Specula Method

Traditional branding shows evident structural limitations: generic purposes, campaigns chasing ephemeral trends, identities consumed at the speed of feeds. The problem is primarily imaginative: many brands continue describing the present while their audience is already elsewhere, projected—consciously or not—into desired, feared, ambivalent futures.

Specula works precisely on this gap. The starting point is no longer "how do we position ourselves in today's market?" but "what futures do we want to help make possible?" From there, we work backward, designing identities, products, services, and AI agents that can operate in those futures without losing deep coherence.

Specula is a strategic design method that uses futures as tools to build living, adaptive brand identities oriented toward preferable scenarios. Born from the intersection of speculative design, brand strategy, and generative artificial intelligence, it helps organizations and teams imagine possible worlds and transform those visions into decisions, prototypes, and operational narratives.

New here? Start from the Quick Start guide · Avvio rapido (IT)

Il posto delle fragole is a community space in Pesaro built by four partner organizations for young people. Starting from three co-design workshops and no coherent identity, the Specula Method produced a governance system for brand — from radical values to a living visual system to validated governance artifacts.

→ Read the full case study · Leggi il case study (IT)

This repository is one of five related SPECULA repositories:

Choose your entry point:

• If you want to understand what the method builds → use specula-bos.
• If you need method and facilitation guidance: start here.
• If you need canonical runtime/spec references: use specula-framework.
• If you need practical technical governance implementation: use specula-skill.

• Brand strategists and design leaders
• Innovation teams exploring future-oriented identity systems
• Facilitators running structured speculative workshops
• Teams translating method outputs into AI governance requirements

See ALIGNMENT.md for document ownership and cross-repository boundaries.

The framework is designed to be:

• Speculative: Starts from multiple scenarios, not a single linear prediction
• AI-Assisted: Uses generative models to expand the field of possibilities, not to replace human judgment
• Values-Anchored: Structurally integrates explicit ethical DNA and a refusal policy
• Measurable: Includes impact indicators and review mechanisms from the start
• Evolutionary: Configures a continuous device (Specula Guardian) that monitors gaps between imagined future and emerging reality

The canonical sequence is shared with specula-bos and with the runtime schemas of specula-framework. Scenarios come before values: the scenarios are the test that produces the Speculative Brand DNA. Full detail in the Method Overview.

Verifying the three threshold conditions (real mandate, recognized crisis, willingness to subtract) with observable evidence, recorded in a Threshold Sheet. Putting the brief under stress and closing with a written consensus on research question, time window, and working rules.

Opening the field through multiple futures. Weak signals are collected by people across cultural, technological, economic, regulatory, and environmental domains, with AI supporting correlations. Four scenarios are built with an explicit construction rule: one per generic future (growth, collapse, discipline, transformation), closed megatrends shared by all, one scenario built against the brand's strongest declared value, a horizon of 10–15 years.

Analyzing competitors' speculative trajectories: not just present campaigns, but research investments, partnerships, emerging languages, narrative territories they're occupying. The goal is to find the "white spaces": futures no one is credibly presiding over yet, each labelled as trend or countertrend.

Excavating what holds across the scenarios: radical values, worldview, forms of care, inviolable limits. Traces come from documents as well as stories, and counterexamples are searched for actively. Each candidate value is written in operational form and projected into every scenario; people who did not build the scenarios judge whether it holds. Uses the Speculative Identity Model: a canvas working on six intertwined dimensions: radical values, persona/entity, agency, speculative interactions, preferable horizons, alternative tools and metrics.

Testing the brand in different futures through speculative design exercises, storytelling, service storyboards, narrative and conversational interfaces. Includes the Resilience Protocol: four stress-test scenarios (recession, regulatory revolution, technological discontinuity, plus a Wild Card black swan).

The Ethical Gate is a formal checkpoint asking:

• Does this scenario violate declared radical values?
• Does it introduce manipulative, extractive, or exclusionary practices?
• Does it create unacceptable technological, social, or environmental dependencies?

Rejected prototypes are logged in the Registry of Refusals: what the brand chose not to become.

Designing the preferable future after the exploration, as a project of its own, and connecting it to the present through backcasting in each scenario. Transforming the constellation of elements into story systems that can live across multiple time horizons. Translating values into decision criteria that carry an expected effect and a review date, recorded in a Decision Log.

Exposing the preferable future to dialogue with communities: customers, partners, suppliers, territories, activists. The Synthesis Circle fixes the values; the community shapes how they are put into practice, and dissent is logged. AI acts as a designed mediator to amplify significant divergences without transforming them into destructive polarization.

Translating work into concrete roadmap: projects, prototypes, releases, experiments, investments. Specula Guardian monitors the gap between imagined future and emerging reality and classifies every drift as error, superseded model, or learning. The Emergency Re-Speculation Clause is triggered when signals significantly diverge for two consecutive quarters.

• Ethical Framework: Gate structure, key questions, exclusion criteria, refusal typologies
• Templates: Registry of Refusals, Speculative Identity Canvas, Impact Measurement Framework
• AI Governance Principles: Responsible use guidelines, bias audit protocols, human-in-the-loop requirements
• Method Documentation: Phases, principles, application guidelines
• Documentation Index: Canonical map of all docs
• Method Agent Protocol: How to configure a Specula Method Agent for facilitated sessions
• Method Evolution Log: Progressive definition and change history of the method
• Schema Profiles: Conceptual JSON artifacts plus runtime-compatible JSON contracts
• Examples: Sample sessions and deliverables

• AI system configurations and prompt libraries
• Scenario libraries and research protocols
• Specific operational facilitation tools
• Client project work and case specifics

This balance between transparency and intellectual property allows Specula to position itself as a credible actor, not another opaque formula.

Specula Audit — Diagnostic focus (~2 weeks): Analyzes brand identity state, AI maturity, coherence between declared values and practices, resilience against key scenarios.

Specula Full Journey — Complete process (2-3 months): All six phases with mixed Specula/client team, producing documents, prototypes, roadmaps, and policies for robust decisions on identity, products, services, and AI systems.

Specula Guardian — Annual accompaniment: Quarterly monitoring of how scenarios are moving, which signals confirm or deny hypotheses, where fragility, incoherence, or unexpected opportunities are emerging.

1. Start from the Documentation Index
2. Review the Ethical Framework
3. Explore the Templates directory
4. Read AI Governance Guidelines
5. Configure the Specula Method Agent for guided sessions (EN)
6. Configura il Specula Method Agent per sessioni guidate (IT)
7. Review the Runtime Alignment Guide
8. Review the Method Evolution Log
9. Review Examples for sample sessions and outputs
10. Join Discussions to share learnings and challenges

1. Review the Method Overview
2. Explore Case Studies (anonymized)
3. Understand the Investment Framework
4. Contact us for an Audit or Full Journey engagement

1. Read Contributing Guidelines
2. Propose improvements to the ethical layer
3. Share anonymized learnings from applications
4. Help refine templates and tools

A space—physical and digital—where brands that have completed a Full Journey or are in Guardian process can periodically confront each other. Not a club of polished best practices, but a place for frank exchange about what it really means to stay true to preferable futures when short-term pressures push elsewhere.

Rigorous documentation of "before" and "after": starting metrics, changed decisions, transformed internal narrative, expected and unexpected effects. In later phases, activating collaborations with academic realities and research centers for longitudinal observation of method effectiveness.

Those bringing the method to other contexts must have personally gone through a training and supervision path, not just read a manual. This ensures minimal consistency in application while leaving room for variants, adaptations, contaminations.

Talking about the future doesn't mean predicting it, but taking responsibility for steering the present toward trajectories we consider desirable. Work on speculative identity isn't stylistic exercise—it's a form of care: for people working in brands, for communities that traverse them, for ecosystems that sustain them.

Brands are no longer just communication objects. They are actors participating in writing futures. The Specula Method exists to help them do it more consciously, more imaginatively, and more responsibly.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0). See LICENSE.md.

Proprietary elements (AI configurations, scenario libraries, operational protocols) remain under copyright.

If you use, adapt, or build upon the Specula Method or the Specula Method Agent, you must clearly attribute the work to:

Marco Livi — Specula Method
https://github.com/oddtitoreal/specula-method

Attribution must be visible in documentation, presentations, and public materials. See ATTRIBUTION.md for full guidelines.

• Marco Livi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcolivi/
• Discussions: GitHub Discussions
• Email: tito@marcolivi.it

Version 2.0, October 2026