Foundations

Speculative Design Basics

An introduction to understanding speculative design and creating organisational impact

42 Online Lessons / At your own pace

£250self-paced

★★★★★96% of students rate our courses 5 Stars

Go through the first 10 lessons. If it hasn't improved your understanding and potential for impact, email us for a full refund. Refund Policy

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Overview

Speculative Design is the design of future products and services to understand the impacts of emerging technology and social, cultural trends. In this course you learn about the basics of using Speculative Design within business and organisational contexts to create meaningful impact. You'll get up to speed on new thinking, methods, and techniques related to futures practice.

We focus on practical applications of the approach, and prepare you to apply what you have learned to your own practice or organizational settings. This course is perfect for researchers, strategists, designers, product leads, program managers, and business leaders.

You'll leave with a deep understanding of what speculative design is and how it can be applied in your work as well as a toolkit of frameworks and approaches. Speculative Design is fast becoming an essential and critical tool for today's business in our complex world.

Details

42 Online Lessons / At your own pace

Enroll Now

AnytimeVirtual

★★★★★

96% of students rate our courses 5 Stars

100% of our past participants would recommend this course to others. (Seriously, it's true!)

You will leave with

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A new approach to product and service development & innovation

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An empathetic approach to systems thinking

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Frameworks for connecting long term considerations and near term action

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Freshly ignited creativity and energy for change

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An approach to shaping organizational change, strategy and purpose

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Opportunities for networking around deep purpose with other alumni through forum access

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Lifetime Access to the material

What’s included

Seasonal cohort with peers from around the world
Live tutorials with the SOCD team
1:1 sessions with the founders (J. Paul Neeley + Gemma Jones)
1 year of Thinking Collection access included (£40 value)

Course Outline

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Basics _ You'll review the basics of Speculative Design, Intro Theory, Names, Amara's Law, Future Cones, etc. (7 Chapters)

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Process _ You'll learn the overall process of Speculative Design, how its similar to existing design processes, and understand new time horizons. You'll be able to see the whole process and how it aligns with your own practice and work. (4 Chapters)

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Tools & Methods _ You'll learn the details of the Speculative Design process and methods, from Signals, to Future Wheels, to Future Prototyping, to Backcasting, and more. You'll have everything you need to start doing the work. (14 Chapters)

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Creating Value _ You'll learn about how Speculative Design can create value in organizational settings, and how it relates to existing practices, like foresight & strategy, user research, product & service development, and leadership activities (4 Chapters)

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Case Studies _ You'll learn about a number of Speculative Design case studies, from future mobility, sleep, and climate change, across various industires and topics, and covering top practitioners like Superflux, Ted Hunt, Extrapolation Factory, Near Future Laboratory, Neeley Worldwide, & Tellart. This will give you a number of speculative design projects to refer to and examples to inspire your own work. (13 Chapters)

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Pep Talks _ You'll get a few personal perspectives from experience partitioners to encourage you on your journey. (2 Chapters)

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The Ethical Imperative _ You'll explore why we think speculative design is a critical practice, and the reasons why we believe speculative design should be normalized, and that everyone should be spending more time in the future. (4 Chapters)

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Additional Resources _ You'll also get a list of additional resources to further your study of speculative design beyond the course.

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Opportunitie‍

Course Format

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We've designed the course to be as concise and accessible as possible, rendering the material in primarily text and images, with some supporting video. Q&A with the instructor, and virtual office hours are also available to support and clarify any material. Forum access for conversations with other students and the instructor.‍

This course is for

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Designers, Strategists, Product Managers, or Researchers, or anyone interested in using speculative design in their work

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Leaders and managers looking to develop skills for thought leadership and product or service vision.‍

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Anyone interested in learning about the basics of speculative design

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Anyone interested in learning about the commercial applications of speculative design

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Anyone with experience in Design Thinking, Service Design, Systems Design, or Innovation practices.‍

Your Teacher

J. Paul Neeley - Speculative Designer & Researcher

J. Paul has 14 years of experience working with Speculative Design and has focused his practice on its use and impact in industry, organizational, goverment, and commercial settings. He has worked with companies like Google X, Microsoft, Honda, Target, and many others on speculative design explorations. For the past 6 years J. Paul has been evagelizing the "Normalization" of speculative design, that everyone should be able to understand the basics and see opportunities to use future practice to create value, and that we have an ethical responsibility to spend more time in the future. J. Paul is a regular speaker on the subject at conferences, and lectures on Speculative Design at the Royal College of Art (World's #1 Art & Design School) where he supports the Service Design program and leads the school wide Design Futures elective. J. Paul holds an MA in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art where he studied with Tony Dunne & Fiona Raby.

What People are Saying

"An outstanding course to learn about Speculative Design."

"Very inspiring!"

"I loved how concise it was."

"Information was really easy to understand and digest."

"It gave me a great wholistic understanding."

"It helped me figure out that I didn't need to go to college again to study futures."

"You can be be part of a vibrant community."

"It is a must if we want to consider and enhance our profession as relevant for the future."

"It will change how you think."

"It helped me figure out that I didn't need to go to college again to study futures, that all the tools of design I already knew are to be reapplied in a different fashion. And it's comforting coming from people who are already sneaking this into their work on live projects."

"The course was fun, practical and also very inspiring. I left feeling like I could make an impact on my organization and had the tools to do so."

"Concise, beginner-friendly, thoughtful, and empowering. Speculative Design Basics encourages you to spend time in the future, but reminds you to come back to and ground everything in the here-now, because that is the only place where we can start."

"My pitch was, 'as a team we are always focused on what to build in the next quarter but we don't have a clear vision of where to go next.' Taking the speculative design course provides tools to create that vision at multiple points in the future. As a result, I have been able to lead multiple workshops with my team which has led to more interest from the team and help us be more future oriented."

Which Speculative Design course should I take?

Many people ask whether to take Speculative Design Basics or the Speculative Design Masterclass. Basics is our self-paced online course. You work through the material whenever suits you, from any timezone, covering what speculative design is, the process, the tools and methods, and how the practice creates value inside an organisation. No prior experience is assumed.

The Masterclass is for people who already have some grounding. You may have read about or studied speculative design, be familiar with the basic methods, know example projects and practitioners, or have run speculative projects yourself. That familiarity lets us go much further into methods, tactics and meaning across five live sessions. Taking Basics first is encouraged but is not a strict prerequisite — you can judge your own readiness.

For Companies

‍For more information on discounts for multiple spots on a program or to discuss a bespoke version of this course for your team please contact hello@critical.design for details.If you would like to be invoiced for spots on the course as some companies require, please contact us at hello@critical.design before purchase.

Accessible Pricing

We are finding ways to make School of Critical Design a more inclusive and representative forum as we address the critical challenges facing our planet, people, and organisations.

We understand that income and means and time is unequal across personal, regional, and global contexts. To accommodate these differences we’ve created this virtual self completed course that is more accessible than our in-person and live virtual workshops.

While top university design masters programs like the Royal College of Art (where we also teach) will cost students tens of thousands of pounds a year, we hope this version of our teaching material and experience can allow participation and world class development without financial anxiety.

With this said, if there are particular situations where this pricing is still difficult, please reach out and we’ll look to work with your individual context.

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Want to see how we run this work end to end? Read The Speculative Design Methodology: A Practitioner’s Workflow.