What is design fiction? And how can you use it? | Clearleft

A good piece of speculative fiction can make something new and novel feel almost inevitable.

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It would appear that science fiction movies have the amazing ability to imagine future products, free of the typical constraints, then inspire others to work out the details. If only there was some way real product companies could harness that power?

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we often mock up simpler effects using a combination of video, photography and animation in Keynote. It’s amazing how a few simple tricks like this can breathe life into an otherwise flat and lifeless prototype!

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The team at Lowe’s innovation lab in the US made liberal use of comic book techniques in order to both explore and communicate the vision for its Holoroom concept. It went as far as hiring science fiction authors to help create realistic narratives.

The Airbnb team did a similar thing when it hired Pixar artists to help visualise the future of its customer experience.

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At the final dConstruct, Nick Foster explained how he broke design down into three categories; now, next, and future. You could argue that any piece of design work that falls outside of ‘now or next’ could be considered a work of design fiction.

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On a smaller scale, design fiction could be used to sharpen your skills at an internal hack-event, or to demonstrate design thinking as part of a possible recruitment task. At Clearleft I’ve used Matt Jones’ concept of Mujicomp to sharpen interns’ design skills.

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I believe design fiction is becoming an increasingly useful way to explore and communicate possible design futures. In order to create a better future, designers should be adding techniques for designing fiction to their toolbox today.

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Posted on January 20, 2020