Design Fiction as a Practice for Researching the Social

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to contribute to a new conceptual foundation for design fiction. Much attention is dedicated to theorising how design fictions relate to our so-called actual world. This work can be seen as an attempt at securing the seriousness and legitimacy of design fiction as an approach to design research. The theory of possible worlds has proven promising in this regard. We argue, however, that a detailed understanding of design fiction is still lacking. In design fiction literature, authors often engage in critiquing techno-centric approaches while paying less attention to how design fiction has a potential to foster social change in situated actual affairs. We argue that analysis should start from the messy unfolding of the design event itself rather than from big ontological discussions of the boundaries between fiction and reality. To grasp the messiness of design fiction, we offer an interdisciplinary framework, bridging knowledge domains such as literally theory and design anthropology.

Methods for Researching Automated Futures

“…For social scientists one of the most established ways in which to engage with this question has been to connect with design, including working with methods such as speculative design (Di Salvo, 2016), the creation of design fictions (Markussen et al, 2020), and the development of design futures workshops (Akama et al, 2018). As designer Carl Di Salvo puts it, speculative interventions give us the chance to "experiment with possible futures, to play out, materially and experientially, what might be, to suggest conditions we might chose to work towards, as well as factors we might have to contend with" (2016: 150-1).…”