Starting from the question "what if?" as the point of departure for design. Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby developed Speculative Design as an attempt to question design understood as problem-solving.
This mode of inquiry appears, at first glance, close to social vision design. Yet the two are distinct. Making that distinction explicit sharpens the contours of social vision design.
What Is Happening
The Genealogy of Critical Design
Speculative Design has its origins in "critical design." This was an approach developed by Dunne and Raby at the Royal College of Art during the 1990s, positioned as a counterpoint to "affirmative design."
Affirmative design accepts the premises of the existing socioeconomic system and solves problems within it. It takes markets, technology, and consumer society as givens, and produces things that are "easy to use" or "beautiful" within those constraints. Critical design places those premises in brackets and asks: "Is this even the right way to frame the question?"
In their 2013 book Speculative Everything, Dunne & Raby systematized this position as "Speculative Design." Through prototypes, installations, and narratives that present future possibilities, the practice shows worlds that "could have been otherwise" — worlds that might have been different.
The Characteristics of Speculative Design
The key opposition that Dunne & Raby articulate is: "real vs. possible," "problem-solving vs. problem-posing," and "for industry vs. for critique."
Works of Speculative Design are not intended to be implemented. They materialize fictional scenarios — "pets in a world where genetic modification has become routine," "a market for buying and selling quantified emotions" — and cast questions at their audience.
In this respect, Speculative Design stands in the middle ground between art and design practice. It values questions over conclusions, and discovery over resolution.
Carl DiSalvo and Adversarial Design
Carl DiSalvo connected critical design to a more explicitly political context in his 2012 Adversarial Design. "Adversarial design" refers to design that makes deliberate objections to the existing distribution of power and the prevailing value system.
DiSalvo brought agonism — the logic of Chantal Mouffe's "agonistic democracy" — into design. The shift entails making the clarification of conflict and the staging of debate the design goal, rather than building consensus.
Background and Context
Distance from Social Problems
Where Speculative Design is most powerful is in "opening questions." It redefines problems and unsettles current framings. That function is close to a thought experiment.
Yet critics point to the problem of "privileged thought experiments." Most Speculative Design is based in art schools and design institutes in Europe and North America, with galleries and academic conferences as its primary venues. The people who are subjects of the social problems being critiqued are not necessarily present in those spaces of critical practice.
The critique from the standpoint of Design Justice is sharp: "Whose questioning is this?" "Who participates in the design process?" Speculative Design has difficulty answering these questions.
The Politics of "the Future"
There is also a problem with the methodology of "future scenarios" that Speculative Design favors. When imagining "society in 2050," whose future is the default?
To what extent do Speculative Design projects seriously incorporate the possibility that economic inequality, climate change, racial discrimination, and gender inequality will persist through 2050? The tendency to depict "technologically sophisticated futures" may be another variant of technological optimism.
Reading the Structure
Comparison Between Speculative Design and Social Vision Design
| Dimension | Speculative Design | Social Vision Design |
|---|---|---|
| Primary purpose | Posing questions, thought experiments | Designing and practicing solutions to problems |
| Outputs | Prototypes, narratives, installations | Processes, institutions, facilitated consensus |
| Primary venue | Galleries, academic conferences | Communities, local governments, NPOs |
| Relationship to those affected | Typically positioned as audience | Engaged as co-designers |
| Evaluation criteria | Sharpness of questions, provocation of debate | Change in the situation of those affected |
| Political character | Critique, dissent | Direct intervention in power structures |
Where Is the Boundary?
The two design practices are not in opposition. They share common ground.
In the function of "opening questions," Speculative Design is in the lead. When debate about social problems has become deadlocked, a speculative approach can reveal alternative possibilities and thereby expand the frame of debate. In that sense it is a useful complementary method for social vision design.
Yet social vision design has a longer reach — it extends to "what do we do after opening the question?" Opening a question alone does not change the situation of those who are directly affected. Changing the frame alone does not move power. When critique is connected to practice, Speculative Design functions as one component of social vision design.
The boundary lies in "the relationship to those affected." If Speculative Design is a practice of "thinking about," social vision design is a practice of "thinking and acting with." That difference does not derive from the resolution of the questions asked, but from the ethical question of who is present in the design process.
Reception in Japan
In Japan, "Speculative Design" has been primarily received in the context of design education. Some programs at Tama Art University (多摩美術大学), Musashino Art University (武蔵野美術大学), and Tokyo University of the Arts (東京藝術大学) have adopted this approach, using it to cultivate students' critical thinking.
In terms of social implementation, however, Speculative Design has barely functioned. For Japanese government bodies and corporations, a design practice that "only poses questions" is difficult to adopt. Design that cannot answer "so, what do we do?" does not connect to social systems.
This reality is also a question for social vision design. Implementability and the openness of radical questioning are always in tension. Which balance to strike depends on context and the situation of those directly affected.
→ Related: What Social Design Is Not / Genealogy of Participatory Design / Six-Field Integration Hypothesis
