A Grammar of Speculation: Learning Speculative Design with Generative AI in Biodesign Education

This study examines how undergraduate design students imagined and critiqued biotechnological futures through speculative work with generative AI in a semester-long biodesign course. Using inductive qualitative coding and visual discourse analyses, we traced how students’ prompts, images, and reflections reveal an evolving grammar of speculation. Students shifted from crisis description to design-oriented possibility and socio-political reasoning about ecological, cultural, and ethical implications. Generative AI supported this shift by offering visual feedback that enabled students to recognize assumptions and critically examine speculative designs. Through repeated cycles of prompting and refinement, students advanced biodesign prototypes and developed a nuanced understanding of AI’s affordances and limits. Extending constructionism learning theories into speculative design with generative AI, this study examines how learners externalize discursive and imaginative thought through prompt-crafting. These findings articulate a grammar of speculation, showing how generative AI mediates critical AI literacy as a discursive and constructionist learning process.