Stead, Michael (2026) Repair, Regenerate, Refuture : Enacting Regenerative Socio-technical Transitions through Participatory Design Futuring. Temes de Disseny, 2026 S. ISSN 2604-9155 (In Press)
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Society’s adoption of digital technologies is rapidly accelerating environmental and civic problems including electronic waste, carbon emissions and biodiversity loss. The ‘speculative turn’ across design and technology research and practice over the past decade has foregrounded Speculative Design as an approach which practitioners can employ to better negotiate such impacts. Yet, this method’s capacity to facilitate real-world sustainable change beyond its intellectual origins can increasingly be questioned. To this end, this paper outlines how, in order to engender more tangible and pluriversal sustainable impact, this research repositioned speculative practice as part of an applied regenerative design-innovation process. The paper describes how the researcher worked in collaboration with partner The Making Rooms, a UK community makerspace, to combine Participatory Speculative Design and More-than-Human Design methods. This unified approach enabled the prototyping and enacting of regenerative pathways that increase community-driven repair and reuse of ‘smart’ Internet of Things (IoT) devices like phones, speakers, and wearables. Reflecting upon the insights generated and boundary artefacts co-crafted during this 4-year ‘Equal-IoT’ design process, the paper puts forward a novel framework for enacting Regenerative Socio-technical Transitions with, and for, local communities. Contributing to Circular Economy and Net Zero discourse, the paper showcases how the framework can help practitioners and stakeholders to begin to work together to regeneratively refuture the unsustainable dependences between human, ecological and technological actors across scales – today, for tomorrow.