Can Diverse Futuring Strategies Inform an Ecology-Centred Speculative Design Practice?

Abstract

{BIO}DIVERSE FUTURES is a doctoral research project that aims to explore the potential of non-normative and ecological futuring strategies as a way to create speculative design tools and techniques that are diverse, ecology-centred (rather than human-centred), and impactful. The hope is that such strategies can form part of a more sustainable design practice, and contribute to positive social change, and biodiversity and community activism. This research project is situated in the context of the catastrophic destruction of global biodiversity, driven by a normative human-centred view of the future. It is clear that action must be taken to argue for—and to achieve!—alternative futures to this. A promising design approach to this form of biodiversity activism could be found in speculative design practices that aim to materialise futures outside of the norm. However, speculative design has been criticised for lacking impact, and not being practiced in a sufficiently diverse way to produce truly transformative outcomes. This paper proposes a path towards a more diverse, ecology-centred speculative design practice by learning from existing community strategies for uncertain futures. This approach is rooted in the critical theories of ecosophy, queer ecology, queer futures, and in works of speculative fiction. The research has four phases: to collect and characterise these strategies, to develop and validate new speculative design tools and techniques, to apply these in a community speculative design project to take action against biodiversity loss, and evaluate their effectiveness within design practice and other fields.