In Human-Computer Interaction, speculative design is widely used to explore the opportunities and challenges of future technologies. However, the criteria that define a “good” speculation are scattered throughout the literature. This challenges the application and evaluation of speculative design especially in an academic context. Through a review of 63 publications on speculative design, design fiction, and critical design, we identified nine key qualities of speculations that can be grouped in three categories: speculative, discursive, and process. Speculative qualities (i.e., fictional, critical, socio-political) reflect the fundamental characteristics of speculative design. Discursive qualities (i.e., experienceable, thought-provoking) facilitate envisioning and debate. Process qualities (i.e., grounded, participative, reflected, playful) encourage an inclusive, responsible, scientifically based and creative approach to speculative design. We propose this as a descriptive taxonomy of qualities, which can serve as a starting point for the creation and evaluation of high-quality speculative designs in diverse contexts, including academic peer review.

The threatening environmental problems of our time challenge the notion that humans are separate from and dominant over nature. As a result, many studies in Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) address alternatives to human-centered design and explore post-anthropocentric approaches that decenter humans and consider nature in technology design. The question, however, is how to design post-anthropocentric technology that engages humans and nature. Based on the PRISMA-ScR guidelines, we conducted a scoping review and analyzed 53 papers, from which we extracted 114 post-anthropocentric artifacts that enable human–nature engagement. We identified seven design strategies, such as recognizing, exploring, and empowering that can guide the future design of post-anthropocentric artifacts. Most of the artifacts included support human agency, fewer support nature’s agency, or advocate for nature to achieve an equitable human–nature relation. We identified opportunities for the field, such as empowering nature and further exploring the implications of post-anthropocentric design for addressing environmental problems.

While speculative methods (e.g., design fiction) could help industry to reflect critically about future products and services, little is known about their potentials and limits when applied in a corporate setting. In this case, we worked with an automobile manufacturer to explore the near future of self-driving cars. For more than a year, we speculated using diverse methods, developed stories about a future with self-driving cars, and told them through 24 artifacts (e.g., city map, quick start guides). In this paper, we scrutinize the process, discuss what has worked and what not, which challenges we faced, and how corporate requirements shaped the emerging design fiction. We saw a trend toward affirmative rather than speculative design, driven by product-centricity and the need to justify process and outcome through concrete innovation. While speculation raised interesting questions about technological futures, it remained a challenge to transform them into concrete design implications.

In the design of social robots, the focus is often on the robot itself rather than on the intricacies of possible application scenarios. In this paper, we examine eight fictional documentaries about social robots, such as SEYNO, a robot that promotes respect between passengers in trains, or PATO, a robot to watch movies with. Overall, robots were conceptualized either (1) to substitute humans in relationships or (2) to mediate relationships (human-human-robot-interaction). While the former is basis of many current approaches to social robotics, the latter is less common, but particularly interesting. For instance, the mediation perspective fundamentally impacts the role a robot takes (e.g., role model, black sheep, ally, opponent, moralizer) and thus its potential function and form. From the substitution perspective, robots are expected to mimic human emotions; from the mediation perspective, robots can be positive precisely because they remain objective and are neither emotional nor empathic.

Employing anthropomorphism in physical appearance and behavior is the most widespread strategy for designing social robots. In the present paper, we argue that imitating humans impedes the full exploration of robots' social abilities. In fact, their very 'thingness' (e.g., sensors, rationality) is able to create 'superpowers' that go beyond human abilities, such as endless patience. To better identify these special abilities, we develop a performative method called 'Techno-Mimesis' and explore it in a series of workshops with robot designers. Specifically, we create 'prostheses' to allow designers to transform themselves into their future robot to experience use cases from the robot's perspective, e.g., 'seeing' with a distance sensor rather than with eyes. This imperfect imitation helps designers to experience being human and being robot at the same time, making differences apparent and facilitating the discovery of a number of potential physical, cognitive, and communicational robotic superpowers.

The uncanny valley effect denotes a dip in the positive relation between a robot's human likeness and likeability. This paper provides first evidence that this design-guiding effect is not limited to humanoids, but extends to zoomorphic robots. In a first online survey, a diverse group of 235 participants rated the animal likeness of 140 robots. Three predictors for high or low animal likeness emerged: surface properties, such as joint visibility; facial properties, such as presence of a pupil; animal-specific properties, such as presence of snout. In a second online survey, 187 participants rated the likeability of 53 robots of varying degrees of animal likeness drawn from the first study. The relation between animal likeness and likeability followed a U-shaped function and showed an uncanny valley effect: robots high and low in animal likeness were preferred over those mixing realistic and unrealistic features. Besides theoretical implications tentative guidelines for the design of zoomorphic robots are discussed.

Conventional hearing aids frame hearing impairment almost exclusively as a problem. In the present paper, we took an alternative approach by focusing on positive future possibilities of 'divergent hearing'. To this end, we developed a method to speculate simultaneously about not-yet-experienced positive meanings and not-yet-existing technology. First, we gathered already existing activities in which divergent hearing was experienced as an advantage rather than as a burden. These activities were then condensed into 'Prompts of Positive Possibilities' (PPP), such as 'Creating a shelter to feel safe in". In performative sessions, participants were given these PPPs and 'Open Probes' to enact novel everyday activities. This led to 26 possible meanings and according devices, such as "Being able to listen back into the past with a rewinder". The paper provides valuable insights into the interests and expectations of people with divergent hearing as well as a methodological contribution to a possibility-driven design.