Navigating the unknown: How speculative design unveils business value

For all of the debate recently about the value of design, I rarely see designers talk about the merits of speculative design.

While we may measure the value of traditional digital product design against how design helps us meet our existing targets, speculative design is a strategic tool that can unlock new business opportunities and drive innovation in product development. Far from being a mere creative exercise, it challenges designers to think beyond the current market needs and user behaviors, enabling them to anticipate and shape future trends.

I’ve experienced firsthand how this approach can help unlock millions of dollars in new revenue and strategic partnership, delivered through design. Unfortunately, due to lack of exposure or understanding, this approach to leverage design is often misunderstood or underutilized by designers.

In an uncertain world, speculative design is a game changer, and an advantage for designers to adopt to stay ahead of the curve. But what exactly is speculative design, and how can it be effectively integrated into SaaS product development?

What is Speculative Design?

Speculative design is a forward-thinking approach that goes beyond solving existing problems. It’s about exploring ‘what could be’ rather than ‘what is.’

This approach encourages designers and developers to envision future scenarios, challenge current assumptions, and experiment with potential outcomes. Unlike traditional design methodologies that focus on immediate solutions, speculative design is about questioning, probing, and imagining.

When applied in a business context, it helps us think beyond our current strategy and solutions and bring others with us. An example might be the prototype of a concept, not yet built or validated, that shows a potential future partner what a possible integration might look an feel like. It helps tell a story, and excites others around a vision that they might not have been able to picture.

In effect, speculative design is a means of ‘pinging’ the market, like radar helping us sense opportunities we cannot see yet.

How to Use Speculative Design in Product Design

In the realm of digital product design, where user needs and technological capabilities are constantly evolving, speculative design offers a way to anticipate and prepare for future trends. It’s not just about creating a product that meets today’s market demands but about envisioning how these demands might change and how technology might evolve.

1. Start with Scenario Building: Begin by imagining various future scenarios for your product. Consider factors like emerging technologies, potential changes in user behavior, and broader societal trends. What challenges and opportunities might these scenarios present?
2. Encourage Open-Ended Exploration: Speculative design thrives on creativity and open-ended questions. Encourage your team to think beyond current constraints and explore a range of possibilities, no matter how far-fetched they may seem.
3. Focus on User Interaction: Consider how future users might interact with your product. How might their needs and behaviors change? Use speculative design to explore new forms of user interaction and engagement.
4. Prototype and Test: Develop prototypes based on your speculative designs. These don’t have to be fully functional but should be enough to convey the concept and test its feasibility or desirability.
5. Gather Feedback and Iterate: Use feedback from user testing to refine your speculative designs. This iterative process can reveal insights into current user needs and potential future trends.

Examples applications of speculative design

• Finding the Perfect Fit: Speculative Design in Market PositioningSpeculative design acts like a puzzle piece in the quest for product-market fit, helping companies identify their place in a complex market landscape. At Degreed, I used speculative design to explore how the company could assist a major client in rethinking the connection between jobs and skills, aiding employees in navigating opaque career paths. This exploration led to unlocking millions of dollars in future revenue by addressing a critical market need.
• Fostering Innovation: Speculative Design as a Catalyst for New Ideas
  Speculative design serves as a navigational tool in uncharted market territories, especially when traditional constraints and incentives are not well-defined, allowing companies to explore and understand emerging consumer needs and market trends that are not immediately apparent.At Vendr, I’ve used speculative design to demonstrate how AI might help people discover insights about their SaaS contracts and quickly un-tap ways to save money. This helped us identify new ways of thinking about our data and delivering customer value that was not obvious without this exploration.
• Attracting Early Interest: Speculative Design as a Market TeaserThis approach is instrumental in generating early customer interest and attracting business investment. By offering a glimpse into potential future products or services, companies can gauge market reactions without fully committing resources.
• At BookClub, I built a robust prototype for a B2B-oriented offering that people could play with in a real world setting. This helped us better understand the market opportunity and led to customers investing in our idea as early adopters.
• Risk Mitigation: Speculative Design in Anticipating ChallengesBy anticipating future challenges and trends, speculative design can help companies mitigate risks and adapt to potential market shifts.
• I often combine speculative design explorations with pre-mortems, working backwards from a concept to identify the biggest risks we need to learn more about or validate a solution against before over-investing in a potential dead end.
  

  Conclusion

  Speculative product design isn’t just about creating; it’s about learning, adapting, and evolving with the market. It’s a journey of discovery, where each step is an opportunity to learn more about the market and the consumers within it. As designers and innovators, embracing this approach could be our key to unlocking potentials we never knew existed.