Speculative Design in HCI: From Corporate Imaginations to Critical Orientations

Abstract

In this chapter we analyze the rhetorical work of speculative design methods to advance third wave agendas in HCI. We contrast the history of speculative design that is often cited in HCI papers from the mid 2000s onward that frames speculative design as a critical methodological intervention in HCI, linked to radical art practice and critical theory, with the history of how speculative design was introduced to HCI publications through corporate design research initiatives from the RED group at Xerox PARC. Our argument is that third wave, critically oriented, speculative design "works" in HCI because it is highly compatible with other forms of conventional corporate speculation (e.g. concept videos and scenario planning). This reading of speculative design re-centers the "criticality" from the method itself to its ability to advance agendas that challenge dominant practices in technology design. We will look at how practitioners trade on the rhetorical ambiguity of future oriented design practices to introduce these ideas in contexts where they may not otherwise have much purchase. Our chapter concludes with a call for critically oriented practitioners in this space to share their experiences navigating speculative design ambiguity and to document the disciplinary history of the method's development.

Infrastructural Speculations: Tactics for Designing and Interrogating Lifeworlds

“…Critically oriented speculative practices use the process of design to surface values, critique social issues, and present alternative visions of the future by creating conceptual proposals and artifacts [48]. These include practices such as critical design [2,26,73], speculative design [1,27,35,104], adversarial design [22], and design fiction [5,7,52,56]. Each of these research approaches creates objects, representations, or depictions of possible or alternate futures, often removed from immediate practical concerns of implementation and commercial viability [104].…”

“…These include practices such as critical design [2,26,73], speculative design [1,27,35,104], adversarial design [22], and design fiction [5,7,52,56]. Each of these research approaches creates objects, representations, or depictions of possible or alternate futures, often removed from immediate practical concerns of implementation and commercial viability [104]. Instead they utilize what Dunne terms "para-functionality" [25], or the use of normative design conventions to give the appearance of a product, while also seeming out of place, unusual, or unfamiliarallowing for "what was invisible and lost in the familiarity of the everyday" to be "made visible" [59].…”

Bringing Design to the Privacy Table

“…Speculative and critical design employs design to explore and to critique, speculate, and present critical alternatives [28,93,103,120]. This is generally done by design authorities, for design authorities to reflect on or discuss social issues, but recent work has experimented using speculative and critical design for stakeholders [31].…”

“…The complicated forward-looking work that corporate privacy practitioners do could benefit from approaches that help not only see around corners but imagine new or alternative corners to see around. While speculative and critical design are sometimes seen as impractical, these practices may resonate with existing corporate speculative practices such as scenario planning or visioning videos [120].…”

Understanding the Boundaries between Policymaking and HCI

“…Nonetheless, there does not seems to be a common tradition of bringing the different types of work together as a 'multiple horizon' study as a part of developing a narrative that informs decision-making. Design-oriented speculative approaches -which have growing presence in HCI research in recent years [82] -on the other hand, have been experimented with by several of our participants. For example, P7 (TT) told us about a project on ageing, in which speculative approaches were adopted to trigger new ways of thinking and to discuss scenarios of the future, leveraging the creative expertise from design:…”