Two weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we gave a course on design fiction presenting more than 20 talented students at Politecnico di Milano’s Service Design Master education with the following speculative scenario: What if Russia invaded Ukraine to conquer energy sources and, at the same time, used cyber-attacks to destroy the European energy infra-structure? What would the skyrocketing of energy prices mean for people’s everyday life and households? How could design fiction be used to invent new ways of producing and consuming energy in a near future?

We were amazed by the students’ creative experiments and the final concepts that came out of the course showing how design fiction can be of vital importance for addressing real-world societal challenges.

Read more about the course here