Reviewing the expansion in design futuring research: Emergent concepts around speculative design and design fiction

Abstract

Design Futuring (DF), situated at the intersection of design and futures studies, has recently emerged as a vibrant research area, involving approaches such as speculative design and design fiction. We provide a systematic literature review to map out the recent theoretical and methodological directions within DF, based on a total of 117 papers in English. We address four significant themes based on our analysis of the corpus: Theorizing DF, (Research) Methods for DF, Materialization and Participation in DF, and Emerging Socio-Technical Issues around DF. Despite the absence of a unified consensus on definitions and frameworks, our research highlights that the advancements in theoretical contributions to knowledge production have enhanced the credibility in DF research. Storytelling methodologies, particularly those that emphasize performance and interactive experiences, are evolving as a new methodological path in DF, enriched by socio-philosophical theories such as posthumanism and object-oriented ontology. This diversity of methods not only broadens the scope of DF but also facilitates collaborations with various design contexts such as service design and participatory design, alongside emerging research areas like more-than-human design and transition design. These insights open up new avenues in DF research and practice, disseminating the consideration of marginalized human and non-human agencies.