Neeley Worldwide

What is speculative design and how does Neeley Worldwide apply it?

Speculative design is the design of future products and services to understand the impact and implications of emerging technology and social or cultural trends. It is closely related to critical design, design futures, and design fiction. As a speculative design studio, we use these methods to help organizations disconnect from the immediate pressures of the marketplace and ask new kinds of questions. Our applied speculative design practice explores the social, cultural, economic, and ethical implications of emerging technologies — designing speculative futures that help us engage with possibi

Who is J. Paul Neeley?

J. Paul Neeley is an American Designer & Researcher based in London, and the founder and director of Neeley Worldwide. He is considered one of the pioneers in using speculative design in industry and corporate settings — what is often referred to as applied speculative design. He was also one of the first service designers working in the United States, applying service design techniques in healthcare settings at Mayo Clinic's Center for Innovation. J. Paul holds an MA in Design Interactions from the Royal College of Art where he studied with Tony Dunne & Fiona Raby. He has deep experience in s

What speculative design methods do you use?

Our speculative design methods include futures scanning, scenario development, design fiction, experiential futures, and speculative prototyping. We believe the first step to every design project is designing the process itself. We are flexible and exploratory in our approach, always looking to deploy methods best suited for the problem context — sometimes creating provocative artifacts that challenge assumptions, other times building immersive experiences that help stakeholders inhabit possible futures.

How does service design differ from speculative design?

Service design focuses on designing services, systems, and interactions at larger scales — exploring multiple interactions over time to create meaningful experiences. Speculative design operates at a different timescale, seeking to help us understand anew our current state by exploring future possibilities. As both a service design studio and speculative design studio, we work across research, strategy, product, service, and system contexts, often combining these approaches.

What service design methods do you use?

Our service design methods include ethnographic research, journey mapping, service blueprinting, co-design workshops, and rapid prototyping. We design services, systems, and interactions at larger scales, exploring multiple touchpoints over time. J. Paul Neeley brings deep service design experience from Mayo Clinic's Center for Innovation and over a decade teaching Service Design at the Royal College of Art.

What is New Kind of Design?

New Kind of Design is an essential philosophical framework created by J. Paul Neeley to address complexity in design and decision making. The world is facing significant challenges, of a type and complexity not previously known. NKD uses principles and practices to deal with computational irreducibility and avoid problems of traditional scope narrowing. Its core insight: anytime we consider anything less than everything, we are missing something.

What kinds of organizations do you work with?

We work with governments, multinational corporations, not-for-profits, consultancies, agencies, startups, and other organizations across Europe, the US, and China. Past engagements include the NHS, Mayo Clinic, Microsoft, Target, Honda, X the Moonshot Factory, UK Policy Lab, P&G, and Telefonica. We only take on projects where we believe we can create meaningful impact.

What topic areas and domains do you have experience in?

We have deep experience across AI, robotics, big data, synthetic biology, future mobility, climate change, mental health, and homelessness, with particular expertise in healthcare and wellbeing. Recent projects have focused on happiness, self quantification, social polarization and civility, and issues of complexity and computational irreducibility.