Design Ideation Through Speculative Fiction: Foundational Principles and Exploratory Study

Abstract

The objective of this work is to position speculative fiction as a broader framework to stimulate, facilitate, and study engineering design ideation. For this, we first present a comprehensive and detailed review of the literature on how fiction, especially science fiction, has played a role in design and decision-making. To further strengthen the need for speculative fiction for idea stimulation, we further prototype and study a prototype workflow that utilizes excerpts from speculative fiction books as textual stimuli for design ideation. Through a qualitative study of this workflow, we gain insights on the effect of textual stimuli from science fiction narratives on design concepts. Our study reveals that the texts either closely related to the problem or consisting of the terms from the design statement boost the idea generation process. We further discover that less directly related stimuli may encourage out-of-the-box and divergent thinking. Using the insights gained from our study, we pose critical questions to initiate speculative fiction-based design ideation as a new research direction in engineering design. Subsequently, we discuss current research directions and domains that will be necessary to take the technical, technological, and methodological steps needed for future research on design methodologies based on speculative-fictional inspiration. Finally, we present a practical case to demonstrate how an engineering design workflow could be operationalized by investigating a concrete example of the design of automotive user interfaces (automotive-UI) through the lens of speculative fiction.

How good is ChatGPT? An exploratory study on ChatGPT's performance in engineering design tasks and subjective decision-making

“…To answer these questions, we designed two experiments based on a previous study completed in 2021 (Xu et al 2021). Researchers have explored the potential of leveraging science fiction narratives to enhance designers' ideation processes (Sterling 2005;Bleecker 2009;Dunne and Raby 2013;Callaghan 2015;Kotecha et al 2021). However, to fully incorporate science fiction into design, we must deal with the time-consuming and labour-intensive task of collecting and verifying speculative technologies from science fiction narratives.…”

Using Science Fiction and Design Thinking in Workshops to Share Research Results With Low-Income, Marginalized Communities

“…Science fiction fosters creativity and imagination; it allows the audience to envision both the scientific present and future absent the shackles of feasibility (Kotecha et al, 2021). Love and Fox (2021) describe science fiction as engaging readers in “social dreaming,” in which they can imagine various scenarios of positive and negative societies and contemplate social change.…”

Spatial visualization for development of visual thinking and cognitive abilities among mechanical engineering students through tool design ideation

“…Anguera and Gazzaly 9 concluded that cognitive abilities can be enhanced through video games, which in-turn help in mastering multitasking, goal management and overcoming difficulty levels in performing any task. Apart from video games, the design ideation based on the works of speculative fiction 10 provides a platform for learning and improving the design skills through creativity.…”