A quick introduction to the notion of speculative design for a pop-up class called "The Decay of Digital Things" at Stanford's d.school.

1. SPECULATIVE
DESIGN
The Decay of Digital Things
decay.io/dschool Elizabeth Goodman, Andrew Lovett-Baron, Maryanna Rogers

2. SPECULATIVE CULTURE
“The way that our society imagines itself
through its forward-looking disciplines”
— Bruce Sterling
Blade Runner

3. “When people think of design, most
believe it is about problem solving.
[…]
There are other possibilities for
design: one is to use design as a
means of speculating how things
could be — speculative design.”
Speculative design
image goes here
Dunne + Raby
Energy Futures
WHAT IS
SPECULATIVE DESIGN?
Dunne + Raby
Speculative Everything, p2

4. Present Futures
Possible
Plausible
Preferable
Probable
A TAXONOMY
OF FUTURES
Redrawn from Speculative Everything redrawing Stuart Candy

5. “During the Indian Civil War, the Dharavi
slums of Mumbai were flooded with refugees
looking to escape the conflict. The Mumbai
authorities, distracted by defence of the city
and facing an already over-populated and
poverty stricken slum could do little to
maintain a semblance of civilised life in the
area. Sometime later a cache of biological
samples appeared through the criminal
networks of Mumbai, in the vain hope that it
might provide new marketable narcotic
opportunities. The collective drive and
expertise of the refugees managed to turn
theses genetically-engineered fungal samples
into a new type of infrastructure providing
heat, light and building material for the
refugees. Dharavi rapidly evolved its own
micro-economy based around the
mushrooms.”
Tobias Revell
New Mumbai

6. Open questions
THE AESTHETICS
OF SPECULATION

7. Superflux
Song of the Machine

8. Near Future Laboratory
Corner Convenience

9. Open questions
EVALUATING
OUTCOMES

10. SPECULATIVE DESIGN SHOULD…
“open up all sorts of possibilities that can be
discussed, debated, and used to collectively define a
preferable future for a given group of people: from
companies, to cities, to societies.” Speculative Everything, p6

11. The Extrapolation Factory
99¢ Futures

12. Open questions
WHOSE FUTURES?

13. Neil Beloufa
Kempinski

14. TO SUM UP
Speculative design is…
Intended to be provocative rather
than predictive or prescriptive
Illustrative of relationships of production,
consumption, and circulation
Instantiated in objects as well as words
Amy Congdon
Biological Atelier: “Extinct”