Why Design Fiction is Evolutionary Advantage

It gets asked often. Probably one way or another in every call I find myself on.

I’ll put it simply and high-mindedly. Then I’ll ground the Why? in the everyday familiar.

Design Fiction is Imagination made Tangible and Familiar.

It provides the ground upon which Imagination can be both expansive, and pragmatic.

Design Fiction makes possibility feel palpable, tangible, familiar, concrete^*, and grounded. Imagination can unlocks the Imagination that lies within your organization, your team, yourself.

And sensing possibility, feeling into what could be, and the ‘not yet true’ are the seeds of the mythopoesis that builds entire worlds.

And Unlocking Imagination is Advantage.

Imagination is the Engine of Innovation, Change, and Creation.

So what does this have to do with Design Fiction?

I didn’t know until after The Manual of Design Fiction was out in the world that the undergirding principle was that Design Fiction helps us see into grounded futures, and that much futures work has always been either abstract or quite high level.

If you’re trying to make sense of what could be in order to shape your strategy and clarify your decision making, an abstraction of a possible future ends up unmoored from the structure required for decision making.

Design Fiction grounds the abstract future and situates it in the particular.

What does this mean, “in the particular”?

That is the grounding of a possible future into relatable, concrete artifacts from that future.

Instead of asking oneself, “What is an AI future?”, we start by grounding the proposition. We might ask ourselves, “What is it to wake up in a future in which AI isn’t a confusing sea of conflict, confusion, and fear?”

To do a thorough job of sense-making of that which at the moment makes no sense, we must approach this non-sense by assuming, when it is now integrated into the world, it can only integrate if it has come to a point where it does now in point of fact make sense.

That is, we assume the possibility has gone from ‘not *yet true’ to a matter-of-fact; possibility has gone from nonsense to that which makes sense, and is quite sensible to the point of familiar or even nothing to be of any concern, any more than we concern ourselves with any of life’s mundane features, like remotely controlling a television by yelling phrases at it. That is, until we do concern ourselves with such curious new interaction rituals in the moments they fail us, or themselves become confused.

Grounded futuring. That’s another way to think of Design Fiction.

Do you want to find out more about how Near Future Laboratory can help you Imagine Harder by working with you to ground your speculations into tangible, relatable artifacts? Contact us. We’re here 24/7.