Design fiction is not a solitary desk exercise. It is a lab practice — in the broadest sense: a space where you experiment, make mistakes, iterate and learn by doing. This course is called "Design Fiction Lab" for a precise reason: the method is the lab.
The workshop format has a deep logic. When a diverse group — citizens, designers, policy makers, activists — gathers to build future artefacts, something happens that a report cannot produce: productive conflict. Visions of the future collide, enrich each other, get corrected. A retiree and a student will imagine different worlds — and the confrontation will make the scenario richer and more realistic.
Iteration is equally central. The first artefact you produce will probably be superficial — a generic "futuristic" object that does not say much. The second version will improve diegetic coherence. The third will add details that open new questions. This process — prototype, test, redo — is identical to design thinking, but applied to possible worlds instead of products.
"Thinking through making" is the principle that distinguishes design fiction from traditional futurology. You cannot truly understand a future world until you try to build something that belongs to it. When you design an ID badge for your scenario, you discover questions you had not considered: who issues it? What happens if you lose it? Who cannot obtain it?
The lab is also democratically accessible. You do not need huge budgets or advanced technical skills. A design fiction workshop can be done with paper, pen, printer and imagination. What you need is time, space and the willingness to ask uncomfortable questions — resources many communities already have.
In the following modules we will put this method into practice: we will build scenarios, make them diegetic and compare them. But the premise remains: design fiction is something you do, not something you read.