Designing The “Next” Smart Objects Together With Children

Today we are facing with the notion of smart objects that are increasingly showing their presence in our daily environments. This phenomenon opens up discussions on how our lives will be in future under the influence of emerging technologies and how designers can speculate on that. Designer - the creator of the “next” that doesn’t exist at the moment, but will come true in the future - should go beyond the limits of technology and today’s circumstances to introduce what would wait for us. “Design fiction” has emerged in design field answering these questions, envisioning possible futures for our society by using different narration techniques. This paper questions how designers can find inspiration for imagining the impossible to reach the so-called “fiction” and represents an experiment, in which imagination of children was the source of creation of future smart object scenarios.