In the language of speculative design, a diegetic artefact is an object — physical or digital — designed as if it belonged to a future world. It is not a concept sketch pinned to a wall: it is something you might find in a shop, in a bag, on a table. Its power lies in making you believe, even for a moment, that this future already exists.
The term "diegetic" comes from cinema. In a scene, everything characters can see, touch and use is diegetic: the sword, the phone, the poster on the wall. The soundtrack, by contrast, is extra-diegetic — we viewers hear it, the characters do not. Julian Bleecker imported this concept into design to describe objects that "live" inside a story about the future, not in our present.
The most important distinction to internalise is between credibility and functionality. A diegetic prototype does not need to work. It must seem plausible within the cultural, social and material context of the world you are imagining. A device for measuring collective mood can be a wooden cube with LED lights and a printed manual: what matters is that it tells something true about the future you want to explore.
Diegetic credibility is built in the details. Materials, typography, language, packaging, indicated price, legal instructions: every element says "this exists in that world". When Superflux designs objects for climate scenarios, they do not create generic futuristic gadgets — they design things that would seem normal to those living in them, even if they unsettle us.
A common mistake is confusing the diegetic prototype with the traditional product prototype. In industrial design, a prototype serves to test functionality, ergonomics, production costs. In design fiction, it serves to test collective imagination: what happens when people encounter this object? What questions do they ask? What emotions do they feel? What decisions would they make?
At Relatronica, we use diegetic prototypes as bridges between abstract thinking about the future and concrete action in the present. A credible object makes visible what often remains invisible: assumptions, trade-offs, injustices, possibilities. Technical perfection is not required — narrative honesty and the courage to show a future that someone, somewhere, might want to avoid or build are.