“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses” (Vlaskovits, 2023), is what Henry Ford said after he reshaped the car industry. As Ford indicated disruptive transformation has never resulted from looking at the probable. Although innovation can be found in the extension of reality, I believe true impactful and transformational innovation is often only found in the unfamiliar and potentially, at the moment, absurd. No one, for example, truly believed in AI technology until IBM’s Deep Blue won its first chess game from a chess champion (Deep Blue | IBM, n.d.), triggering various waves of human-AI interaction. Likewise, prior to the economic crisis in 2008, it was almost unimaginable to think of alternatives for the banking system, until one anonymous individual, referred to as Satoshi Nakamoto, fundamentally changed the concepts of information management and our perception of ownership by introducing blockchain technology (Nakamoto, 2008). This illustrates how transformational technologies often originate from unfamiliar, ambitious, and sometimes unconventional visions, stressing the importance of futuring techniques in transitional processes. By drawing alternative futures into the present through the communication of stories or the creation of material artifacts, the speculative can unlock opportunities for alternative value sets and practices to break through disruptive systems. In doing so speculative design can assist in the creation of long-term visions and strategies and inform contemporary design to facilitate incremental change. Hence, moving into the field of transition design, I wish to use design to harness the power of the speculative and strategic to catalyse systemic change.

Additionally, living in a society that is in high need of solutions to wicked problems, I have become increasingly aware our problems can’t be defined by simple product criteria anymore. Instead, our problem spaces have become increasingly complex and interconnected, spreading over a broad time horizon, and engaging numerous human and non-human actors. Consequently, instead of designing for context-specific, short-term solutions, I believe designers should adopt a system-level view of the problem spaces, situating solutions in the context of bigger ecosystems of change and recognizing their impact as a step towards transition. This adds to the point that wicked problems can’t be solved in isolation. To guarantee the effectiveness and support of socio-technical transitions, a collaborative approach is essential to fostering a sense of ownership and commitment to the transition process. Therefore, I aspire to use design to empower stakeholders in the co-creation of strategies, systems, and policies, responding to the needs of both tomorrow and today.