Speculens: AI-Augmented Mixed Reality for Imaginative Knowledge Creation and Critical Futures Discourse

Imagination plays a vital role in generating knowledge, particularly when engaging with uncertain socio-technical futures. This paper positions imagination as a legitimate epistemic practice that enables individuals to formulate, critique, and reflect on conjectural possibilities. We introduce ‘Speculens’, an AI-augmented mixed reality system that supports knowledge creation through verbalized imagination and embodied interaction. By combining speech-to-image AI with haptic engagement, Speculens allows users to externalize future visions and encounter dynamically generated ‘artifacts-from-the-future.’ Rather than optimizing for visual fidelity, the system fosters critical discourse by prompting reflection on values, assumptions, and trajectories embedded in imagined scenarios. An exploratory study (n = 19) illustrates how such speculative interactions can support situated, affective, and interpretive knowledge work, expanding the epistemological scope of futures thinking and knowledge management.