Proposta de uma abordagem de literacia de futuros pela lente do design especulativo

Abstract

The complexity of contemporary challenges demands new approaches that transcend past established practices. Faced with the need to tackle complex and poorly defined problems, strategic design emerges as a tool to deal with uncertainty. On the other hand, futures literacy, promoted by UNESCO, aims to empower individuals to imagine transformative futures. In this context, speculative design stands out for its ability to open new perspectives on complex problems, encouraging debate and imagination. The research proposes to explore the following question: what is the potential of speculative design in Futures Literacy? From this inquiry arises the overall research objective: To analyze the potential of Speculative Design in Futures Literacy. Using an exploratory methodology with an experimental bias, this study identified gaps and necessary conditions for futures literacy and potential values identified in speculative design. From this relationship, a practice is conceived and conducted where speculative design values, extracted from the literature, such as criticism, openness, tension, interaction, anticipation, recursiveness, and experimentation are organized into stages to develop futures literacy. The conducted practice is described and presented to specialists, and its contributions are discussed through triangulation between theory, practice, and interviews. In the discussion, after triangulation, differences in terms of objectives, motivations, and outcomes among futures literacy approaches, speculative design, and the conducted practice are identified and explored. Convergences such as methodological flexibility, scenario imagination, and temporal displacement are also identified. After this stage, new values are identified, such as systemic thinking and signal exploration. Finally, a new approach called LEAF (Experiential Futures Learning Laboratory – in portuguese: Laboratório Experiencial de Aprendizagem em Futuros) emerges as a proposal, based on five principles: meta-exploration, temporal plexus, experiential emancipation, tangible catharsis, and diegetic reverberation.