Speculative prototyping, frictions and counter-participation: A civic intervention with homeless individuals

This article reflects on the possibilities that speculative prototyping offers for rethinking forms of participatory design, generating spaces of friction and counter-participation. Based on a case of urban hacking conducted with homeless people in Santiago de Chile, the study deploys a critique of our current understanding of Smart urbanism, which is focused on aseptic and universal solutions. We describe the capacities of speculative prototyping to go beyond the logic of ‘solutionism’ present in the Smart City narrative and in some PD strategies, precipitating forms of participation-in-prototyping based on differences and dissensus. Specifically, we argue that the permeability of prototyping can evoke forms of counter-participation in which frictions are not limited under the concept of consensus, but rather used in an inventive manner to explore the issues at hand, inviting to reimagine the notion of participation trough prototyping.