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Design+ Speculative and participatory stakeholder mapping

which turbocharged the emergence of liquid and flexible and creative thinking, explore possible implications,
societies of individuals. 37-39 Due to its strong focus on and fully engage the imagination. What-ifs were also
technology and its impact on people’s lives, speculative extensively used to explore ideas, encourage creativity,
design corresponds to a form of speculative philosophy and potentially improve the quality of predictions about
of technology that questions what technology means. the impact of specific stakeholders. We challenged the
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In Malpass’s words, speculative design maps alternative organization’s members to assess how the outcome of the
systems to challenge the dominant technological ideology identification process would change if, for example, specific
and proposes different technological futures grounded on actions were implemented (such as communication or
alternative values. awareness campaigns). This project included a dimension
The project described in this article decoupled of realism to speculations, which are not merely possible
speculative design both from technology and from its more and narrative abstract happenings, but realistic factors
pungent socially critical dimension. Instead, it endorsed that may take place in the future, and not just by accident,
and highlighted other aspects of speculative design, in but also because the organization decides so.
particular, the projection into the future of speculative 3. Research challenges
design artifacts and its capability to stimulate creative and
critical thinking – in this context, “critical thinking” should A stakeholder landscape is not static, but it evolves
be understood as a form of reflection that goes beyond the constantly. The traditional approach to stakeholder
specific situational status quo, but not necessarily with identification, discussed in greater detail in the literature
macro-social and ethical implications. Projection into the review section above, often results in static stakeholder lists
future is indeed a key characteristic of speculative and primarily generated through desktop analysis. This method
conceptual design practices, which are more concerned makes it resource-intensive to keep the stakeholder list
about designing for how things could and should be. 37 continuously updated. Furthermore, it may be challenging
Despite speculative designers criticizing several aspects to plan stakeholder engagement strategies starting from
of the relationship between technologies and society complex lists of stakeholders.
(and the impact of technologies on society) through Therefore, the directors of the organization were proposed
their designs, they also want to have social usefulness. to adopt a design-oriented approach for the project that
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In the research project presented here, usefulness played allows iteration and staff participation. Based on a literature
an important role. Speculative design was used to design review and our experience as designers and researchers,
a solution that could be accepted and understood by the participatory design and speculative design were identified
organization. Imagination-based speculation is a powerful as suitable design practices for the desired approach. Both
tool to change existing situations. Speculative design approaches presented immediate challenges in identifying
provides the opportunity for the organization to flexibly stakeholders. As pointed out in the previous section,
and iteratively shape the outcome of the stakeholder speculative design is normally used with technologies and
identification through speculations, not about how the technological artifacts rather than management processes.
future will be (like in other design approaches, such as In addition, speculative design is a form of critical design
design roadmapping ) but about how the future should be that focuses on socio-scientific and socio-technical issues,
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made – through activities, innovations, and processes that focusing on concerns related to possible futures. The main
have a direct impact on the stakeholder identification. research challenge involved decontextualizing speculative
Due to the limitations of traditional stakeholder design and using it to engineer a future-oriented process
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identification strategies, our methodological approach grounded in design thinking, tailored to the specific needs
incorporated established speculative design methods to and requirements of the organization. Another challenge
address these shortcomings. In particular, we invited the was the implementation of participatory design methods
organization’s members to identify stakeholders critically within an organization with no prior experience. A further
and creatively through fictional (but possible), narrative- issue, discussed in the next section, was that organizations
centered scenarios built as thought experiments. The usually identify their stakeholders in a non-participatory
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proposed scenarios, which are the core of a thought way, leading to unsatisfactory results.
experiment, partially follow the paradigm of thought 4. Research question and methodology
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experiments described by Dunne and Raby – mental
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constructions based on ideas expressed through design This article answers the following research question: Are
that support thinking about challenging issues. The participatory and speculative designs adequate methods to
thought experiments used in the study stimulate critical design a methodology and process to identify stakeholders?

Volume 2 Issue 3 (2025) 4 doi: 10.36922/DP025060011