Co-experiential futuring: Where speculative design and arts meet futures studies
Álvaro Aranda Muñoz, Nina Bozic Yams, Lisa Carlgren · Futures · 2025
In the face of continuous transformations in organisations, technological advancements directly impact the practice of professionals who need to (re)imagine and (re)shape their roles, workflows, and contexts. To navigate these uncertainties and collaboratively explore alternative futures, we present a collaborative method to stage hybrid design futures in organisational settings. We tested the method in a five-workshop journey in a Swedish public academy for competence development that trains healthcare practitioners such as doctors, midwives, nurses and dentists, among others. The findings and outcomes from workshops are presented in the light of a combined analytical framework of hybrid design futures. The collaborative method engaged participants to be active creators during workshops by creating physical models representing their future scenarios, writing speculative stories about their future roles, enacting ideas from their speculative fictions, and making low-fidelity prototypes of potential technological applications in their future workplace. The results suggest that the collaborative method helped participants develop their sense of agency to change and shape their futures within the organisation. The findings indicate that participants became more aware of technological roles, their capacity to own their futures, and the need to collaborate with other departments within the organisation. • We present a collaborative method consisting of five workshops that merge experiential futures with design futuring. • The method was assessed within a Swedish competence development centre that trains healthcare personnel. • The organisational participants were engaged in conceiving, materialising, and performing alternative futures. • Artists performed interventions in the workshops to support critical questioning and explore alternative technology roles. • The results indicate that the collaborative method fosters participants’ sense of agency in shaping their work futures.