Choosing to focus on the future instead of the now might seem kind of strange for, design, for design research. I think generally design is very focused on the now—leaning into the past to understand issues and problems and identify them, and maybe thinking into the near future. But I was interested in the far future in that range between the near future and the far future. And I felt like it could offer a very unique space within this topic.

And a lot of that has to do with how I feel we can integrate speculative fiction and speculative design into the design process and into design research methods. In a lot of ways, co-design already does this and thinking about the past, present, and the future. But it was missing something for me. It was missing an intention behind speculative design. I think even the word speculation is great—it can be a little bit mysterious, It can be interesting. But it also automatically for me gets me thinking. And I love the idea of a speculation on something...we're speculating!, we're imagining…but we're imagining with a little bit more of a purpose. We're not just thinking off into space, we're speculating. And thats something that I love.

But speculations are also about the now. They might be thinking about the future, but they're using our fears, and our dreams of the now to get to that speculation. And that's where I felt like co-design and speculative design could work hand in hand together to go somewhere. I didn't know where, but to go somewhere within the topic of sexual and reproductive experiences.

The where was a big mystery—I knew I wanted to collect these imaginations, these speculations and see what that collection of them looked like. But I had no idea if the futures that people would imagine would be positive or negative, would they be completely pessimistic? Would they just be dystopian? And how would that be different between groups and individuals? I had a lot of questions but, I knew that within speculative design, it could offer something unique and very necessary to this topic.