014 - Why Speculate?

Visual Essay originally created for the IDE45 exhibition (Feb 2026), celebrating 45 years of Innovation Design Engineering, a double masters course between the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London.

‘Why Speculate?’ is a visual essay, that asserts the value of speculative design within the design process of new products and services. After having explored design fiction artefacts like instruction manuals and catalogues in alternative worlds, speculative fiction stories, and critical design cartoons in the previous books; Visual Essays is yet another format that Eliza allows me to explore.

This two page essay is an excerpt / iteration of my ‘FutureBabble’ lecture that I’ve been doing for several years at various venues.

Ironically, it also feels like I’m justifying the Eliza project through this visual essay.

Bonus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlI1MR-qNt8
Here’s a Steve Jobs video (yes, yet another one) where he asserts that Apple sits at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts. I think this bears repeating in 2026 with how big-tech has seemed to have decoupled with critical thinking about implications. Thinking of technological and social what what-if scenarios, implications beyond just applications is inherently necessary within design projects.

Until the next one!