Investigating the capabilities of design fiction

Design fiction toolkits, futures cards, scenario games, future newspapers… These tools are now everywhere in design schools, innovation labs and organizations. But what really makes a design fiction tool powerful? Where does it fall short? And how do we keep it from becoming just another “serious game” disconnected from real political, social or organizational stakes?

This event closes a two-day design fiction workshop with students from the Innovation by Design master’s program at ENSCI Les Ateliers, where they have been turning futures into concrete tools for discussion, critique and decision-making. The Speculative Futures Paris chapter invites Max Mollon and Phil Balagtas to critically engage with three student-designed tools and to debate recent evolutions in the design fiction field:

• Which formats spark real debate rather than just a “wow effect”?
• How can tools engage both imagination and decision-making?
• How do we balance immersion, simulation, controversy and responsibility?

Max and Phil will first react live to the students’ tools, sharing their criteria and critical feedback. A round table will then open up broader questions: how design fiction has evolved in organizations, culture and public policy; what role tools (kits, games, workshop formats, protocols) play in their practice; and what impacts these approaches have on audiences, decisions and organizations.

A Q&A and open discussion will close the evening, connecting the two-day workshop experiments with wider design fiction practices in the field.

Founded in 1982, the École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle (ENSCI-Les Ateliers) is the only public school in France dedicated to industrial design. It offers Master's degrees, a PhD in partnership with Paris-Saclay University, and three Specialised Master's degrees. Inspired by the Bauhaus, the school adopts innovative teaching methods and collaborates with major academic institutions, under the supervision of the Ministries of Culture and Industry.

Speculative Futures Paris is an open initiative, a space for reflection, sharing and networking for anyone interested in the future and how it can be used to support current changes. Designers, artists, researchers, futurists, entrepreneurs, students, curious minds... By bringing together different perspectives and practices through round tables, workshops and carte blanche events, Speculative Futures Paris aims to promote and democratise speculative design and foresight as tools for debating and transforming the present.

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