Social Design Dreaming: Everyday Speculations for Social Change

Abstract

Racial justice activists tend to turn to science fiction to imagine better, freer worlds. Speculative futures in design are rarely fantasy-based. Design speculation relies more on unfamiliarity and exaggeration than fantasy to challenge assumptions and norms. This paper proposes that design, futuring, and utopian thinking can offer a new path to justice movements, and a new purpose for speculative design, to envision optimistic long-term possibilities based on realism. Designers, with their unique ability to ‘change existing situations into preferred ones,’ can build realistic and plausible visions of equitable, liberatory worlds. Such visions that amplify the missions of justice efforts can help enlist new supporters and motivate advocates through complex, disruptive change. This article describes eight workshops structured to explore the value of imagining radically hopeful visions co-created through critically conscious collaborative futures. In each workshop, designers acted as facilitators to help foster solution-finding with participants from various racial justice projects in both community and academic organisations. Workshops introduced participants to the joy and strength of thinking about long-term futures. Still, their visions often did not last beyond the workshop. Only in later workshops, when design prompts provided new formats for evoking participants’ futures, did their visions become tangible and long-lasting. The results show that designers’ creative skills can complement and give shape to the deep knowledge of justice advocates.