Design fiction is an approach to design that speculates about new ideas through prototyping and storytelling.

One of the thought leaders in science-fiction writer , a Hugo Award-winning, Bruce Sterling  explained design fiction as the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change.

Fiction is not to create objects that are for storytelling, but to create objects that help think through matters-of-concern. Design fictions are propositions for new, future things done as physical instantiations rather than future project plans done through PowerPoint.

“Smart, creative, imaginative ways of linking ideas to their materialization really do matter, because the future matters, and we will use whatever means possible to do create these better worlds, including the simultaneous deployment of science, fact, fiction and design.”- Julian Bleecker in his essay “Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction”