Speculative Story World Design

Researchers: Jakob Ion Wille, Arthur Stein

Interactions with fictional worlds can function as a way of speculating on and preparing for possible future developments in the real world. Through play, narratives and imagined environments, users rehearse possible futures and explore alternative societal trajectories.

At the same time, the entertainment industry is currently developing new digital tools and production methods that are transforming how visual fiction is conceived, visualized and produced. A key hypothesis of this research is that such tools and creative practices may also be applied outside the entertainment industry as ways of communicating, investigating and prototyping responses to real-world challenges.

The project investigates creative practices and emerging technologies in the development of story worlds for visual media, while examining how these approaches may contribute to design research by opening new ways of exploring complex societal questions through speculative scenarios and narrative environments.

The research is framed around the concept of Story World Design. On the one hand, Story World Design draws on methods from the development of fictional universes within film, television, theatre, computer games and transmedia storytelling. On the other hand, it connects these approaches with methods from design practice and design research concerned with addressing real-world problems.

Within the program, the intersection between speculative design and story world design is investigated as a way of exploring possible futures through narrative environments, visual speculation and immersive storytelling.