Past Reimagined: Exploring Possible Scenarios for Product Innovation through the Counterfactual History

Past Reimagined: Exploring Possible Scenarios for Product Innovation through the Counterfactual History

This study explores the potential of constructing counterfactual historical scenarios to open the discursive space for product innovation. In the process of innovation, designers are often constrained by historical legacies, leading to path dependencies and limiting future possibilities for corporate products, and the public also loses the chance to engage with alternative product possibilities. Using the Toyota Hydrogen Ball case as a foundational study, which applies counterfactual history to identify critical turning points in technological development. The counterfactual design approach in the case study creates a negotiation space between designers, corporations, and the public, facilitating discourse on alternative pathways for product innovation, embracing new opportunities, and contribute a speculative past perspective to design futures research.

Keywords: discursive design, counterfactual, alternative history, design innovation, speculative design