Speculative Design in HCI: A Methodological Investigation into Research Practice, Process, and Quality

Speculative design has become a prominent approach in Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) for exploring not-yet-existing technologies and their ethical and societal implications. Yet, despite its growing use, it remains a contested research approach, often criticized for lacking methodological rigor. Positioned between art and academia, it is more a research stance than a method. It brings together a range of heterogeneous approaches, including design fiction, critical design, material speculation, and speculative enactments. What unites these approaches is not a shared methodology, but a common orientation. They all use design to explore possible futures in order to reflect on, question, and potentially change present assumptions, values, and trajectories.
While prior work has clarified what speculative design is and introduced a variety of methods for its application, far less attention has been paid to foundational methodological questions. In particular, it remains unclear what defines “good” or successful speculative research and how speculative design and its diverse practices and methods can be effectively applied in research contexts. As a result, researchers face ongoing challenges in applying speculative design to the study of emerging technologies and in evaluating its outcomes, for instance within academic peer-review processes.
This dissertation responds to this situation by examining how speculative design can be effectively applied to explore the design, roles, and implications of emerging technologies. It does so using the example of otherware, that is, autonomous and interactive technologies experienced as socially present others (e.g., voice assistants, social robots). Across five interrelated studies, it investigates speculative design’s methodological potentials, challenges, and “quality” both through practice and the systematic analysis of speculative design knowledge in HCI.
A first set of three case studies investigates speculative design (particularly design fiction and speculative enactments) within academic HCI contexts. These studies examine how speculative approaches and methods can be applied to explore potentially meaningful futures with voice assistants and social robots. Across the cases, speculations were grounded in empirical and theoretical insights and materialized through tangible artefacts such as fictional product websites, documentaries, and flyers. These materializations enabled participants to imagine, inhabit, and reflect on possible technological futures in situated and experiential ways. Through participant engagement, the studies surfaced values, tensions, and assumptions that informed the design of otherware. Together, these studies revealed recurring methodological strategies for effective speculative inquiry (e.g., grounding speculation, materializing imaginaries) and a transferable three-part research process: (1) informing the design, (2) (co-)creating fictional worlds, and (3) empirically engaging with these worlds through debate and reflection.
A fourth case study extends this investigation by situating speculative design within a real-world organizational context through an 18-month collaboration with an automotive company on the future of self-driving cars. By examining how speculative design practice changes when applied beyond academic and expert settings, it shows how business objectives and organizational structures can steer speculative design toward product-driven innovation rather than critical exploration. This shift affected speculation’s capacity to generate new knowledge about the potentials, challenges, and long-term implications of envisioned products and services. Speculations that closely resembled existing products and services proved less effective in stimulating discussion and uncovering assumptions about their future role and challenges than more provocative speculations. This finding highlights the importance of quality criteria for maintaining the exploratory, critical, and epistemically productive character of speculative design, particularly in organizational contexts.
Building on these findings, the fifth study addresses the question of quality directly. Through a systematic scoping review of 63 theoretical and methodological publications on speculative design, design fiction, and critical design, it synthesizes the widely scattered characteristics scholars associate with “good” and successful speculations. This analysis results in a descriptive taxonomy that comprises nine quality criteria (e.g., critical, thought-provoking, participative), organized into three categories: speculative, discursive, and process. This taxonomy provides researchers, designers and practitioners with a shared vocabulary for planning, creating, and evaluating high-quality speculative designs.
Across its five studies, the thesis makes three connected methodological contributions: (1) it conceptualizes speculative design as a positive, participatory, and empirically informed approach to design research for studying emerging technologies; (2) it operationalizes this approach through a transferable three-part research process; and (3) it introduces a descriptive taxonomy for the quality of speculation that provides orientation within this process.
Together, these contributions offer recommendations and methodological guidance for researchers, designers, and practitioners in structuring and evaluating speculative design in HCI.