Design fiction is a design practice aiming at exploring and criticising possible futures by creating speculative, and often provocative, scenarios narrated through designed artifacts. It is a way to facilitate and foster debates, as explained by futurist Scott Smith: "... design fiction as a communication and social object creates interactions and dialogues around futures that were missing before. It helps make it real enough for people that you can have a meaningful conversation with".
By inspiring new imaginaries about the future, Design Fiction moves forward innovation perspectives, as conveyed by author Bruce Sterling's own definition: "Design Fiction is the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change".
Reflecting the diversity of media used to create design fictions and the breadth of concepts that are prototyped in the associated fictional worlds, researchers Joseph Lindley and Paul Coulton propose that design fiction be defined as: "(1) something that creates a story world, (2) has something being prototyped within that story world, (3) does so in order to create a discursive space", where 'something' may mean 'anything'. Examples of the media used to create design fiction storyworlds include physical prototypes, prototypes of user manuals, digital applications, videos, short stories, comics, fictional crowdfunding videos, fictional documentaries, catalogues or newspapers and pastiches of academic papers and abstracts.
History
Design fiction is part of the speculative design discipline, itself a relative of critical design. Although the term design fiction was coined by Bruce Sterling in 2005, where he says it is similar to science fiction but "makes more sense on the page", it was Julian Bleecker's 2009 essay that firmly established the idea. Bleecker brought together Sterling's original idea and combined it with David A. Kirby's notion of the diegetic prototype and a paper written by influential researchers Paul Dourish and Genevieve Bell which argued reading science fiction alongside Ubiquitous Computing research would shed further light on both areas. Since Bleecker's essay was published design fiction has become increasingly popular as demonstrated by the adoption of design fiction in a wide variety of academic research.
Characteristics
Although design fiction shows a lot of overlaps with other Discursive Design practices such as critical design, Adversarial Design, Interrogative Design, Design for Debate, reflective design, and contestational design, it is possible to draw some of its special features.
Design fiction draws its inspiration from weak signals of our everyday lives, such as innovations in new technologies or new cultural trends, and use extrapolation to build disruptive visions of society. Through challenging the status quo, this practice aims at making ourselves question our current uses, norms, ethics or values, whether leading innovation, or consuming it at the other end of the line.
Design fictions tend to stand aside from manichaean utopian/dystopian depictions, and rather dig into more ambiguous grey areas of the explored subjects. As explained by Fabien Girardin, co-founder of The Near Future Laboratory: "Design Fiction doesn't so much 'predict' the future. It is a way to consider the future differently; a way to tell stories about alternatives and unexpected trajectories; a way to discuss a different kind of future than the typical bifurcation into utopian and dystopian".
Design fictions focus on the everyday, exploring and questioning interactions between people or HCI, habits, social behaviors, casual failures or rituals. Fabien Girardin on this point: "To contrast with other similar design approaches, we think Design Fiction is a bit different from critical design, which is a bit more abstract and theoretical compared to our own interest in design happening outside of galleries or museums. Design Fiction is about exploring a future mundane".
Another approach to design fiction is through live action role-playing games (larps). Malthe Stavning Erslev argues that the research larp Civilisation's Waiting Room, which explores a future society run by an AI, is a form of design fiction using what he calls a mimetic method that is "making the technology appear" in "deeply embodied, ephemeral encounters of enactment".
In recent pop culture, design fiction might be bonded to the Black Mirror anticipation series, each episode portraying a disturbing alternative present or near future where characters have to deal with the unexpected consequences of emerging technologies.