The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is rapidly blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological worlds through advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and other technologies. While Industry 4.0 is transforming our future realities, it is essential not to lose sight of human needs and basic human rights. Development must balance social, economic, and environmental sustainability, which is why designers need to engage with ethical considerations and social realities. One example of a technology that has both potential benefits and ethical threats is nanotechnology. Nanobots, machine versions of bacteria or viruses, can perform pre-programmed tasks autonomously at the atomic level.

Speculative design is being promoted as a critical approach to design. Speculative design does not attempt to predict the future. Instead, it attempts to create debate and discussion about preferable futures (Dunne & Raby 2013). Design educators and practitioners from the Global South have become increasingly critical of speculative design practices (Martins 2014). This paper provides an account of a speculative design project set for final-year students pursuing a degree in Digital Media Design at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. The paper describes the project brief, the purpose of the assignment and the intended outcomes. Three student designs are presented and explored using a textual analysis methodology.

The watershed Decolonial and Fallist movements in South African universities have reawakened and reignited the necessary, urgent, and compelling need to foreground and position Afro-diasporic episteme in South African university curricula and everyday practice. This article posits that centrally positioning Afro-diasporic Speculative Design (ASD) episteme in South African higher education design institutions, without necessarily displacing or subordinating other knowledge lenses, could positively contribute to engaging with some of the concerns raised by the Decolonial and Fallist movements in design pedagogy and praxis. It contends that African, and its diasporic, speculative designs draw on the retrospective but also project into the future.