design fiction

this isn’t an entirely new concept considering how i’ve went through architecture school and have heard forms of design fiction ( [[ speculative design ]]). but just a quick search about the definition of design fiction

design fiction is a design practice aiming at exploring and criticising possible futures by creating speculative, and often provocative, scenarios narrated through designed artifacts.

however this concept first resurfaced today as i was stalking azlen and i think what made it so interesting was the way she approached a [[ bottom up thinking ]] as a design process, through the use of design fiction, or in lay terms, making use of fictional stories + ai. her method involves providing a prompt to chatgpt such as “what does a dictionary in 2060 look like?” and ai would then reply with a seemingly fictional story.

from there, she reads through and annotates any notable insights that can be extracted from this - which i feel is really an ingenious way of using ai

• 2025-11-19 21:57
  • i’ve been stalking https://azlen.me/ site for today and honestly it is so interesting, as well as looking through various curius.app users that i have stumbled upon today. firstly, just have to say that seeing so many people that have their own coding and design projects going on, whether its for their own personal site or just some small project that they are curious enough to build and share - i find that so amazing.
  • anyways, back to azlen, there’s a page on her site showcasing her design journal, and more important her [[ design process ]] and i find it so interesting, how she uses fiction stories + ai to help her to think. design fiction is what she call it.