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Evolutionary history, writes Peirce, teaches us that the future influences the present: it conditions it, puts it into question, and places it in a state of planning. To be in evolution, as well as to feel part of a history, means to project oneself, to form an idea, a prefiguration, of what we could be in a future state, no matter how distant. The logical form of every design and the inventive process is , in particular projective abduction, which proposes as the object of discovery an object or event that has yet to be realized. In this sense, abduction can also be defined as the . Is it possible to outline an abductive design method? My contribution aims to discuss how abduction, and with it, everything that contributes to the formation of an , can be considered as the ineliminable step of every design process. This is the case of Speculative Design, which has had the credit of introducing the notion of possibility into design thinking.

In an era marked by overlapping crises, including climate change, democratic erosion, digital disruption, and socioeconomic inequality, municipalities increasingly serve as frontline actors in shaping adaptive and inclusive urban futures. This article examines how Futures Bazaar, a participatory futuring method, can develop future literacy and resilience within municipal governance. Drawing on survey data from a multi‐case study involving 13 Swedish municipalities, based primarily on responses from organisers coordinating the events across municipalities, and complemented by an in‐depth survey of participants from one workshop, this study analyses how Futures Bazaar workshops engage civil servants, policymakers, and citizens in co‐creating tangible future scenarios to address locally defined societal challenges. Framed within theories of participatory design, co‐creation, and strategic foresight, the article explores how futures are imagined and negotiated in municipal contexts, and how this reshapes the agency of local actors in future‐making. The findings show that Futures Bazaar functions as a temporary yet transformative space for challenging institutional path dependencies and stimulating systemic thinking. Through playfulness, prototyping, and dialogue, the method helped unlock participants’ imagination, enabling them to move beyond existing constraints. However, the study also identifies critical frictions, such as organisational inertia, limited policy integration, and the exclusion of marginalised voices that constrain the method’s long‐term impact. By investigating how municipalities can navigate challenges through design‐led speculative engagement, this study contributes to a broader understanding of urban planning as both a technical, imaginative, and democratic practice. It argues that participatory futuring tools like the Futures Bazaar can help realign urban governance toward more anticipatory, inclusive, and situated future‐making practices, provided they are supported by institutional commitment and structural anchoring.

This paper reviews algorithmic or artificial intelligence (AI) bias in education technology, especially through the lenses of speculative fiction, speculative and liberatory design. It discusses the causes of the bias and reviews literature on various ways that algorithmic/AI bias manifests in education and in communities that are underrepresented in EdTech software development. While other recent work has responded to mainstream or private sector technology development, this review looks elsewhere where practitioners, artists, and activists engage underrepresented communities in brainstorming processes to identify and solve tough challenges. Their creative work includes films, toolkits, applications, prototypes and other physical artifacts, and other future-facing ideas that can provide guideposts for private sector development. Acknowledging the gaps in what has been studied, this paper proposes a different approach that includes speculative and liberatory design thinking, which can help developers better understand the educational and personal contexts of underrepresented groups. Early efforts to advocate for fairness and equity in AI and EdTech by groups such as the Algorithmic Justice League, the EdTech Equity Project, and EdSAFE AI Alliance is also explored.

Çeyizlab is a research project tackling with çeyiz (trousseau)- a traditional gift-giving to the bride in Turkey. Due to the societal changes, çeyiz is under a transformation. By looking at the past and speculating about the future of çeyiz, our research question emerged: Can we envision scenarios that would turn the existing transformation of this tradition into preferable futures? We answered this question by conducting online focus-groups, auto-ethnography sessions and expert interviews. Based on our analysis, the idea of a Manifesto has emerged. This manifesto was embroidered on a fabric reflecting the stories, memories and desires of the women with whom we interviewed. To spread out the message of the manifesto, we decided to make a short film that gives rise to discussions around the issues entangled within çeyiz.

Speculative design is widely used in research contexts across multiple disciplines, emphasising problem-finding over problem-solving, and involves methods for exploring possibilities that challenge ingrained assumptions. This systematic literature review analyses speculative design methods used in 52 studies within disciplines such as human–computer interaction, fashion, urban planning, and healthcare, among other fields. It presents results about the common phases and methods of speculative design that are utilised in these studies. It identifies and characterises four core phases that appear to be common within speculative design processes, namely select, explore, transform, and provoke. It shares examples of how these phases are used to achieve the goals of speculative design. The discussion section considers the process of speculative design, leading to the synthesis of a framework that visually and conceptually organises these findings to facilitate their comprehension and application. This paper contributes to the understanding of speculative design by providing a clear process that addresses gaps in its theoretical and methodological foundations.

Speculative design is an emerging form of critical material engagement with possible futures. Designers working speculatively call attention to current and future sociotechnical dilemmas, and aim to provoke debate about the moral, political and ethical implications of sociotechnical innovation. Despite the popularity of speculative design and its presence in a variety of domains, there are very few resources that address it as a pedagogical practice. We attempt to fill this gap by presenting the structure, reasoning and outcomes of a graduate course on speculative design we taught during the academic year 2022-3. The article describes class activities and outcomes, discusses the benefits and challenges of teaching speculative design (especially in a design-engineering program), and concludes by identifying the most considerable obstacles awaiting those who want to integrate speculative design into the curriculum. As such, the article provides a useful resource for those interested in understanding the benefits of speculative design as a critical pedagogical practice, and for those who wish to bring that understanding into the classroom.

In an era where technology increasingly blurs the boundaries between humans and machines, artifacts have become crucial mediums for critically examining the technological, social, and ethical dimensions of Human–Computer Interaction (HCI). This study explores artifacts as a key yet underutilized medium for speculation in the evolving field of HCI from a systemic perspective. While artifacts increasingly enable HCI to move beyond optimizing user experiences towards critically and collaboratively envisioning futures, perspectives comprehensively examining artifacts across the speculative design process and their impacts remain limited. Through a literature review of 53 speculative artifacts within the scope of HCI, this research elucidates the roles of artifacts across intention, making, and impact. Four categories of speculative artifacts emerged—Reflective, Exploratory, Interventional, and Heuristic—demonstrating how artifacts employ material, ambiguous, functional, and provocative forms to shape experiences, behaviors, and social norms. This study highlights the need for HCI to increasingly recognize the capacity of artifacts to support critical, sustained, participatory speculation by providing tangible representations of alternative futures. Speculative artifacts thus serve as powerful mediums to engage in societal discourse around the ethics and values of emerging technologies and to envision and enact responsible innovation. The materialization of alternative futures through artifacts allows researchers to reimagine socio-technological relationships, pushing design into inclusive, controversial spaces where diverse stakeholders can collaboratively shape desired and undesired futures.

What does more-than-human mean? How can we, as humans, understand that our ecology is only one of the many that do exist within the world? Furthermore, in which way should we step aside to let all ecological actors exercise their agency? And, more specifically, what should be the role of design and designers in tackling complex issues and in contributing to a major shift in thoughts? These questions fostered a reflection on the relation between possible futures and the design practice itself and set the basis for the creation of a provotype. A provotype (from “provocation” and “prototype”) is a conceptual product or an artifact whose objective is to foster reflections and provoke discussions mainly concerning social and environmental sustainability, innovations, and technologies, leaving gaps to be filled with the audience imagination.The research reported in this contribution deals with issues and questions that fall under the umbrella of the topic of alternative biopolitics in future scenarios: how can we co-design with more-than-human actors? In which way can symbiosis between different entities be achieved? What is the meaning of interspecies justice, and which should be the steps to follow to fulfill it? And, finally, maybe the most significant question to focus on: how can communication between different entities be fostered? The designed provotype consists of a fictional event (“The first Multispecies Symposium”) which takes place in 2100, further helped the researchers in opening new reflections that made it possible to experiment with participatory design and to finalize a tool that can be used to share and expand reflections about futures without hierarchies, not human-centered, sustainable progress and hope, participative futures.

Well-documented scientific evidence indicates that mobile health (mHealth) apps can improve the quality of life, relieve symptoms, and restore health for patients. In addition to improving patients’ health outcomes, mHealth apps reduce health care use and the cost burdens associated with disease management. Currently, patients and health care providers have a wide variety of choices among commercially available mHealth apps. However, due to the high resource costs and low user adoption of mHealth apps, the cost-benefit relationship remains controversial. When compared to traditional expert-driven approaches, applying human-centered design (HCD) may result in more useable, acceptable, and effective mHealth apps. In this paper, we summarize current HCD practices in mHealth development studies and make recommendations to improve the sustainability of mHealth. These recommendations include consideration of factors regarding culture norms, iterative evaluations on HCD practice, use of novelty in mHealth app, and consideration of privacy and reliability across the entire HCD process. Additionally, we suggest a sociotechnical lens toward HCD practices to promote the sustainability of mHealth apps. Future research should consider standardizing the HCD practice to help mHealth researchers and developers avoid barriers associated with inadequate HCD practices.

The role and embodiment of the designer/artist in making publics is significant. This special issue draws attention to reflexive practices in Art & Design, and questions how these practices are embedded in the formations and operations of publics, grounded in six cases of participatory design conducted in the United States, India, Turkey, England, Denmark, and Belgium. From these design practices, typologies of participation are formulated that describe the role of the designer. These typologies describe different and sometimes conflicting epistemologies—providing designers with a vocabulary to communicate a diversity of participatory settings and supporting reflexive practices.