Design fiction is a design practice aiming at exploring and criticising possible futures[1][2] by creating speculative, and often provocative, scenarios narrated through designed artifacts. It is a way to facilitate and foster debates, as explained by futurist Scott Smith: "... design fiction as a communication and social object creates interactions and dialogues around futures that were missing before. It helps make it real enough for people that you can have a meaningful conversation with".[3]

By inspiring new imaginaries about the future, Design Fiction moves forward innovation perspectives, as conveyed by author Bruce Sterling's own definition: "Design Fiction is the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change".[4]

Reflecting the diversity of media used to create design fictions and the breadth of concepts that are prototyped in the associated fictional worlds, researchers Joseph Lindley and Paul Coulton propose that design fiction be defined as: "(1) something that creates a story world, (2) has something being prototyped within that story world, (3) does so in order to create a discursive space", where 'something' may mean 'anything'.[5] Examples of the media used to create design fiction storyworlds include physical prototypes,[6][7] prototypes of user manuals,[8][9] digital applications,[10][11] videos,[12][13][14] short stories,[15][16] comics,[17][18][19] fictional crowdfunding videos,[20] fictional documentaries,[21][22] catalogues[23] or newspapers[24] and pastiches of academic papers and abstracts.[25][26][27][28]

History

Design fiction is part of the speculative design discipline, itself a relative of critical design.[1] Although the term design fiction was coined by Bruce Sterling in 2005, where he says it is similar to science fiction but "makes more sense on the page",[29] it was Julian Bleecker's 2009 essay[30] that firmly established the idea.[5] Bleecker brought together Sterling's original idea and combined it with David A. Kirby's notion of the diegetic prototype[31] and a paper written by influential researchers Paul Dourish and Genevieve Bell which argued reading science fiction alongside Ubiquitous Computing research would shed further light on both areas.[32] Since Bleecker's essay was published design fiction has become increasingly popular as demonstrated by the adoption of design fiction in a wide variety of academic research.[16][18][25][26][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]

Characteristics

Although design fiction shows a lot of overlaps with other Discursive Design[41][42][43] practices such as critical design, Adversarial Design, Interrogative Design,[44] Design for Debate,[45] reflective design,[46] and contestational design,[47] it is possible to draw some of its special features.

Design fiction draws its inspiration from weak signals of our everyday lives, such as innovations in new technologies or new cultural trends, and use extrapolation to build disruptive visions of society. Through challenging the status quo, this practice aims at making ourselves question our current uses, norms, ethics or values, whether leading innovation, or consuming it at the other end of the line.

Design fictions tend to stand aside from manichaean utopian/dystopian depictions, and rather dig into more ambiguous grey areas of the explored subjects. As explained by Fabien Girardin, co-founder of The Near Future Laboratory: "Design Fiction doesn't so much 'predict' the future. It is a way to consider the future differently; a way to tell stories about alternatives and unexpected trajectories; a way to discuss a different kind of future than the typical bifurcation into utopian and dystopian".[48]

Design fictions focus on the everyday, exploring and questioning interactions between people or HCI, habits, social behaviors, casual failures or rituals. Fabien Girardin on this point: "To contrast with other similar design approaches, we think Design Fiction is a bit different from critical design, which is a bit more abstract and theoretical compared to our own interest in design happening outside of galleries or museums. Design Fiction is about exploring a future mundane".[48]

Another approach to design fiction is through live action role-playing games (larps). Malthe Stavning Erslev argues that the research larp Civilisation's Waiting Room, which explores a future society run by an AI, is a form of design fiction using what he calls a mimetic method that is "making the technology appear" in "deeply embodied, ephemeral encounters of enactment".[49]

In recent pop culture, design fiction might be bonded to the Black Mirror anticipation series, each episode portraying a disturbing alternative present or near future where characters have to deal with the unexpected consequences of emerging technologies.

Methodology and process

Design fiction is an open and evolving practice, demonstrating a variety of approaches from designers and studios. However it is possible to draw some common lines:

  • "What if?" questions

Design fictions often rely on a question: "What if?", creating a provocative framework for speculation from the start. This questioning format stimulates the exploration of tensions and sticking points, leading to the construction of the new fictional universe, in an alternative present or near future, which includes a new set of morals and values: "The New Normal".[50]

  • Diegetic prototypes

The speculative scenario and the fictional world in which it takes place are made tangible thanks to design tools and methods, to conceive what David A. Kirby was the first to call "diegetic prototypes".[51][31] The term diegetic stands for their narrative attribute, made to be self-explanatory of the world they come from. At the same time, they purposely leave narrative spaces for the viewer's imagination to fill in: they "tell worlds rather than stories".[52] As explained by Julian Bleecker: "Design fiction objects are totems through which a larger story can be told, or imagined or expressed. They are like artifacts from someplace else, telling stories about other worlds".[30]

These prototypes are effective entry points into complex topics subject to socio-technological controversies such as digital technologies, Internet of things, ubiquitous computing, biotechnology, synthetic biology, transhumanism, artificial intelligence, data or algorithms. They "help make things visceral and real enough to jump to discussions and get to decisions".[3]

  • Discussion and debate generation

Design fictions are meant to be displayed in order to create a space for discussion and debate. They can be exposed in various contexts depending on the targeted audiences: online – video platforms, social media, dedicated websites,... – or offline – galleries or museums,[24] convenient stores,[53][54] forums,[55] ... – unveiling or not their fictional nature. In 2013, the project 99¢ FUTURES[53] driven by the Extrapolation Factory studio showed that provoked discussions and debates could happen successfully in non-institutional places, such as a convenient store : they shelved artefacts – previously imagined and conceived during a workshop - among "real" current consumption objects. Customers passing by started to discuss about these pieces of futures, even purchasing the one they liked the most for a few dollars.

Application scope

  • Public policy-making

Design Fiction is a helpful tool used to discuss and move forward public policy-making processes. In 2015, ProtoPolicy, a co-design project led by the Design Friction studio, All-Party Parliamentary Design and Innovation Group (APDIG) and Age UK aimed at building a shared understanding of the constraints and opportunities of political issues around Ageing in Place and loneliness through design fictions.[56] A series of creative workshops involving older people communities led to the conception of "Soulaje", a provocative self-administered euthanasia wearable designed to start discussion around the taboo issues of death and freedom of choice. A second scenario staged "The Smart Home Therapist", a new kind of therapist who, through human psychology and artificial intelligence expertise, facilitates and improves older people's relationship with their smart homes and eases their access to personalized domestic products and services.[57]

  • Innovative companies

Design fiction can be a powerful tool for companies showing prospective approaches or interests within changing or emerging industries. It can be used to help inspiring new imaginaries about the future, collecting insights and qualitative data that will help to formulate strategic directions and decisions, anticipating risks, social and cultural obstacles, enabling discussion between stakeholders, involving internal teams and external audiences in future orientations, bringing out unexpected feedbacks, frictions, misuses, misappropriations or reappropriations of new technologies and highlight their multiple impacts on potential users and more broadly speaking on the society.

The Near Future Laboratory on its approach of design fiction towards companies: "Design Fiction is one approach among others, but its contribution focus on the near future and is tangible. For instance, instead of participating to workshops of multidisciplinary experts with a powerpoint filled with ideas for a technology, we propose to create the user manual for the envisioned product or produce a video that showcases how an employee appropriates the technologies with its features and limitations. These artifacts are meant to materialize changes, opportunities and implication in the use of technologies. They particularly point out details in situations of use with the objective to avoid a "general discussion". ... For our clients a successful Design Fiction means that they can feel, touch and understand near future opportunities and with convincing material of potential changes of their customers, markets, technologies, or competition."

  • General public

Design fiction gets closer to activism when it comes to raising the awareness of the general public on emerging social, legal, political or economic issues. Oniria is a project developed by A Parede studio in 2016 in reaction to the Statute of the Unborn, a Brazilian law project settling the beginning of life at the stage of egg fertilisation, therefore prohibiting the Morning-After Pill in a country where abortion is already illegal under most circumstances. As a critique, designers imagined a scenario in which a company launches a contraceptive technology in line with this new measure. People were invited to share their own visions through various social media platforms on how their life would be affected and how they would bond to this new device in their everyday life.

Publications

  • Ecotopia 2121: Visions of Our Future Green Utopia--in 100 Cities, written and illustrated by Alan Marshall, ISBN 978-1-62872-600-8,[58] an outcome of the Ecotopia 2121 Project

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Dunne, Anthony; Raby, Fiona (2013). Speculative Everything. MIT Press. ISBN 9780262019842.
  2. ↑ "Definition of speculative design". Auger Loizeau : Blog. Retrieved 2016-07-05.
  3. 1 2 Smith, Scott (2016). "Insights: Scott Smith". Medium. Design Friction.
  4. ↑ Sterling, Bruce (October 2013). "Patently untrue: fleshy defibrillators and synchronised baseball are changing the future". Wired.
  5. 1 2 Lindley, Joseph; Coulton, Paul (2015-01-01). "Back to the future". Proceedings of the 2015 British HCI Conference (PDF). British HCI '15. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 210–211. doi:10.1145/2783446.2783592. ISBN 9781450336437. S2CID 6898198.
  6. ↑ Superflux (2015). "DRONE AVIARY".
  7. ↑ "N O R M A L S — A P P A R E L". normalfutu.re. Retrieved 2019-11-10.
  8. ↑ The Near Future Laboratory. "Helios Quick Start Guide".
  9. ↑ Design Friction (2015). "Euthanasia Wearable Quick Start Guide" (PDF). Imagination Lancaster.
  10. ↑ Automato Farm (2014). "Ethical Autonomous Vehicles".
  11. ↑ Hopfengärtner, Bernd; N O R M A L S (18 October 2019). "Molecular Futures — VR App for exploring 5 scenarios". Vimeo.
  12. ↑ Joe Lindley (2014-10-30), A Machine. Learning. (An example of HCI prototyping with design fiction), retrieved 2016-07-05
  13. ↑ "A Digital Tomorrow". Vimeo. Retrieved 2016-07-05.
  14. ↑ "Uninvited Guests | superflux". superflux.in. Archived from the original on 2016-07-18. Retrieved 2016-07-05.
  15. ↑ Maughan, Tim (2013-09-19). "Zero Hours".
  16. 1 2 Dalton, Nicholas S.; Moreau, Rebecca; Adams, Ross K. (2016-01-01). "Resistance is Fertile". Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (PDF) (Submitted manuscript). CHI EA '16. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 365–374. doi:10.1145/2851581.2892572. ISBN 9781450340823. S2CID 30925626.
  17. ↑ Michon, Aurélien R. (2014). N O R M A L S 001 + 002 + 003. Normals. ISBN 978-2-9545994-0-3. Retrieved 2017-01-12. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  18. 1 2 Sturdee, Miriam; Coulton, Paul; Lindley, Joseph G.; Stead, Mike; Ali, Haider; Hudson-Smith, Andy (2016-01-01). "Design Fiction". Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (PDF). CHI EA '16. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 375–386. doi:10.1145/2851581.2892574. ISBN 9781450340823. S2CID 6532763.
  19. ↑ "Emotion detector could reveal if a date really finds you attractive: Is this the kind of world we actually want?". www.sciencedaily.com. Retrieved 2016-07-05.
  20. ↑ "Introducing the Empathy Engine". Vimeo. Retrieved 2016-07-05.
  21. ↑ "A P P A R E L by N O R M A L S". normalfutu.re. Retrieved 2017-01-12.
  22. ↑ Joe Lindley (2015-08-11), Care For a Robot (A design fiction documentary about caring robots), retrieved 2016-07-05
  23. ↑ Near Future Laboratory (2014). "The catalog of the near future's normal ordinary everyday".
  24. 1 2 Near Future Laboratory (2014). "Winning Formula".
  25. 1 2 Lindley, Joseph; Coulton, Paul (2015-01-01). "Game of Drones". Proceedings of the 2015 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (PDF). CHI PLAY '15. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 613–618. doi:10.1145/2793107.2810300. ISBN 9781450334662. S2CID 1406799.
  26. 1 2 Lindley, Joseph; Coulton, Paul (2016-01-01). "Pushing the Limits of Design Fiction". Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (PDF). CHI '16. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 4032–4043. doi:10.1145/2858036.2858446. ISBN 9781450333627. S2CID 13454930.
  27. ↑ Blythe, Mark; Buie, Elizabeth (2014-01-01). "Chatbots of the gods". Proceedings of the 8th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Fun, Fast, Foundational. NordiCHI '14. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 227–236. doi:10.1145/2639189.2641212. ISBN 9781450325424. S2CID 21724519.
  28. ↑ Blythe, Mark (2014-01-01). "Research through design fiction". Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI '14. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 703–712. doi:10.1145/2556288.2557098. ISBN 9781450324731. S2CID 207210135.
  29. ↑ Sterling, Bruce (2005). Shaping Things. The MIT Press. ISBN 9780262693264.
  30. 1 2 Bleecker, Julian (2009). "Design Fiction: A short essay on design, science, fact and fiction" (PDF). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  31. 1 2 Kirby, David (2010-02-01). "The Future is Now Diegetic Prototypes and the Role of Popular Films in Generating Real-world Technological Development". Social Studies of Science. 40 (1): 41–70. doi:10.1177/0306312709338325. ISSN 0306-3127. S2CID 145514001.
  32. ↑ Dourish, Paul; Bell, Genevieve (2013-05-15). ""Resistance is futile": reading science fiction alongside ubiquitous computing". Personal and Ubiquitous Computing. 18 (4): 769–778. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.180.2028. doi:10.1007/s00779-013-0678-7. ISSN 1617-4909. S2CID 5580334.
  33. ↑ Encinas, Enrique; Blythe, Mark (2016-01-01). "The Solution Printer". Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (PDF). CHI EA '16. New York, NY, USA: ACM. pp. 387–396. doi:10.1145/2851581.2892589. ISBN 9781450340823. S2CID 10015414.
  34. ↑ Joshua Tanenbaum, Karen Tanenbaum, Ron Wakkary. "Steampunk as Design Fiction:"
  35. ↑ "Near Future School". 2014-09-08. Retrieved 2016-07-05.
  36. ↑ "Sans Duty | Communities and Culture Network +". www.communitiesandculture.org. Retrieved 2016-07-05.
  37. ↑ "Design Fiction: Does the search for plausibility lead to deception?". DRS2016. Retrieved 2016-07-05.
  38. ↑ "Using Design Fiction To Facilitate Discussion on the creation of A Sustainable Internet of Things". DRS2016. Retrieved 2016-07-05.
  39. ↑ "Games as Speculative Design: Allowing Players to Consider Alternate Presents and Plausible Futures". DRS2016. Retrieved 2016-07-05.
  40. ↑ "Euthanasia Wearable Design Fiction – ImaginationLancaster". imagination.lancs.ac.uk. Retrieved 2016-07-05.
  41. ↑ Tharp, Bruce M. and Stephanie M. (December 9, 2015). "What is Discursive Design". Core77. Retrieved May 25, 2018.
  42. ↑ Tharp, Bruce M. and Stephanie M. (January 5, 2009). "The Four Fields of Industrial Design". Core77. Retrieved May 25, 2018.
  43. ↑ Morrison, Andrew and Timo Arnall, JørnKnutsen, Einar Sneve Martinussen, Kjetil Nordby (October 31, 2011). "Towards Discursive Design". Centre for Design Research. Retrieved May 25, 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  44. ↑ "About. Interrogative Design". Archived from the original on 2018-03-23.
  45. ↑ From the 2008 MoMA Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition website: “Design for Debate is a new type of practice that devises ways to discuss the social, cultural, and ethical implications of emerging technologies by presenting not only artifacts, but also the quizzical scenarios that go with them. These projects shamelessly place the human being at the center of the universe and seek to take into account scientific and technological progress while respecting and preserving our essence as individuals.” https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/
  46. ↑ Sengers, Phoebe; Boehner, Kirsten; David, Shay; Kaye, Joseph 'Jofish' (2005-08-20). "Reflective design". Proceedings of the 4th decennial conference on Critical computing: Between sense and sensibility. ACM. pp. 49–58. doi:10.1145/1094562.1094569. ISBN 978-1595932037. S2CID 9029682.
  47. ↑ HIrsch, Edward A. (2008). Contestational Design: Innovation for Political Activism (Thesis). PhD dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. hdl:1721.1/46594.
  48. 1 2 Girardin, Fabien (October 2015). "Our Approach of Design Fiction". Medium.
  49. ↑ Erslev, Malthe Stavning (2022-10-18). "A Mimetic Method: Rendering Artificial Intelligence Imaginaries through Enactment". A Peer-Reviewed Journal About. 11 (1): 34–49. doi:10.7146/aprja.v11i1.134305. ISSN 2245-7755.
  50. ↑ Jain, Anab (2013). "DESIGN FOR THE NEW NORMAL".
  51. ↑ Sterling, Bruce (May 2011). "Design Fiction: diegetic prototypes". Wired.
  52. ↑ Bosch, Torie (March 2012). "Sci-Fi Writer Bruce Sterling Explains the Intriguing New Concept of Design Fiction". Slate.
  53. 1 2 Extrapolation Factory (2013). "99¢ FUTURES".
  54. ↑ Near Future Laboratory (2012). "Corner Convenience".
  55. ↑ Superflux (2016). "MUTO LABS".
  56. ↑ "ProtoPolicy". Imagination Lancaster. 2016-05-16.
  57. ↑ Design Friction. "Smart Object Therapist Video". YouTube.
  58. ↑ Ecotopia 2121 book review
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