VizChitra 2025

Design is no longer just about solving present-day problems — it’s about anticipating what might come next. From climate change to AI shifting cultures, designers are asked to think about long term implications, emerging systems and speculative futures. For every vertical let it be healthcare, food, transportation we are pushed to think about what kind of world are we designing for? What kind of solutions do we come up with when the future is unpredictable?
Let’s dive in and sketch out some bold, unexpected futures.

Through this lens, the session introduces the human body—especially the bodily outputs like Flatulence/Farts as speculative design material. Rather than seeing farts as static and gross, What if these outputs are data? Could they become future interfaces or systems?

Introducing Flasac, a wearable that collects flatulence in a sac, which acts like a mini fuel cell. This device breaks down the different gases in a fart and stores them separately. Once stored, these gases can be used in many ways: to power portable devices, fuel cars, or even act as a self defence device like pepper spray. While it may seem humorous or even a bit gross at first, this wearable challenges us to think differently about value, waste, and how we relate to our own bodies. It imagines a future where something as overlooked as flatulence could become a resource for data.

The session uses this project to explore how designing with the body as a speculative interface allows us to explore complex futures through tangible, human-centered provocations. A speculative interface isn’t meant to be functional in the traditional sense — it’s meant to provoke, reveal, and ask questions.

Attendees will gain:

• Use Data as a Narrative Tool:
  Learn how to integrate real-world data, scientific research, and emerging technologies into speculative design to ground wild ideas, incredible insights and make imagined futures feel tangible.
• Blend Speculation with Systems Thinking:
  Explore how speculative design can transform personal, bodily experiences into critical storytelling tools that uncover hidden economic, environmental, and behavioral systems.
• Harness Humor and Absurdity with Purpose:
  Understand how playful, provocative prototypes — like a fart-powered fuel sac — can invite deeper reflection on value, sustainability, and the politics of the body, while backed by meaningful data.

This session is for designers, data thinkers, and curious minds who want to explore bold, unconventional ways of imagining and engaging with data through speculative, body-centered narratives.

By day, Shreeya Patil works as a Senior Designer at Studio Paperheads, crafting thoughtful, timeless design solutions. Off the clock, she switches gears and dives into a world of speculative futures, strange ideas, and body-based provocations. She mixes design fiction, biohacking, and a healthy dose of absurdity to question what we consider waste, value, and data. One foot in reality and the other in what-if — that’s how she designs.
You can find more about her at :
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shreeyapatil09