6 examples of combining science fiction world-building techniques with design to create prototypes of future artefacts

Photo by Pierre Châtel-Innocenti on Unsplash

Speculative Design is a design practice combining science fiction world-building techniques with design to create prototypes of future artefacts to provoke thinking and discussion about potential futures beyond what we think is possible.

The practice emerged in the 1990s as designers began to question their role in consumerism’s impact on the planet. This values-based, experimental practice remained a lesser-known curio until the internet exposed it to the wider design folk, offering them a means to explore designing for values over profit.

While foresight practices and other futures studies start with an analysis of today and relevant data to identify unseen future opportunities, Speculative Design jumps into future ideas and works backwards to understand their potential and impact. This is a fun way of exploring the fringes of what’s possible and how we might attain or avoid these scenarios.

Alternate futures ahead

There’s plenty more to read about Speculative Design, but examples speak louder than words — so here are 8 Speculative Design projects to jettison you into alternate futures and expand your idea of what’s possible.

Museum of Futures

The virtual Museum of Futures

Not to be confused with The Museum of the Future under construction in Dubai, the Museum of Futures is an interactive virtual gallery created by Sydney-based creatives Claire Marshall and Mel Rumble. As a virtual visitor, you can tour the online gallery to explore artefacts from alternate futures created during experiential workshops facilitated by Marshall’s creative company iflabs.

The latest exhibition, Pandemic Pivots, explores two possible futures — a utopia where we tackle climate change, and a dystopia where extreme climate change has altered our way of life forever.

Previous exhibitions explored the Future of Work, the Future of Australia, and The Future of Food.

The virtual Museum of Futures showcases the fascinating artefacts from all exhibitions, including a ‘repurposable’ toy made in 2035, a sculpture commemorating the 2030 introduction of The Native Species Title Act that ‘gave animals rights to all native forests and bushlands across Australia’, and a bottle of Australian air from the early 2020s’.

I had the pleasure of hearing Claire and Mel speak about their Museum project and the passion they brought to unearthing other people’s thoughts about the future to “highlight the role we all play in creating different futures”.

The exhibition asks for a small $5 entry fee to cover the maintenance of the online exhibition, as well as a portion being donated to various charities working towards a better future for all.

The Museum of Futures is a fun way to give back, explore, and ignite your imagination about what’s possible.

Extrapolation Factory

https://extrapolationfactory.com/99-Futures

Founded by creatives Chris Woebken and Elliott P. Montgomery, Extrapolation Factory use their own experimental, collaborative methods to explore democratised futures by creating hypothetical future props. They often embed their provocative props into real-world scenarios.

‘99¢ Futures’, the Factory’s first project—and my personal favourite—began with a selection of possible future scenarios expanded into small stories. Related product ideas generated from the stories (‘Benzene Vapor Refills, Mars Survival Kits, and Triple-Nipple Baby Bottles’) were created via rapid-prototyping and then stocked for purchase in a real-world 99¢ store amongst its usual products. This guerrilla installation provoked conversations between strangers about the future scenarios triggered by these specials in the 99¢ store with Time-Warp sale.

Many organizations have recognised the Factory’s genius creativity and partnered with them—UNICEF, Autodesk Research, The Royal College of Art, TED, and more. Visit Extrapolation Factory for more fantastic future creations.

Core77 Design Awards

https://designawards.core77.com/speculative-design/93249/Become-a-Dropian

The annual and inclusive Core77 Design Awards have recognised excellence across 18 design disciplines from both students and professionals since 2011. From low-fi to complex prototypes, the submissions often wow the judges with their cultural commentary and innovative exploration.

2020’s submissions included:

Dropianism — a 2025 lifestyle trend of abstaining from everyday freshwater sources and using only the recycled water from tears, breath vapour, and saliva to satisfy their daily water usage.

Botanical Bodies — the exploitation of the microscopic similarities between human and vegetable kingdoms to create compatible human organs.

An Extended Time-Unit World — four new time measurements applied to different regions of the world depending on their pace of life and productivity.

Institute for the future

https://www.iftf.org/what-we-do/artifacts-from-the-future/

IFTF is a leading futures organisation with a focus on sustainable futures. Using their own methodologies and toolsets, they have provided forecasts, research, and foresight training to governments and organisations for over 50 years.

Creating Artefacts from the Future with their clients, IFTF creates ‘objects and fragments’ of daily life from the next 10-50 years. These prototypes simulate what it might be like to live in a particular future in tangible detail to challenge assumptions and goals.

Designed Realities Studio

The Designed Realities Studio is a New York research and teaching platform led by the pioneers of critical and speculative forms of design practice, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. Utilising “practice-led research and project-based teaching”, the studio empowers students to combine social thought with design and art to create unique visions that address today’s social, political and technological realities. The Studio’s aim is to encourage a world where imagined alternate futures flourish and thrive.

As you can imagine, the work coming out of such an innovative educational institute arrive from alternate realities that are extremely absurd yet rooted in the plausible. Reminiscent of Dunne and Raby’s “Speculative Everything”, the Studio and its artefacts seem to be an extension of the book itself.

Automato Farm

http://automato.farm/

This design group, based in Shanghai, combine their computer science, product design and electrical engineering skills to develop real and fictional future products and interfaces.

Their investigations ask questions like:

“If a smart coffee machine knows about its user’s heart problems, should it accept giving him a coffee when he requests one?”

Their projects’ output is often fully-functioning electrical prototypes that are ‘bridging and blurring physical and digital interfaces’.

Automato seem to thoroughly enjoy exploring in detail how emerging technologies collide with reality.

Inspired?

Start imagining and creating your own alternate futures by checking out these methods and tools to start playing around. Or check out my guide book to Future Scouting — a step-by-step speculative design method incorporating life-centred design, product design, and science fiction to get you saving the world and back to the present well before the next pandemic!