The definitive book describing the origins, evolution, and practice of design fiction written by its originators Julian Bleecker, Nick Foster, Fabien Girardin and Nicolas Nova. In collaboration with Patrick Pittman and Chris Frey.
Order your copyIn any organization, managing the present takes away oxygen from working to understand the future. This Manual reveals an approach called design fiction that encourages teams to translate a future scenario and quickly simulate it early in a low cost, low consequences sandbox. With design fiction you can:
We think of design fiction practice as more of a mindset or approach with an accompanying grab bag of activities, methods, and tactics, rather than any sort of defined system. Still, as a starting point it definitely helps to have a handle on the key steps involved. We’ve broken it down into ten parts, unfolding in a more or less linear manner, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Think of them as modules that can be recombined according to your needs. There is no specified time period for the entire process, nor for each step.
We started working on this book with the seemingly straightforward intent of creating a manual about the practice of design fiction—a book that almost anyone could pick up and quickly get a handle on this practice we’ve been refining over more than a decade, and go on to apply the tools and tactics of design fiction in their own work. You will find much of that nitty gritty of developing your own practice in this book.
A conversation with the Julian Bleecker, Nick Foster, Fabien Girardin and Nicolas Nova on what design fiction is, what it means to them, and what it could mean to other people.
— Bruce Sterling
— Near Future Laboratory Shop review
