This paper sketches a potential direction of future methods and techniques for the systematic investigation of future human-machine-systems. It describes the concept of exploration, a pre-cursor of the development phase, and complement of tests and experiments, as an underlying principle providing a systematic way to explore the design and use space of potential systems. The overall methodological framework of an “exploroscope” will be sketched and defined as a human-machine system combined with a set of tools and procedures e.g. in a dedicated room specialized on the exploration of human-machine design spaces. Ontologically, exploroscope is related to the concept of a microscope, a tool that is specialized to help humans to see smaller and smaller details of the world, and to the concept of a telescope, a tool that helps humans to see details of the world further away. Exploroscopes belong to the class of macroscopes, initially proposed by de Rosnay [1], a tool that is specialized to help humans to see more or bigger relationships and connections in the world. Exploroscopes can help interdisciplinary design and development teams to develop and experience new human-machine-systems in their specific use situation and space, independently from the question whether the realization of such systems is beyond time and space, or is just around the corner. The paper structures the design space of exploroscopes, and describes the research questions that are open to be investigated. As early examples of exploroscopes, the design exploration laboratories of DLR, RWTH Aachen University, and Fraunhofer FKIE and their application in the research of human-machine-system integration are briefly described
