How to think about the future of food? Speculative design and design fiction applied to consumer research

Abstract

Speculating about the future has intrigued humans for thousands of years. What will bring the future is something that is in everybody’s mind at a certain moment, including consumer researchers. However, studying future scenarios is not an easy task and is certainly something that we cannot do with traditional consumer research methodologies. This review focuses on speculative design and specially in design fiction as two different approaches to study plausible futures of food in consumer research. By making a revision of the publications of speculative design and design fiction, we want to bring these methodologies closer to the consumer researcher in food, as almost all publications in this domain come from design disciplines. Our aim is to show, at an early stage, the potential benefits and limitations of these approaches, particularly in the field of consumer research of food.