Speculative design & UX
By: Natalia Sander
Tags: UX Design, Future, Speculative Design, Future Technology, Technology And Design

Speculative design for UX

UX Design is said to be a discipline which works on improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction with a product or service.

We create this amazing user interaction with products and services by gathering the requirements of current and potential users, designing alternatives, prototyping, and testing.

Cooler design alternatives

Being a very interdisciplinary field, we strongly rely on research and industry standards — which ironically are also created by huge corporations (e.g. Material Design). While standards may guide and help us during the design process and especially support us when research comes short, we need other tools and methods to help with idea generation if we want to create meaningful products for the future.

Design for the future

But why should I create products for the future, you might ask. I’m creating products which will be used today. Let me give you an example of that.

Let’s imagine you got approved for a new project this month, for a big and complex app or platform. Your MVP will launch at the beginning of 2020, the full version will be done by 2021. The time most users will start using your app or platform will be by 2022. Three years from now. But most strategic decisions have to happen now, in 2019, and still be valid by the time the service is fully available.

We have to face strategic decisions for 2022 already today via Liechtenecker.

So how can you ensure it will still be meeting the needs of your users in 2022? How will their life look like by that time? Do you at least know how your life will look like then?

Well, you don’t and will maybe never know for sure. But methods of Speculative Design might help you to at least think about the possibilities. UX designers are user-centered — so let’s be focused not only on current users but also on the users of 2022 as well.

Apple & Speculative Design

The example most people use when talking about the connection point of Speculative Design and UX is the launch of the iPhone 2007.

Until then the world was familiar with computers, mobile phones, and some chosen companies were working on creating tablet computers (so actually the iPad was developed before the iPhone). Steve Jobs then consciously decided to launch the iPhone first as it could „easily fit into the pocket“. How is that Speculative Design?

The world has never seen anything like it before

Apple moved away from current constraints of „phones look like the look“

Apple imagined the future while re-thinking the role of technology in everyday life

And shifted the entire mobile phone market

By that changing our whole life in the last 12 years

This is how other phones looked like in 2007. To imagine the first iPhone was definitely a big innovation via Genius App

So every UX designer who wants to be great, to make a difference and create something extraordinary, needs to think beyond our tech world of today. If we want to use design to change the status quo then Speculative Design is a method you need to involve in your UX tool kit.

Traditional vs. speculative design

There are some different approaches in the traditional design opposed to speculative design. While the traditional design is solving problems (well or find current usability issues), Speculative Design aims at finding problems which might occur in the close future.

Consequently, the traditional design provides answers and makes us buy, while speculative design asks questions and makes us think. The traditional design works in the service of the industry by creating an optimal user experience. Speculative design, on the other hand, works in the services of society by supporting the creation of various future scenarios and encouraging us to discuss how we want our lives to look like in 3, 5 or 10 years.

Does it work in the daily business?

The answer is yes, it does. Just as design thinking and design sprints, methods of speculative design can work wonder if you know when to use them. Here are some scenarios we’ve been using it for. Speculative design is great for:

Working on the company vision for the next years

To share the company vision to inspire employees, clients, society

To offer different future visions and open up a discussion with the team, clients and other stakeholders

To make sure to be innovative in the next years as well

To start or continue digital transformation by asking: how will the digitalization of my product/service influence the employees, the clients and society?

To see how a new product will change humanity

To imagine the possibilities of your product development in the future

Speculative UX Design

There is a lot of insecurity when creating digital products which should be useful not only today but also tomorrow. No method in the world (so far) is able to give us a 100% guaranty for the future. But we at Liechtenecker love asking critical questions because they help us shape our lives the way we want. And especially UX designers should use their skills to inspire and innovate companies and businesses.

I’d be happy to hear about your experiences with speculative UX design if you had any — and about your opinion on that topic.