Speculative design and the future

Speculative design is a method of design in which you must look at the bigger picture into the future and design for that scenario. It is design without knowing anything about design. Not thinking about technologies or other factors. Typically in design, you are given a problem you must solve, but in speculative design you must broaden your field of view and tackle the biggest problems in society. First coined by Anthony Dunne, he says designers shouldn’t just address issues of today, but also take a look into the future and ask, "How can we address future challenges with design?”

An important part of design, and particularly speculative design, is thinking about what we don't want to see in design. It is easy to say that design in the future, just as everything, will be mainly technology focused, so designing with that in mind is easy. But you have to understand what you don't want to see in the future, and actively design to prevent this. I find that bad design is always the most beneficial when researching something. It is much easier to see and pin point, whereas goo design is often unnoticeable and taken for granted.

Another important part of speculative design, is to design for all possible outcomes in design. You can plan and plan but there is always something that cannot be predicted. There i a possibility that literally anything that can happen, and if you're the only one designing for that outcome, you are immediately n the forefront of design a soon as that outcome comes to fruition. The current pandemic is an excellent example of this. Millions of companies around the world had to close and were forced to work form home, this means that immediately, any companies that had no plan in place to help people work from home were unprepared. Those companies that designed for a situation like this are now at the forefront.