Ad Absurdum
• Counterfactuals
• Ambiguity
• Satire

and the outcome of speculative design can be a project in the form of:

• Para-functional prototypes
• Post-optimal prototypes

Adjacent practices

Speculative design has many adjacent practices including critical design, discursive design, and design fiction. They share similar motivations but different purposes or target areas.

Criticism

The most significant criticism for critical and speculative design would be based on the understanding that design is not functional or useful, so it cannot be considered as design. The grounds for criticism are built on the basic understanding of design as a problem-solving activity. In contrast, speculative design is concerned with problem finding. It does not create functional objects at the end but rather problematizes an issue or social implication.

Other criticism directed towards speculative design points out that what some would present as dystopian futures resemble the actual conditions of people groups foreign to the designers. Critics such as Luiza Prado de O. Martins consider the practice a niche that is only presented in highly intellectual venues such as MOMA and V&A Museum.

Another criticism for speculative design is dissemination and reflection. The format and venues of presenting speculative design proposals do not imply a methodological approach for engaging with the audience and broader society. This is what Bruce and Stephanie Tharp call "a message in a bottle," a comparison that argues against some designs' inability to exceed their boundaries.