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A COLLABORATIVE WORKSHOP-GAME, IMAGINING OBJECTS, PRODUCTS AND SYSTEMS IN SPECULATIVE FUTURES.

MUTANT:FORMATICS is a collaborative workshop-game about design/product fictions. In it, participants transform everyday objects, products and systems into speculative tools for alternate futures.

Part design fiction, part systems critique, and part absurd play, this session asks what happens when we stretch a product to its limits, across time.

Through prompts and guided mutations, teams reimagine familiar things into collective resources, emotional technologies, or cultural relics.

Whether designing for real-world futures or rewriting the logic of objects, this is a generative space for radical rethinking.

This workshop helps participants prototype new products—but more importantly, glimpse the symbolic futures those products might accidentally create.

Teaching teams to design with consequences in mind—not just features.

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Imagination is Strategy → Futures aren’t predicted, they’re prototyped.

Think in Ripples → From climate to culture, what we make makes meaning.

Design Isn’t Neutral → Products encode belief. This workshop helps decode them.

WHO IT’S FOR

Design teams looking to future-proof or reframe thinking
Innovation orgs wanting high-concept ideation that avoids cliché
Creative studios, researchers, or educators exploring speculative tools
Anyone reckoning with the role of design in a transforming world

WORKSHOP STRUCTURE

MUTANT.SYSTEMS/FORMATICS is a speculative design workshop for any number of participants.

It can work in 3 “Levels”
+ Level 1 : Mutant Formatics Presentation

+ Level 2 : Mutant Formatics Boarding Workshop

+ Level 3 : Mutant Formatics Workshop & Catalog Artifact

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It’s hands-on, collaborative, and weird-in-the-right-way.

Participants work individually and in small groups to deconstruct, mutate, and reimagine products, objects, systems. Not just how they look, but what they mean, how they behave in future contexts, and how they might shape (or distort) our world.

You will:
1.Mutate a real-world product
2.Map ripple effects from practical to poetic
3.Add to a collective “Mutation Atlas”
4.Share insights in a ritual-style debrief

TOTAL TIME
~3 hours (can be shortened or extended)

Phase 1: Grounding the System (~30 min)

Intro talk
Real-world case studies of effect orders
Introduce the Mutation Framework

Phase 2: Mutation Engine (~90 min)
Participants choose or are assigned an existing product (or create their own).

They’re led through guided prompts and transformation rituals:

Define the original product’s purpose and cultural logic
Apply mutation prompts
Extrapolate the second/third/fourth-order effects
Visually or verbally represent the result
Group check-ins every ~20 min spark discussion and cross-contamination.

Phase 3: Stitching the Catalog (~45 min)

Participants pin their final concepts to a shared Miro board or physical wall
Group discussion around what trends, systems, or logics emerged.
Optional: Gallery walk or final presentations

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MUTATION CATALOG
Each participant leaves behind a contribution to a collective archive:

A shared visual Miro board or PDF booklet
Includes their mutated product, new use-case or belief system, and symbolic logic
Optional: each group receives a follow-up Mutation Atlas zine or digital deck
In longer or exhibition-style versions, the output can be formatted into a pop-up gallery, zine-style publication, or internal report.

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WHO RUNS THE WORKSHOP
Adam R. Garcia is a creative director, artist, and speculative systems designer. His work lives at the intersection of design, world-building, and symbolic language. He’s ran teams at Apple and Nike, taught thesis design curricula, worked in the music industry and attended SCI-Arc, gaining a Masters degree in speculative worlding and visualization.

He builds workshops and systems like this to help people critically rethink what they make, and what it means.

Whether designing for real-world futures or rewriting the logic of objects, this is a generative space for radical rethinking.

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