N°41 — Design Fiction with Elliott P. Montgomery

Elliott and I discuss some meta topics related to speculative design generally speaking and design fiction, the way its practiced, taught, and received in academic as well as commercial contexts. We also discuss the map he created 'Unresolved Map of Speculative Design' which should not be taken as literal rather as a provocation and conversation starter to discuss (not resolve) the role, relationships, situatedness, and purposes of futures thinking and the futures mindset.

This map has been generative some others whose practice operates in the general space of futures design (https://blog.tobiasrevell.com/2020/08/05/box-006-gadget-realism/, https://futurehumanbydesign.com/2019/09/futures-thinking-and-design-thinking/) and recently I found it quite helpful for describing the 'Where' of design fiction in a conversation with a c-level executive who wanted to have a better sense of where it 'fit' alongside other practices within their innovation design teams. I discuss this further in the Issue 32 of the Design Fiction Newsletter.

Elliott P. Montgomery is a design researcher, strategist and educator whose work focuses on speculative inquiries at the confluence of social, technological and environmental impact. He is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Design and Management at Parsons School of Design, The New School, teaching in the MFA Transdisciplinary Design Program and across the School of Design Strategies. He is also the co-founder of The Extrapolation Factory, an award winning design-futures research studio based in Brooklyn. He was previously a design research resident at the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, Energy as well receiving the Graham Foundation's Individual Grant and The Shed's Open Call commission. He holds a Master's in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art in London and a Bachelor's in Industrial Design from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.