Playful Prototyping In Speculative Design Practices

Prototyping is a fundamental part of the design process. The iterative as-semblage and manipulation of shapes, textures, colors, and volumes generate re-flections not only about formal qualities but also about possible affordances, functionalities, and meanings. Prototypical artifacts emerge from the negotiation between the informed rational thinking coming from research, the mechanical behavior of the material, the human body ergonomics and dexterity, and the serendipitous discoveries happening in the process. Analyzing the creative dy-namics happening during prototyping, it is possible to observe similarities be-tween model-making and play. Such dynamics of reflection in action have the creative potential to foster speculative inquiry. The aim of this contribution is to present, through a case study workshop, playful prototyping as a speculative de-sign methodology: a playful approach that can generate extreme, thought-provoking, and radical outputs in the form of diegetic prototypes of speculative design and design fiction.