Speculative design as research method

Galloway, Anne; Caudwell, Catherine Barbara

doi:10.4324/9781315526379-8

Cited by 33 publications

(33 citation statements)

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“…Briefly, speculative methods have emerged over the past few decades as a broad approach to qualitative inquiry, technology design, and imaginative possibility in critical scholarship (Dunne & Raby, 2013;Harrington & Dillahunt, 2021;Toliver, 2021). As our methods may be unfamiliar to academic LA communities, we are eager to introduce and model this "critical methodological intervention" (Wong & Khovanskaya, 2018) as an approach that is both relevant to discussions of alternative technology futures (e.g., Galloway & Caudwell, 2018) and resonant with our stated commitment to abolition. As Lury and Wakeford (2012) summarize in the influential volume Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social, speculative methods "enable research to follow forked directions, to trace processes that are in disequilibrium or uncertain, to acknowledge and refract complex combinations of human and non-human agencies, supporting an investigation of what matters and how in ways that are open" (p. 4).…”

Section: Speculative Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As such, we believe there remains room for additional illustrative accounts of what LA may look like and feel like as learners seek to accomplish analytics-oriented goals on their own terms. In this respect, we turn to Galloway and Caudwell (2018) who have described the value of design fiction as one approach to envisioning "works of design that imagine, speculate on, and represent alternate visions of design and the worlds it inhabits" (p. 86). One compelling and germane example of design fiction can be found in the scholarship of Skirpan and Yeh (2017) who share fictive scenarios about computer vision technologies to explore potential risk scenarios and analyze discriminatory harms associated with cybersecurity.…”

Section: Speculative Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Learning Analytics and the Abolitionist Imagination

Swauger¹,

Kalir²

2023

Learning Analytics

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This article advances an abolitionist reframing of learning analytics (LA) that explores the benefits of productive disorientation, considers potential harms and care made possible by LA, and suggests the abolitionist imagination as an important educational practice. By applying abolitionist concepts to LA, we propose it may be feasible to open new critiques and social futures that build toward equity-oriented LA design and implementation. We introduce speculative methods to advance three vignettes imagining how LA could be weaponized against students or transformed into a justice-directed learning tool. Our speculative methods aim to destabilize where power in LA has been routinely located and contested, thereby opening new lines of inquiry about more equitable educational prospects. Our concluding discussion addresses how speculative design and fiction are complementary methods to the abolitionist imagination and can be pragmatic tools to help build a world with fairer, more equitable, and responsible LA technologies.

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Section: Speculative Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Speculative Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning Analytics and the Abolitionist Imagination

Swauger¹,

Kalir²

2023

Learning Analytics

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“…While there is much focus on generating debate, "Speculative projects typically appear as static images or artifacts on display, prioritizing the aesthetic vision rather than enabling a collaborative process of imagination" [15] In addition, the audience is often expected to imagine and narrate the world around the exhibited object, which is a demanding task. As pointed out by Malpass [28] and Galloway and Caudwell [14] there is often a need for additional contextual and narrative element, beyond the designed object.…”

Section: Participation and Speculation In And Through Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Un/Making in the Aftermath of Design

Lindström

Ståhl

2020

Proceedings of the 16th Participatory Design Conference 2020 - Participation(s) Otherwise - Volume 1

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This paper takes as its starting point the fact that we live in the aftermath of previous making and design. For participatory design to adequately answer to this aftermath, we suggest building on a combination of participatory and speculative design approaches in everyday life settings and exploring the practice of un/making matters. The paper draws on two cases where participants have been invited to engage with recent scientific findings and practices -one where they explore the practice of un/making plastic waste through composting, and one on un/making polluted soil through plants that can accumulate metals. By not primarily aiming at feeding into new iterations of a design process, there is an openness for speculating beyond the given systems, and to bring into question imaginaries of constant progress, which have been part of generating these lingering matters.

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“…Our design methods are drawn from speculative, critical and future-oriented approaches [7,26,34,50]. We use the 'Contestable AI by Design' framework [2] as a generative tool to design a concept for a contestable camera car system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contestable Camera Cars: A Speculative Design Exploration of Public AI That Is Open and Responsive to Dispute

Alfrink,

Keller,

Doorn

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Local governments increasingly use artificial intelligence (AI) for automated decision-making. Contestability, making systems responsive to dispute, is a way to ensure they respect human rights to autonomy and dignity. We investigate the design of public urban AI systems for contestability through the example of camera cars: human-driven vehicles equipped with image sensors. Applying a provisional framework for contestable AI, we use speculative design to create a concept video of a contestable camera car. Using this concept video, we then conduct semi-structured interviews with 17 civil servants who work with AI employed by a large northwestern European city. The resulting data is analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis to identify the main challenges facing the implementation of contestability in public AI. We describe how civic participation faces issues of representation, public AI systems should integrate with existing democratic practices, and cities must expand capacities for responsible AI development and operation. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in interaction design; • Applied computing → Computing in government.

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Speculative design as research method

Cited by 33 publications

References 0 publications

Learning Analytics and the Abolitionist Imagination

Learning Analytics and the Abolitionist Imagination

Un/Making in the Aftermath of Design

Contestable Camera Cars: A Speculative Design Exploration of Public AI That Is Open and Responsive to Dispute

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