Doing Design Futures Inquiry Through Metaphorical Thinking

This chapter introduces an experimental approach to design research that uses metaphor and chance as tools for exploring the unknown. Centred on the Future Philosophical Pills project, it presents a post-qualitative methodology that transforms uncertainty into a productive and creative material for inquiry. Rather than imposing fixed frameworks or predictions, this approach cultivates openness to what the future may—or may not—bring, inviting designers to engage in “serious play” and speculative experimentation.

The metaphor of the pill operates on two levels: as a curative agent offering conceptual clarity and as a pharmakon—both remedy and poison—signifying the ambivalent and transformative nature of philosophical inquiry. Through randomly selecting and interpreting Pill and Prompt cards, participants engage in chance-based, co-creative reflection, generating insights that connect the speculative and the pragmatic dimensions of design.

This divinatory and transdisciplinary practice situates design as philosophy-in-action, using metaphorical thinking to decode the present and imagine plural futures. Ultimately, the chapter proposes that doing futures inquiry through the Future Philosophical Pills is not about prediction or control, but about cultivating attentiveness to the unknown as a vital, generative force for thinking and making futures differently.