Speculative design is a design practice that is concerned with future design proposals of a critical nature. The term "speculative design" was popularised by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby as a subsidiary of critical design. The aim is not to present commercially-driven design proposals but to design proposals that identify and debate crucial issues that might happen in the future. Speculative design is concerned with future consequences and implications of the relationship between science, technology, and humans. It problematizes this relation by proposing provocative future design scenarios where technology and design implications are accentuated. These provocative design proposals are meant to trigger the debate about future challenges. Speculative design proposals might seem subversive and irreverent in nature as they are meant to initiate discussions not to be market products.
Dunne and Raby, the researchers who coined the term speculative design, describe it as:
“an activity where conjecture is as good as knowledge, where futuristic and alternative scenarios convey ideas, and where the goal is to emphasize implications of “mindless” decisions for mankind.”
— Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby
Therefore, speculative design is used to challenge preconceptions, raise questions and to provoke debate. It focuses on the future and opens the door for designers to question “how things might be?"
James Auger claims Speculative design "combines informed, hypothetical extrapolations of an emerging technology’s development with a deep consideration of the cultural landscape into which it might be deployed, to speculate on future products, systems and services”.
Speculative designers develop alternative presents to ask the question of "why things are the way they are now?" so that they can project on a future scenario. James Auger explains that these alternative presents can always make radical interventions to the current practices and evolving technologies by applying different ideologies and practices. Speculative design emphasizes the “philosophical inquiry into technological application”; it tends to take the discussion on technology beyond the experts to a broad population of the audience. The resulting artifacts often appear subversive and irreverent in nature; they look different to the public, and this is the key behind triggering discussions and stimulating questions.
Speculative design can be distinguished from traditional design and affirmative design as the latter types are considered the conventional design that operates within the commercial borders where the aim of designing is profitability. However, speculative design does not aim to be profitable but can be considered an exploratory design genre. In particular, as a Research through Design (RtD) approach, at which knowledge can be gained through reflection on practice approach.
Anti-design and Italian radical design could be considered as ancestors of speculative design. However, the format of speculative design as we know it today is derived from the critical design practice. Both are connected and use similar approaches. Dunne and Raby described as a practice that “uses speculative design proposals to challenge narrow assumptions, preconceptions, and givens about the role products play in everyday life”.
Critical design is a form of design that uses design tools and process not to solve a problem but to rethink the borders and parameters of a problem from a critical point of view Dunne and Raby explained the term further in their book ‘Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects,’ as “Instead of thinking about appearance, user-friendliness or corporate identity, industrial designers could develop design proposals that challenge conventional values”.
The relationship between speculative design and critical design can be seen from Matt Malpass identification of the current contemporary design practices into three classifications; the first is associative design, the second is speculative design, and the third is critical design.
Speculative design is a form of critical design that is concerned with future proposals. It examines future scenarios to ask the question of “what if?”.
Some attempts of the Italian radical design can be considered as speculative design. For instance, Ettore Sottsass worked on “The planet as a festival” in 1973. Speculative design is inspired by the attitude and position of the , yet does not necessarily imitate its format and motivations.
In futurology, especially in Europe, the term foresight has become widely used to describe activities such as: