Application Deadline: 25th May 2026

Duration: 12th September 2026 - 7th April 2027

This course is currently offered in collaboration with Creative Futures Academy (CFA). CFA is a ground-breaking partnership between: The National College of Art and Design, University College Dublin, and the Institute of Art, Design + Technology. Our tailored programmes and micro courses offer access to expertise and networks across the three leading creative institutions and our industry partners. Learn with us as we experiment, innovate and respond to change.

What is Speculative Design Futures?

What does the future hold for us all? Well, instead of wondering, why not design it?

The Certificate in Speculative Design Futures is a new course suitable for designers and creatives practitioners from all disciplines interested in designing a positive future for all (people and planet).

The course will equip you with futures thinking literacy and the practical speculative design skills needed to engage critically with the uncertainty and complexity of wicked problems that exist in our world today.

From the urgency of climate change, and pervasive new technologies, to the precarity of peace and the search for tolerance and inclusion, the need for creative and concrete alternative visions of our futures must be envisaged.

Our course will provide you with a set of critical thinking and making tools that will enable you to confront futures design challenges with confidence.

During the course, you will:

Be guided through a range of futures and speculative design thinking, approaches, processes and methods as you learn about how to map time and describe future design contexts.

Apply a range of interdisciplinary research and foresight methods to question and analyse the social, environmental, economic and political impact of predicted future trends and emerging technologies.

Explore new ways to practice in the creation of speculative design prototypes, narratives and probes that demonstrate alterative and concrete visions of the future.

 What will I do on the course?

Course content will include:

Introduction to Speculative Design, approaches, philosophies and case studies
• Defining speculative goals and values
• Scoping a speculative design futures project
• Speculative and Critical Design principles
• Futures research
• Design Fiction principles
• Mapping time and systems
• World building
• Emotional design
• Experimental design prototypes
• Participatory group exercises and charette
• Project presentations

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