Speculative Design — Beyond Design Thinking

Definition & Origins

The word speculative means “thinking” or “considering carefully.” Speculative design is a design method that doesn’t try to offer a ready‐to‐use solution immediately. Instead, it focuses on imagining future scenarios and possibilities.

It is used to explore social, political, technological and ethical issues, aiming to generate new ideas and solutions. In other words, it is about designing by asking “How might the future be?” from a design perspective, and by better understanding the present through that lens.

The concept of speculative design was proposed around 2009 by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, then at the Royal College of Art in the U.K. Their book Speculative Everything: Design, Dreaming, and Social Dreaming brought the idea broader attention.

They describe speculative design as taking imagination as its source, aiming to provide new perspectives on so-called difficult problems, creating spaces for discussion and dialogue about possible ways of living, and encouraging free expansion of people’s imagination. They suggest designers should not only address today’s issues but also think about how design can tackle tomorrow’s ones.

Purpose, Features & How It Differs from Traditional Design

Today, “design” covers many fields—from architectural space design, graphic design (posters, brochures), web design, to experience design (designing user experiences). In speculative design, we go further: instead of using design solely for problem‐solving, we reach for “designing how things might be in the future.”

This is because new technologies, the changing environment of our planet, and the fact that even the near future becomes hard to predict have pushed the context such that simple “solve current problems” thinking is no longer enough.

Important: speculative design is not about predicting the future. Its purpose is instead to raise questions and provoke thought: through exploring possible futures, we aim to better understand the present and thus make better decisions now.

The core idea is visualising potential future experiences, technologies or products, then reflecting on the relationship between those futures and the present: “What if this future were real?” vs “How do we act in the present?”

Some key points:

・Focus is not on problem‐solving, but on raising the issue.
・It draws out “what if …” worlds of technology and society.
・It creates a sense of unfamiliarity in the everyday to shake up thinking.
・It gives users or audiences options and encourages dialogue.

While speculative design emerged in the early 2000s, design thinking has long been widely used in design fields. Design thinking often refers to the process by which designers take a problem, observe and analyse a customer’s needs, form a hypothesis, prototype, test with users, and iteratively improve.

The difference:
Design thinking focuses on “how to solve the problems we face today,” while speculative design offers a perspective that asks, “what is the problem in the first place?” The two approaches are not in conflict — rather, they work as complementary forces, functioning like the two wheels of exploration and convergence.

特にデザイン思考とスペキュラティブ・デザインでは、時間軸や目的、問いの立て方が異なる点に注目しましょう。

・時間軸の違い：デザイン思考は「今」、スペキュラティブ・デザインは「未来」
・目的の違い：デザイン思考は「問題解決」、スペキュラティブは「問題提起」
・問いの立て方：前者は「どうやって？（How）」、後者は「もし〜だったら？（What if）」

例：同じテーマを使った場合の違い
テーマ：高齢化社会における移動手段の課題

・デザイン思考：高齢者でも使いやすい自動運転タクシーのUIを設計する
・スペキュラティブ・デザイン ：高齢者が「自動運転車と対話して孤独を癒す未来」のプロトタイプをつくる

Dunne & Raby “Foragers” (2010)

This project visualised a future food‐crisis world where people live with tools that allow them to collect plants and process food themselves, touching on themes of genetic modification, large‐scale agriculture, and individual‐level food procurement. It was not intended for commercial production, but to provoke discussion.

Superflux “Mitigation of Shock”

・2050年には人口が90億人を超えると予測され、食糧不足が大きな問題になる。
・遺伝子組換えや大規模農業以外の解決策を探るため、個人レベルでの食糧調達の未来を想像。

アプローチ

・人間が自然環境で食物を採集し、自らの体や道具を通じて加工・消化するという仮想的なライフスタイルを提示。
・「胃の外で消化する」ための携帯用発酵装置や、海藻を効率的に収穫・処理するための器具など、架空の道具や衣装をデザイン。

特徴

・実際に製品化することを目的とせず、「こんな未来もあり得る」という議論を促進。
・デザインを通じて社会や技術の倫理的・文化的側面を問う。

Superflux「Mitigation of Shock」

「Mitigation of Shock」 は、Superflux（アナーシャ・アニャンガ・アンダーソンらによるデザインスタジオ）によるインスタレーション作品で、ロンドンの未来を舞台に、気候変動が深刻化した中での生活、ロンドンの未来の家庭を実寸大で再現しています。自給自足や代替エネルギー、強制的な生活変化を提示し、持続可能性への問いを実際の体験を通して訴えています。

プロジェクトの背景と目的

・近未来における都市生活の現実的な変化（食糧不足、インフラ崩壊など）を可視化。
・抽象的な気候リスクを「今ここにある問題」として実感させる。

アプローチ

・架空のアパートの一室を作り込み、その内部には自作の水耕栽培棚、発電装置、缶詰備蓄、教育用ビデオ、気候対応レシピ本などが整備。
・訪問者はその空間を歩きながら、2050年の「リアルな日常」を体感できる。

特徴

・リアルなプロトタイプを通じて、未来の生活の質感や制約を身体的に感じさせる。
・脱炭素社会やレジリエンス（回復力）についての議論を誘発。

Near Future Laboratory「Design Fiction」

Near Future Laboratoryは、ジュリアン・ブレトン（Julian Bleecker）らによって設立された、スペキュラティブ・デザインの文脈で活動するスタジオです。彼らのアプローチは「Design Fiction（デザイン・フィクション）」と呼ばれ、架空の未来の商品カタログや広告を用いて、あり得る未来を“生活感”とともに描き、現実とのギャップを示しています。

プロジェクトの背景と目的

・テクノロジーの進化に伴う社会的・文化的変化を思考実験的に探る。
・現在の意思決定に影響を与えるような、代替的な未来を視覚化・物質化する。

アプローチ

・架空の製品広告、ユーザーマニュアル、チラシ、ニュース番組などを制作。
・例えば、「スパムメールを物理的に配達する郵便サービス」「未来の自己量子化デバイス」など。

特徴

・「もしこの未来が実現していたら？」という想像を促すドキュメンタリースタイル。
・プロトタイプや映像などのマルチメディア形式を駆使し、観察者に「この未来が現実かもしれない」という感覚を与える。

これらの事例は、いずれも「未来を予測する」のではなく「未来について考えるための装置」としてのデザインであり、政策立案者、企業、一般市民に対して、新たな価値観や選択肢を提示する役割を担っています。

Compared to standard design processes (idea generation → research → ideation → prototype → test), speculative design adds two extra steps:

・Exploration: Explore new technologies, cultural shifts, current issues, to imagine the future.
・Visualization: Use sketches, storyboards, prototypes to materialize the ideas.

So you move from a future hypothesis → question → fiction → dialogue, always with an axis of “future looking back to present.”

Speculative design is being applied in education, corporate R&D, and public policy.

Education:

Universities and design schools use it to train future thinking; workshops explore “2050’s jobs” and prompt students to imagine futures in STEM education with themes such as climate change, AI ethics, gender, etc.

Corporate / R&D:

Companies use speculative design to examine how new technology might impact society: e.g., in the automotive industry imagining future mobility; companies like Philips developed “Design Probes” to explore medical/food/lifestyle futures 10-20 years ahead.

Government / Public Policy:

Administrative bodies use speculative design for citizen participation and visioning: e.g., the UK government’s Foresight Programme and the city of Barcelona’s Design for City Making initiative. In Japan, ministries use future-citizen stories for smart city or regional revitalisation projects.

Limits

Although speculative design is about imagining futures, it still needs a realistic basis. Scenarios that ignore current reality are meaningless. For example, even designing a 2030 hotel room must consider technologies that could realistically exist.

So while the focus is future-oriented, the grounding in present context is vital.

Future

We expect speculative design to be used more widely across fields as technology and social change accelerate.

Explorations into AI ethics, autonomous driving’s impact on cities and employment, and the blending of virtual/real worlds like the metaverse are all likely themes. Speculative design offers strong potential for such explorations.

If design thinking is a tool for addressing today’s problems, then speculative design is like a sensor for questions we haven’t yet seen. It stimulates creative thought, helps us think beyond existing frameworks, and can be applied when creating as-yet nonexistent products or services or rethinking what already is.

The future is not for us to predict, but to engage in dialogue and make choices. That’s why speculative design is needed.

Ref：
・Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby, “Speculative Everything” (MIT Press, 2013) Superflux 公式サイト
・Near Future Laboratory, ““What Is Design Thinking?” — IDEO Japan (MIT Press, 2013)
・Near Future Laboratory, IDEAS FOR GOOD “What Is Speculative Design — Definition and Meaning”
・「THE BASICS YOU NEED TO KNOW & UNDERSTAND ABOUT SPECULATIVE DESIGN」：Pradipto Chakrabarty