Speculative writing : Enabling design thinking

Writing, with its unique capacity to describe the essential, yet elusive relationship between creation and context, may be the most important skill in design. Speculative writing, in particular, is emerging as a valuable means of eliciting creative, critical design thinking and writing, with significant and increasing numbers of speculative writing subjects recently developed for design-focused higher education degree programs. These courses employ a plethora of pedagogical approaches to creative writing practice, enabling students to engage in design thinking about future contexts, and create what are known as design fictions (Blythe, 2014; Dunne & Raby, 2013, p. 2) or design ‘futuring’ (Fry, 2009). The practice of speculative writing can be both creative and critical, and evolving forms – including creative nonfiction (Tansley & Maftei, 2015), critical speculation, and quasi-fiction – blend fact and fiction, research and speculation. The resulting works are research-informed, with the potential to be paradigm disrupting narratives (Inayatullah, 2008). In particular, speculative writing within design practice has been shown to enable critical thinking around sustainable consequences of design including ecological, social, and economic factors. The methodology thus epitomises Design and Technologies’ educational aim of imagining sustainable global futures (Stables & Keirl, 2015). This paper will illustrate the philosophy and usage of speculative writing, outline current literature and discuss a case study approach to speculative writing used in Design education. It will consider how these valuable narrative methodologies – recurrently used in both primary school curricula and tertiary Design courses – might be implemented by Design and Technology educators at secondary level, and pose the question: Could these practices, which blend creative and critical thinking, also be harnessed to the benefit of Design and Technology education?