Talking and writing stories about the future can be made more tangible and accessible by using drawings, images and other (audio)visual media which can include physical objects and artefacts. Arthur Brisbane's well-known motto, 'Use a picture. It’s worth a thousand words' applies to futures too: an image can convey an atmosphere of a future at a glance; a video can tell its story in a few minutes; an object can add a tactile, perhaps even olfactory or gustatory dimension.

Design fiction has popularised making futures tangible by creating 'objects from the future' that are recognisable, yet strangely unfamiliar, raising questions and enabling critical discussions about futures in the present. The techniques in this section borrow from the arts, design, film-making and other creative practices that have well-established methods to imagine possible worlds and bring them to life in different forms. The techniques described here vary in complexity as well as time, resources and skills needed to develop them, but they all should be accessible to enthusiasts and professionals alike.

• Moodboards and collages
• Storyboards
• Speculative and critical design techniques
  • Design fiction techniques
  • 'The Thing from the Future' cards
  • 'Design Fiction Toolkit', TBD catalogue
  • Superflux tarot
  • Extrapolation Factory techniques (products, infomercials…)
  • Newspaper or magazine from the future
  • Design futurescaping
• Interaction design
• Rapid prototyping
• Simulations
• Artworks
• Nomic
• Tinkering and prototyping
• …