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.

Over the past decades, numerous concepts and prototypes for fostering emotional connections across distance (relatedness technologies) have been proposed. This has made it challenging for researchers and designers in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to maintain a comprehensive overview and effectively build on previous work. To address this, we conducted a systematic literature search (PRISMA) and collected 241 concepts and prototypes (2010-2024). We organized this corpus according to key aspects: (1) target population, (2) theoretical grounding, (3) design, (4) evaluation, and (5) ethics. Based on this, we developed the “COmpendium of RElatedness Technologies” (CORE), an open-access, searchable online database that provides researchers and practitioners with a reliable repository to inform future work. In addition, we present a systematic review of the corpus, revealing that despite its long tradition work on relatedness technologies remains characterized by limited theoretical grounding, lack of robust empirical evidence of effects, and insufficient attention to ethical considerations.

While realism is a common design goal for virtual reality (VR), VR also offers opportunities that are impossible in the real world (e.g., telekinesis). So far, there is no design support to exploit the potential of such “impossible” augmentations, especially for serious applications. We developed a card set and a workshop format, which features 15 opportunities to facilitate the ideation of augmentation-oriented VR. We piloted the method in five workshops with people in the early stages of developing a VR application (N=35). Participants found the cards easy to use and to inspire viable new concepts that differed from earlier ideas. Analysis of the concepts with interaction criticism identified two strategies: (1) augmentations that are only loosely related to the purpose of the application, simply to increase “fun”, and (2) augmentations that are closely related to the core purpose and thereby subtly facilitate its fulfillment. The latter has the greater potential.

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.

Soon, voice assistants might be able to engage in fully-fledged social conversations with people, rather than merely providing a voice-operated interface to functionality and data. So far, not much is known about designing such "social" voice assistants and the potential social experiences, which could and should emerge in everyday situations. In the present paper, we created a design fiction to explore a sophisticated social voice assistant in the context of the car. Based on models from psychology and psychotherapy, we designed the fictional "virtual passenger" Kiro. We created a website for Kiro (http://www.heykiro.com/), distributed it, and collected responses in various ways (e.g., comments). We further ran a market research-type focus group. In general, we found people to accept Kiro as a conversation partner but not as a replacement for human-human conversations. We suggest designing social voice assistants in a way to enable novel types of socially fulfilling, yet distinct human-machine conversations.