1. Reframing the Future Beyond Hype
Design Fiction, such as a future newspaper, transforms abstract ideas into tangible scenarios. This newspaper reframes AI’s integration into daily life not as a utopian or dystopian extreme but as an ordinary reality.
- It reduces speculative hype and sensationalism.
- It provides a balanced vision of practical, societal, and ethical implications, offering a foundation for grounded discussions.

2. Strategic Scenario Planning
Design Fiction enables stakeholders to explore a range of plausible futures. Unlike traditional forecasting or market trend analysis, this approach:
- Highlights unintended consequences and second-order effects (e.g., social norms shaped by AI).
- Supports robust scenario planning by presenting concrete “what-if” contexts.

3. Engaging Stakeholders and Driving Consensus
Through immersive storytelling, the artifact sparks meaningful conversations, enabling stakeholders to: - Align on future aspirations and risks without jargon-heavy data.
- Foster creativity and divergent thinking in strategic planning sessions.

4. De-risking Strategic Decisions
Analytic minds value reducing uncertainty. A Design Fiction artifact offers a low-cost, high-impact method to: - Identify blind spots in current strategies by simulating lived experiences of future scenarios.
- Explore ethical and regulatory challenges that might arise in a heavily AI-mediated world.

5. Bridging Disciplines
The artifact acts as a mediating object across different organizational functions — engineering, marketing, legal, and leadership — helping each understand potential future impacts of AI in a unified way.

6. From Ambiguity to Actionable Insights
The richness of a Design Fiction artifact lies in its detail. For example, a newspaper as a container of culture, experiences, hopes, fears, dreams, art and materiality:
- Suggests societal norms, consumer behaviors, and legal landscapes that could emerge with AI adoption.
- Provides speculative headlines or product advertisements that can inspire innovation pipelines or policy discussions.

7. Prototyping Without Building
Much like a prototype for a product, the newspaper serves as a “prototype” for ideas, allowing:
- Early exploration of what products, services, or regulations might look like.
- Rapid iteration of future concepts without physical or software development costs.