Prototyping the non-existent as a way to research and innovate: a proposal for a possible framework for design research and innovation.

Abstract: Since design has made an argument on its ability to foresee possible future scenarios for the artifacts designers construct; one of the most important contemporary issues is the understanding of how these objects and the people around them will interact in the real world, beyond the expectations proposed on the process of design. This paper advances on the idea of a framework for design research and innovation that tries to go beyond the research of the current state of the system and proposes the use of prototypes as probes into a possible future scenario of the system that could bring new knowledge about how the system could be transformed when the objects are implemented.