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The ideology of the future in design fictions
Abstract
The production of fictions within the design field are not disinterested speculations about distant futures, but intentional political actions in the present time. Fictions can entertain as much as cause social friction. This article discusses three sources of design fictions: a global information technology company; an art school in the UK; and a design institute in Brazil. By contrasting the three cases in light of the philosophical work of Álvaro Vieira Pinto, this article deconstructs the ideology of the future—futurology—and proposes acting in the present—handiness—to sketch an ideology of liberation. Instead of supporting the status quo, such ideology could inspire collective action for change. The practices from the three aforementioned sources are discussed to lay the foundations for such ideology of liberation in design fictions.
... (1960a, 1960b, 1973), temporality is the result and the condition for the social production of historicity, the union between "historical memory" and "will of destiny" (Côrtes, 2003, p. 210). In other words, the present corresponds to the realm of freedom, as it is an open field for changing past and future (Gonzatto et al., 2013). Since it is oriented to change, the present always directs toward the future, even when including the past. ...
... 680-695). Domestication of the future is not just a type of media or a form of narrative, but an ideological way of operating with the future dimension (Gonzatto et al., 2013). It is about removing the threatening and unknown nature of the future, domesticating it in advance, in detail (Vieira Pinto, 2005b). ...
... Although they speak about a futuristic scenario, design fiction is materialized in the present, reflecting present values, intentions, and ideologies (Gonzatto et al., 2013). Design scholars concerned with the domestication of the future have tried to counter this strategy in the present by adopting a decolonial perspective over speculative design (Vieira de Oliveira, 2016; Martins & Vieira de Oliveira, 2016;Schultz, 2018). ...
Interaction design is increasingly taking part in privileged history-making activities of our society. These activities require a responsible attitude to temporality, considering multiple courses of time and different ways of being in the world. This research introduces the concept of existential time drawn from the work of Álvaro Vieira Pinto to understand interaction design in the production of existence and its denial. The concept is applied to explain a couple of design fiction projects that strived for the liberation of underdeveloped existences in an educational interaction design studio. The students experimented with handling existential time’s fundamental quality — historicity, or the possibility of making history — through several conjunctural artifacts. The reflection on these experiments suggests that increasing students’ consciousness of historicity is an effective way of countering the domestication of the future, an imperialist strategy that undermines history-making activities in underdeveloped nations.
... Further, the Futures Cone is presented in a way that suggests a universally accepted consideration of the present, with no influence drawn from our perceived history or even how fictional representations of the world help to foster our particular worldviews. The cone therefore fails to acknowledge how these will combine to influence the futures presented (Gonzatto, van Amstel, Merkle, & Hartmann, 2013). We can also draw from the writings of Arturo Escobar in Designs for the Pluriverse (2018) to recognise how the differences in lived experiences of individuals and communities from around the world will also have significant implications for these factors. ...
... The plurality of More-than-Human futures (building uponGonzatto, van Amstel, Merkle, & Hartmann, 2013). ...
A more-than-human right-Abstract: Whilst the recent introduction of the Right-to-Repair to European citizens is undoubtedly a step forward in tackling planned obsolescence, and the resultant deluge of electronic product waste-the efficacy of this new legislation is reliant on consumers availing themselves of this right. Given that repairing and maintaining devices will often require specialist knowledge and skills, it is difficult to assess how effective this right may prove to be in practice. To address this concern, we draw from the expanding infusion of datafication and Artificial Intelligence into everyday products and services via the Internet of Things to consider alternative futures whereby the Right-to-Repair is granted to the device itself. Building upon More-than-Human-Centred Design approaches, we explore the potential embodiment for such a perspective and present two Speculative Designs that concretise this consideration: the Toaster for Life and The Three Rights of AI Things.
... Further, the Futures Cone is presented in a way that suggests a universally accepted consideration of the present, with no influence drawn from our perceived history or even how fictional representations of the world help to foster our particular worldviews. The cone therefore fails to acknowledge how these will combine to influence the futures presented (Gonzatto, van Amstel, Merkle, & Hartmann, 2013). We can also draw from the writings of Arturo Escobar in Designs for the Pluriverse (2018) to recognise how the differences in lived experiences of individuals and communities from around the world will also have significant implications for these factors. ...
... The plurality of More-than-Human futures (building uponGonzatto, van Amstel, Merkle, & Hartmann, 2013). ...
... Recent union actions (Anon, 2018, Rawlinson, 2021, platform co-operative movements (Conaty, 2018), worker perspectives (Graham & Shaw, 2017, Woodcock & Graham, 2019Cant, 2019), and reviews of working practices (Taylor, 2017) highlight a need for technology and legislation to work in the best interest of gig workers. Groups such as the Fairwork Foundation and unions like the Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB), continue to make strides in supporting workers both in the gig economy and more widely, fighting for workers' rights, providing advice and support for organisation, increasing transparency, and challenging the industry in its treatment of gig workers (e.g., collective action against Uber, Deliveroo and Transport for London). ...
... In addition, by centralising the experience of the workers, and involving them in the production, with the intention of avoiding pitfalls of critical design as being reserved by designers to be shown in galleries (e.g Prado &Oliveira, 2017, andTonkinwise, 2015), and instead use design as part of a dialogue around the real concerns of the stakeholders (Thomas, et al., 2017). This is a useful method because, although situated in a speculative future, design fiction uses speculation in service of ideologies (Gonzatto & van Amstel, 2013). In the case of corporate fictions presented by the platforms gig work is an aspirational and shiny example of how high technology can benefit customers in convenience and gig workers in flexibility (Mihov, 2021). ...
Gig economy is presented as disruptive, technologically driven, and forward thinking. Design is explicit in this framing, through use of slick apps to reduce friction and simplify experience for customer and worker. However, this framing is often driven by the platforms, and does not fully recognize the actual experience of work. In this paper we report on a collaborative design process on developing concepts for the future of gig work from a worker-centric perspective. This explicitly does not involve the platforms as stakeholders and uses design fiction as a tool for workers to express fears, joys, and the aspects of their work that are nuanced, reflective and surprising. We reflect on the designs created through this process, the tensions, and opportunities with working with gig work-ing couriers, and issues around power and representation when designing with and for this community.
... fiction (Gonzatto et al., 2013) has on our perception of time. ...
... This futures 'cone' has been adapted and integratesGonzatto, van Amstel, Merkle, and Hartmann's (2013) research, whose hermeneutic model represents the 'interpreted present' as an interplay between past, future, reality and fiction. ...
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968) speculates on humanities technological ascension through the exploration of space and the ultimate transcendence of humanity galvanised by the invention of AI. Every detail of this portrayal was an exercise in World Building, with careful considerations of then state-of-the-art technology and informed predictions. Kubrick’s speculative vision is comparative to the practice of Design Fiction, by suspending disbelief and leveraging a technologies emergence to question the future’s sociotechnical landscape and its ramifications critically. Discovery’s AI system, Hal9000, is a convincing speculation of intelligence with Kubrick’s vision showcasing current and long-term aims in AI research. To this end, Hal9000 uniquely portrays Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) underpinned by visualising ‘narrow’ AI subproblems; thereby, simultaneously highlighting then current research agendas within AI and manifesting them into the aspirational research agenda of human-computer symbiosis. As a result of Kubrick’s mastery in suspending a viewer’s disbelief despite portraying a particular reality for AI, and humanities fascination with artificial life, the term AI simultaneously refers to the grand vision of AGI as well as relating to the contemporary reality of narrow AI. This confusion, along with establishing AI’s ontology, are current challenges that need addressing to create effective and acceptable realisations of AI. This paper responds to the ontological confusion by reviewing and comparing Kubrick’s speculative methodology to the practice of Design Fiction by unpacking Hal9000 as a diegetic prototype while defining the active threads of ‘AI’s Definitional Dualism’. The paper will also present a Design Fiction submerged in the reality of narrow AI and the adoption of a More-Than Human Centred Design approach to address the complexity of AI’s ontology in alternative ways. Finally, this paper will also define the importance of researching the semantics of AI technology and how film and Design Fiction offer a discursive space for design research to transpire
... Nicolas Friederici (2014) suggests that one key attribute in defining a hub is its adaptation to local context and at the same time its participation in the global ICT community. 24 The mentality and culture are important aspects of the tech hubs and the Kampala hubs I visited express a vibe of being focused, lively and determined to innovate for both local and global markets. ...
... 22 Barad, "Posthuman performativity," 801-831 and Cassar, "Becoming." 23 For a list of active technology hubs in Uganda from 2017 se: http://digestafrica.com/6-activetech-hubs-uganda/ Accessed 2018-02-20 24 Friederici, "What is a tech innovation hub anway?." ...
The digital era has brought forward many innovative technologies but their contribution to resilient, inclusive and sustainable societies remain ambiguous. Innovation has often been considered a key component for production and economic growth, but this notion is gradually changing. Innovation is turning into a practice for societal responsibility and sustainable development, transforming the directionality of the grand challenges of our time. I address this transformation of directionality by focusing on the norms and values which are embedded in technology design. The main objective of this thesis is to develop knowledge on how norms of innovation, technology and development are embedded in technoscientific storytelling and how these narratives affect and are affected by technocultural practices. I have approached this objective by engaging with technocultures in Uganda and Sweden where I have explored how assemblages of people, technologies and infrastructures merge, overlap and contrast with each other in technological development. The empirical work has been quite different in scope and context and have tackled norms and values differently. In Uganda I met with representatives from the urban ICT community to discuss the challenges and possibilities with the mobile phone infrastructure. I held an Open Space Workshop on mobile development, and met with the co-founders of two women’s tech initiatives. In Sweden I did a pilot study on a norm-critical game culture and worked with critical design practices in a higher learning context.
The different projects present a complex scenario of how technoscientific stories are power-laden, contradictory and messy. I have located several dominant narratives that affect, and are also affected by, the actors in the different technocultures. The dominant narrative of a linear development of economic growth and technological advancement creates technocultures of marginality and inequality that have ethical implications for individuals and infrastructures in Uganda. Working with feminist and postcolonial technoscience I challenge the binary innovation systems of science and modernity and argue for a more heterogeneous approach to development and epistemology. Another dominant narrative concerns the norms and values of how games and media techno- logy can and should be performed. Working with critical design practices I encourage a learning platform that creatively critiques design processes of ‘the no longer and the not yet’.
The historical present has created unjust relationships that are systematically power- laden and violent. We cannot ignore these relationships. When we choose to re- imagine science, technology and innovation as transformative with the possibility of subverting these violent relationships, we may be able to foster more response-able and caring relationships. When we acknowledge knowledge production as situated, partial and located we learn to listen for more stories than one.
... The technology of presenting possible future technologies is not limited to researchers or authors; large IT companies also try to convince users about their own (current or future) devices by developing fictional scenarios of use [56]. By using design fiction, the scenarios can even include the social and political context of a design or a prototype [37]. ...
This article and the design fictions it presents are bound up with an ongoing qualitative-ethnographic study with Imazighen, the native people in remote Morocco. This group of people is marked by textual and digital illiteracy. We are in the process of developing multi-modal design fictions that can be used in workshops as a starting point for the co-development of further design fictions that envision the local population's desired digital futures. The design fictions take the form of storyboards, allowing for a non-textual engagement. The current content seeks to explore challenges, potentials, margins, and limitations for the future design of haptic and touch-sensitive technology as a means for interpersonal communication and information procurement. Design fictions provide a way of exposing the locals to possible digital futures so that they can actively engage with them and explore the bounds and confines of their literacy and the extent to which it matters.
... We can also envision how technologies not yet here (but soon to come) could be used in everyday life, how they could be discussed and what kinds of meanings, feelings and values people could attach to them. As Gonzatto and his colleagues aptly suggests that design fictions "are not disinterested speculations about distant futures, but intentional practices in the present time" [20]. When it comes to the agency of things, fictional influences have proven to play an important role for its development. ...
This chapter, set in Amsterdam in 2040, illustrates what an urban environment may look like in the future based on current technological advancements and forecasts. In fact, as things get smarter and autonomous, they move from being mere tools to becoming agents with performative capabilities. The city becomes even more an assemblage of agents, both human and nonhuman, ideally performing together for a shared goal: the community welfare. The scenery, the diegetic prototypes, and the accompanying story were crafted by mapping forecasts, reviewing relevant academic literature and popular news, and envisioning situations in which intelligence and autonomy of urban things may be controversial. Design fiction is used as a way to set the stage for discussion and identifying relevant questions and controversies that may arise from the coexistence of humans and intelligent and autonomous things in near‐future cities.
... There are different approaches to the definition and use of design fiction in the academy. As Gonzatto et al. (2013) mention, some researchers suggest that design fiction is a philosophy, while others think it is a design method. In this study, we implement design fiction as a design methodology to provide a common ground between design, science, and science fiction (Bleecker, 2009). ...
Spatial computing technologies enable new interaction possibilities every day between virtual and physical spaces by bringing out new products that aim for a smarter lifestyle. The underlying technology of these new products is named XR (Extended Reality-Cross Reality) technologies, which include augmented, virtual, and mixed reality technologies and perhaps all future reality technologies waiting to be discovered. However, studies on the adaptation of XR technologies to daily life remain product-oriented, and solutions on how spaces will change with these technologies or how these technologies can be integrated into spaces remain deficient. The wide variety of science fiction artworks throughout history shows that people think about life
in the future, and it is seen that these thoughts affect the use of technology in spaces over time. While these effects sometimes highlight the benefits of technology and encourage the use of technology in the future, sometimes people imagine a future without technology, emphasizing dystopias, which affect the adaptation of technology. This research aims to study the possible uses of existing XR technologies in the smart spaces of the future from a different perspective through the concept of design fiction. Here, design fiction will be used as a design technique for speculating future spaces within the scope of spatial computing technologies by analyzing the space, technology, and human relations in science fiction movies and series. In this study, we
analyzed sci-fi movies and TV series to determine the ones containing XR elements, and then we discussed the use of XR in these media productions. In the end, we made speculations on future spaces with XR technology and propose a future space design method with the transition from science fiction to design fiction.
... Technology, in this case, is used as a scapegoat for oppression (Vieira Pinto, 2005), as if the oppressed could oppress themselves by using that technology. This ideology spreads fear for new technologies among users, which prevents them from taking the initiative of early appropriation and of putting their hands on their future (Gonzatto et al., 2013;Van Amstel and Gonzatto, 2022). ...
PURPOSE: This research theorizes the condition of human beings reduced to being users (and only users) in human-computer interaction (HCI), a condition that favors them becoming objects or targets of commercial dark patterns, racialized profiling algorithms, generalized surveillance, gendered interfaces and heteromation.
DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The reconceptualization of the users’ condition is done by confronting HCI theories on users with a dialectical-existential perspective over human ontology. The research is presented as a conceptual paper that includes analyzing and revising those theories to develop a conceptual framework for the user oppression in HCI.
FINDINGS: Most HCI theories contribute to the user oppression with explicit or implicit ontological statements that denies their becoming-more or the possibility of users developing their handiness to the full human potential. Put together, these statements constitute an ideology called userism.
SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS: HCI needs to acknowledge its role in structuring oppression not just in sexism, racism, classism and ableism, but also the specific relation that pertains to HCI: userism. Similar to other fields, acknowledging oppression is the first step toward liberating from oppression.
ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The user is an existential condition for HCI theories, yet few theories can explain in depth how this condition affects human development. From the dialectical-existential perspective, the user condition can be dehumanizing. Computers may intensify existing oppressions through esthetic interactions but these interactions can be subverted for liberation.
KEYWORDS: Users, Human-Computer Interaction, Oppression, Ontological design, Social justice informatics, Userism
... Can a DF ever be less than a thought experiment? Corporate promotional videos for designs-in-progress such as the Google Glass [113] [32], or as promotions of the future vision of the corporation, have been classed as DFs by some [108]. As promotional videos, these works seek to persuade (at least) as much as speculate. ...
In the year 2021, wearable technology could look beautiful and feel magical, but instead is exemplified by a plain wristband that looks suspiciously like a prison monitor. How can we make wearable technology that respects our privacy, enhances our daily lives, integrates with our other connected devices without leashing us to a smartphone, and visually expresses who we are? This study uses a novel method of participatory design fiction (PDFi) to understand potential users of everyday wearable technology through storytelling. I recruited participants from the general public and gave them a five-point prompt to create a design fiction (DF), which inspired the user-centred design of an everyday connected wearable device. The participants each received a technology probe to wear in the wild for a year. They then updated their DFs as a way to reflect on the implications of the technology. For the purposes of privacy, augmenting device functionality through interoperability, and integration into an Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, I used the Hub-of-All-Things personal data store to provide the software infrastructure. By listening to their stories, we can elicit design concepts directly from the users, to help us create wearable IoT devices that put the wearer at the centre of the design process, and are satisfying both functionally and emotionally.
... This is not to say we should completely ignore the past, as we may have lost potential futures through the decisions we made, but rather we should be aware of its influence. Further, we should acknowledge that there is no universally accepted view of the past, the present, or indeed the future (as Figure 2 suggests) -but rather these are individually constructed based on both reality and fiction [7] to create an ultimately particular reality [8]. This plurality of perspectives is vital as it also acknowledges the dominance of western visions in technology futures "The notion of oww [One-World World] signals the predominant idea in the West that we all live within a single world, made up of one underlying reality (one nature) and many cultures. ...
... And indeed, the US science fiction writer Bruce Sterling is often credited with coining the term 'design fiction', while speculative design is traced back to interaction design curricula at the Royal College of Art, developed by design researchers such as Dunne and Raby (Auger, 2013). Both speculative design and design fiction are framed as a method; methodology; a design technique; a research trend; a genre or a tactic … among an expanding list of other terms (Gonzatto et al, 2013;Malpass, 2017;Rosenbak, 2018). Design scholars agree that both speculative design and design fiction are located within the field of critical design practice (Martins, 2014;Malpass, 2017;Rosenbak, 2018;Tharp and Tharp, 2018). ...
This paper explores the relationship between speculative design and ethics, both within and beyond the context of design pedagogic research. It examines some our struggles in, and motivations for, engaging with speculative methods in design as design scholars and practitioners, by reflecting on research which aimed to explore whether speculative, future facing design curricula would have an impact on raising design students’ awareness of design’s agency, beyond the micro-environment of specific design disciplines or disciplinary industrial contexts.
We draw on feminist theory and critique to go on to argue that speculative methods could help the design discipline to break out of its oft wilful ontological blindness but, in order to fulfil their full critical and transformative potential, foundational ethics, and questions of positionality, require equal status around the table. If speculation is to facilitate the surfacing of issues around positionality and foundational ethics within the design curriculum and beyond, contestations central to feminist critique such as ‘what futures and whose futures’ are needed.
... Design fiction or speculative design involves imagining a fictional technological diegetic product system in a fictional future or past world to identify its opportunities and pitfalls for our society [11,54]. Design fiction aims to offer controversial or ideological products or services to lead people to critically reflect on their current situation and not to develop realistic services [55]. ...
The sharing economy, virtualizing the peer-to-peer-based sharing of physical or logical resources such as cars, houses or people’s spare time with digital technologies, has recently attracted a great deal of attention. Investigating the feasibility of sharing other types of physical resources, particularly human bodies, offers promising opportunities with which to expand the current scope of the sharing economy. This study explores the opportunities and pitfalls of collectively sharing parts of the body, particularly human eyes and ears, to build and explore novel services based on wearable cameras and microphones. The paper proposes a novel concept named CollectiveEyes to realize a digital platform for collectively sharing human seeing and hearing, then presents a prototype platform of CollectiveEyes to demonstrate key features of CollectiveEyes. The essential contribution of the paper is that it reveals potential opportunities and pitfalls of collectively sharing physical capabilities of the human eyes and ears for building a novel digital platform and diverse services on the platform. We mainly found the following two promising research directions extracted from the current study: (1) CollectiveEyes enhances human thinking abilities through multiple visual perspectives; (2) nonhuman’s visual perspectives offer potential opportunities to access more diverse perspectives for augmenting human thinking abilities.
... "before the end of another two decades" [Fields 2016:1]. This future-oriented perspective is not without criticism, as it has been suggested that it might create a barrier for participants when relating to the topic [Gonzatto et al. 2013] or "cultivate unrealistic anticipatory relationships" [Harmon et al. 2017:1]. Researchers who use design fiction in their practical work argued instead that it is a useful tool to make the future tangible (e.g. ...
Design fictions are used in HCI to position emerging technologies in fictional future worlds, through which the complexities of our relationships with technologies can be represented, explored and experienced. They promise to stimulate discussions about sensitive topics, such as the future of technology-enabled care, a complex area with contrasting emotional, social and practical views and wishes. However, the term design fiction is currently associated with a wide range of uses, and artefacts. It is also linked to contrasting philosophies and frameworks, which are often not made explicit, as I show in an initial survey with practitioners. This makes it difficult to identify what makes a design fiction good or effective for different purposes. This thesis aims to answer the research question: How can design fiction be used and evaluated in understanding sensitive settings? I turn to the Constructive Design Research framework and adapt it to classify how design fiction is used in HCI. I outline how design fiction can be used in the showroom approach, where it is most commonly placed, but also how it can be used as a lab and field approach to gather insights into the responses to design fictions. I developed design fictions and explored how they can be used to further discussions around the use of monitoring technologies in dementia care: an area challenging to research because of ethical issues associated with deployment studies of prototype technologies. The contribution of this thesis is threefold: first, a methodological contribution into the use of design fiction in HCI and an evaluation of the Constructive Design Research framework as a means to classify research through design fiction. Second, insights into participants’ views and wishes about technology-led care in regards to dementia. Third, a design contribution of artefacts that can be used to stimulate further debate around the topic.
... Design fiction diegetic prototyping has potential to respond well to the call for immersion techniques involving potential users (Franke et al., 2006) by presenting ideas without attempting to convey unnecessary underlying technicalities or details of the specific technology that could confuse rather than inform . Hales (2013) states that it is not simply an ideological perspective of some futuristic context, but it is about revealing "intentional practices in the present time" (Gonzatto et al., 2013). Thus, whereas narrative stories alone do not yield a visualized new or emergent technology-in-use, its visual representation through a prototype enables possible new insights to emerge in narrative (storytelling) processes. ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a design fiction diegetic prototyping methodology and research framework for investigating service innovations that reflect future uses of new and emerging technologies.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on speculative fiction, the authors propose a methodology that positions service innovations within a six-stage research development framework. The authors begin by reviewing and critiquing designerly approaches that have traditionally been associated with service innovations and futures literature. In presenting their framework, authors provide an example of its application to the Internet of Things (IoT), illustrating the central tenets proposed and key issues identified.
Findings
The research framework advances a methodology for visualizing future experiential service innovations, considering how realism may be integrated into a designerly approach.
Research limitations/implications
Design fiction diegetic prototyping enables researchers to express a range of “what if” or “what can it be” research questions within service innovation contexts. However, the process encompasses degrees of subjectivity and relies on knowledge, judgment and projection.
Practical implications
The paper presents an approach to devising future service scenarios incorporating new and emergent technologies in service contexts. The proposed framework may be used as part of a range of research designs, including qualitative, quantitative and mixed method investigations.
Originality/value
Operationalizing an approach that generates and visualizes service futures from an experiential perspective contributes to the advancement of techniques that enables the exploration of new possibilities for service innovation research.
... They can be short stories, narratives, films, research papers, and, as mentioned, even prototypes [23,46]. Here, the technology of presenting possible future technologies is not limited to researchers or authors; large IT companies also try to convince users of their own (current or future) devices by developing fictional scenarios of usage [22]. By using design fiction, the scenarios can even include the social and political context of a design or a prototype [13]. ...
There is currently uncertainty in the research community as to how ICT can and should be designed in such a way that it can be convincingly integrated into the everyday lives of prison inmates. In this paper, we discuss a design fiction that closes this research gap. The descriptions and results of the study are purely fictitious. Excluded is the State of the Art as well as the description of the legal situation of prisons in Germany. The analysis of the fictional study data designed here thus refers to the real world in order to derive ethical guidelines and draw practical conclusions. It is our intention to use these results as a possible basis for further research. The paper presents results of an explorative study dealing with the design, development and evaluation of an AI-based Smart Mirror System, Prison AI 2.0, in a German prison. Prison AI 2.0 was developed for daily use and voluntarily tested by eight prisoners over a period of 12 months to gain insight into their individual and social impact, with an emphasis on its ability to actively support rehabilitation. Based on qualitative data, our findings suggest that intelligent AI-based devices can actually help promote such an outcome. Our results also confirm the valuable impact of (Psychosocial) ICT on the psychological, social and individual aspects of prison life, and in particular how prisoners used the Smart Mirror system to improve and maintain their cognitive, mental and physical state and to restore social interactions with the outside world. With the presentation of these results we want to initiate discussions about the use of ICT by prisoners in closed prisons in order to identify opportunities and risks.
... A diferença principal está no processo, que se assemelhou ao design participativo (Karasti, 2014;Le Dantec & Disalvo, 2013) e ao metadesign (Vassão, 2008), porém, sem a copresença física típica de oficinas de codesign e sem a participação de profissionais de design. Este tipo de prática tem sido descrita como design livre, uma prática infraestruturante que abre processos de design para a participação em diferentes níveis, permitindo que todos atuem como projetistas e disseminadores de conhecimento de design (Gonzatto et al., 2013;Van Amstel & Gonzatto, 2016). ...
... And then it becomes familiar and eventually "normal"" (Dator, 2007). Furthermore, as experiences and images of the past and the present shape the way in which futures are conceptualised (Sardar, 2010;Gonzatto, 2013), introducing scenarios as sites of discussions can also help with clarifying agendas, expectations, underlying values, and assumptions. Such assumptions refer both to what is considered preferable, but also what is probable, possible, or plausible since probabilistic models of futures are largely influenced by the tools and practices that generated them (Dator, 2007). ...
This paper examines the future of community and values for 2050 in three areas: likely trends, probable trends, and possible outcomes. It evaluates current and emergent patterns, in particular the overarching shifts toward a more individualised society; the use of digital technology as both enabler and inhibiter of participation in wider society; and the rise in socio-spatial inequalities and the empowering responses to those inequalities.
In order to generate new insights and establish a wider understanding of the implications of and for communities and values out to 2050, our paper sets out a novel way of examining key trends and patterns through five stages. First, we introduce a matrix that enables us to identify examples of communities across their different states (i.e. formation, movement, preservation, dissolution) in relation to core characteristics of communities (i.e. access, place, power, security). Secondly, we use a wide range of different examples of communities to populate this matrix to illustrate the complex interrelationships of the different types, their values, and scale of influence. Thirdly, having examined these examples through business as usual scenarios, we then use a speculative mode to explore radical alternatives based on the evidence collected to understand the challenges, barriers, risks and threats that may face the future of communities and values out to 2050. These scenarios are described in order to explain the way events might unfold and in doing so, enable us to understand what guidance and actions may need to be followed to direct us toward a desirable future. Fourthly, we then use an analytical mode to examine evidence that enables assessment of the underlying changes informing risks and threats (i.e. who we are, what we will do, why we will do it). Finally, we compare these two modes to understand how the future of community and values might change over the next 30 years.
... Há iniciativas relacionadas à filosofia e condução do design de interação inspiradas em projetos e comunidades de FLOSS, por exemplo, design livre [22,25] e open design [17,18,20]. Duas das iniciativas que fomentam o design livre são: i) a Plataforma Corais 6 , que possui ferramentas que apoiam a colaboração e o desenvolvimento de projetos com participantes distribuídos geograficamente; e ii) o site Designlivre.org ...
The challenges of design and development of software with geographically distributed stakeholders have not been widely addressed in the literature by the human-computer interaction (HCI) community. Although there are reports of experiences about interaction design in distributed software development (DSD), it is unclear how interaction design has been conducted in DSD projects. This paper presents the results of a survey conducted with the objective of identifying the perception of professionals involved in DSD on interaction design and to verify how interaction design has been conducted in DSD. The results indicated that good practices of interaction design have been adopted in a considerable part of the DSD projects. However, communicability and accessibility have not been considered in most DSD projects. In addition, participatory methods, techniques, and practices have been little used in DSD. The results of this survey provide an overview of how interaction design has been conducted in DSD projects and present the difficulties, challenges, and gaps of interaction design in DSD. We concluded that there is a need for future research to understand interaction design in detail and develop new solutions (or adaptations of existing solutions) of interaction design for the DSD context.
... Time was a naturally recurring point of discussion. Fictional abstracts are artefacts unstuck in time, situated in diverse futures, hinting at different pasts to come (Lundgren & McCloud 2042, Geinhaust 2050, Picard & Xavier 2064 ), yet built out of the anxieties of the present 7 (Gonzatto et al. 2013). In reflection of how wise we are today, Pargman (T) asks "how do people who live in 1968 perceive us? ...
In this paper, we present a structured report on a dialogue on the Future of Computing and Wisdom. The dialogue consists of a recorded and transcribed discussion between researchers and practitioners in the field of Human–Computer Interaction that was held at workshop in conjunction with the 10th Nordic Conference on Human–Computer Interaction in September 2018. However, the dialogue also encompasses workshop participants’ preparatory work with writing “fictional abstracts” – abstracts of yet-to-be-written research papers that will be published in 2068. The polyvocal dialogue that is reported upon thus includes not just the voices of researchers and practitioners who attended the workshop, but also includes the voices of the future researchers of 2068 who wrote the abstracts in question as well as the voices of the organisms, individuals, intelligent agents and communities who are the subjects, victims, beneficiaries and bystanders of wise (or unwise) future computing systems.
... If we are to move beyond this situation we need to first conceive a future which accommodates the potential for future DIY Medical Devices to be fully exploited. However, getting authorities to engage with futures is often difficult as they can get bogged down within discussions of the present, that are, in turn, more often than not based upon the past (Gonzatto, van Amstel, Merkle & Hartmann, 2013) In this paper, we use Design Fiction to explicate a future in which the widespread utilisation of DIY Medical devices plausibly exists. Although the design fiction methodology is becoming increasingly well established, one of its foundational tenets is the power of the 'diegetic prototype', a concept whose foundations include the realisation that fictional representations of medical devices can have a profound influence over the publics' perception of real medical devices (Kirby, 2010). ...
... Design fictions can be narratives, short stories, films, objects, and prototypes (Blythe 2014b), taking also the form of utopias and dystopias (Knutz, Markussen, and Christensen 2013). Scholars tried to define requirements and standards for specifying design fictions, such as utilising tropes, i.e. figurative language like metaphor or irony that make ideas relatable (DiSalvo 2012), or incorporating social factors (Gonzatto et al. 2013), as well as to outline taxonomies (Hales 2013), method toolboxes (Grand and Wiedmer 2010) and models (Lindley and Coulton 2014). Despite these attempts, design fiction practice remains flexible and open to interpretation, so that it has been proposed to define it as pre-paradigmatic (Lindley and Coulton 2016), where different schools of thought and approaches can coexist. ...
Human–computer interaction researchers are increasingly designing behaviour change technologies for a variety of purposes, from promoting healthier lifestyles to support sustainable habits. These technologies are commonly assessed in terms of their effectiveness in modifying human behaviour. Nevertheless, the multifaceted social and psychological long-term consequences of these kinds of artifacts are often forgotten. To explore their design space, we involved 48 students asking them to envision and design future behaviour change systems. Following the recent interest in design fictions, which present ‘fantasy prototypes’ in plausible near futures, we investigated how designs might help people think of the presuppositions and implications of technology. Then, we analyzed four design fictions to explore themes that are often forgotten in the current behaviour change debate. We finally discussed the empirical and methodological outcomes of our study and presented a series of design considerations and research questions that could stimulate further reflections on behaviour change technologies and the method we employed.
... If we are to move beyond this situation we need to first conceive a future which accommodates the potential for future DIY Medical Devices to be fully exploited. However, getting authorities to engage with futures is often difficult as they can get bogged down within discussions of the present, that are, in turn, more often than not based upon the past (Gonzatto, van Amstel, Merkle & Hartmann, 2013) In this paper, we use Design Fiction to explicate a future in which the widespread utilisation of DIY Medical devices plausibly exists. Although the design fiction methodology is becoming increasingly well established, one of its foundational tenets is the power of the 'diegetic prototype', a concept whose foundations include the realisation that fictional representations of medical devices can have a profound influence over the publics' perception of real medical devices (Kirby, 2010). ...
With ever increasing demands on healthcare around the world, ensuring adequate provision for patients is becoming more and more challenging. In this paper, we focus on future healthcare provision, specifically looking at how Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Medical Devices might become widely adopted. Our motivation is to move beyond current debates, which tend to focus on technological capabilities, and instead consider the implications of those technologies for future policy and regulation. Discussions around the future are often challenging, as people find it difficult to envisage how disruptive technologies make futures that stand apart from their current and previous experiences. To facilitate these discussions, we use Design Fiction to speculate about a multipurpose DIY Medical Device which can support various medical conditions. Using Design Fiction in this way allows us to concretize and explore a future world in which DIY Medical Devices exist, and thus enable meaningful discussions around the social and ethical implications of such DIY medical cultures.
... The speculative future explored by The Pilgrimage Project materialized an educational environment that accepts the interconnectedness of theory and practice by demonstrating how the blurring of boundaries affords new and productive pedagogical approaches. The Pilgrimage Model, and speculative method more generally, suggests a futurology in which enacting and imagining technological futures generate useful effects in the present (Gonzatto et al., 2013;Ross, 2016: 7). When those speculations also tackle the material past, such as the historical presence of Old North, we might suggest a ''retrofuturology,'' in which the rigorous study of history (e.g. the history of Old North) inspires future possibilities of digital knowledge and action (Osborn, 2017: 200). ...
This article presents the Pilgrimage Model as a template for educators wishing to lead students on site-specific studies of engaged learning. During the 2015–2016 academic year, a group of Georgetown University students, faculty, and staff pursued the Pilgrimage Project, a year-long pedagogical experiment in interdisciplinary education and speculative design. Students researched Georgetown’s historic Old North building from a variety of disciplinary angles and presented the results of their collective research in an on-site multimedia exhibit. The article analyzes the Pilgrimage Project from a practical perspective, as an effective means of delivering robust educational experiences, and from a theoretical perspective, as an example of speculative method in education research. As a model of interdisciplinary education, the Pilgrimage Model effectively merges disciplinary-specific course goals, in-depth student-led research, and student skill development in digital design and multimedia production.
... O termo "ficções projetuais" é uma proposta de tradução, de Frederick van Amstel para o termo em inglês design fictions que indica projetos de interação especulativos, os quais incluem tecnologias emergentes e cenários de futuro próximo.[17] ...
Human-Computer Interaction literature often includes the allegory of computers oppressing users through badly designed interfaces. Analyzing this oppression relation through the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire, it is possible to say that computers are not oppressors, yet they can be considered oppressive if one social group is using it to oppress another. This article introduces an alternative proposal that appropriates the computer as a space of possibilities to overcome oppression relations, similarly to the Theater of the Oppressed of Augusto Boal. An experiment of critical pedagogy in Interaction Design confirmed the effectiveness human body as a fulcrum to the interaction design project and as a springboard to understanding and overcoming oppressions mediated by the computer.
... Traditionally, design fiction or speculative design involves imagining a fictional technological diegetic product system in a fictional future or past world in order to identify its potential pitfalls and possibilities for our society [19]. Design fiction aims to offer controversial or ideological products or services to make people to critically reflect on their current situations-not to develop realistic services [27]. Therefore, considering how the services can be realized in the real world in not usually considered. ...
This paper reports a process to derive intermediate-level knowledge as a service design and analysis framework for designing digital services to offer alternate reality experiences, and analyzes the possible opportunities and pitfalls of the framework. The user experience felt by refining the meaning of real space through virtuality is defined as alternate reality experiences. Alternate reality experiences are typically achieved by modifying our eyesight or replacing our five senses to others, and they make our world interactive by implicitly influencing human attitudes and behaviors. First, the paper extracts observations for deriving the intermediate-level knowledge through the discussions raised in exploration workshops. In the workshops, the three digital services that utilize diverse strategies to offer alternate reality experiences are chosen. The workshops’ main focus is to examine how a person could have a sense of values in alternate reality experiences via the three digital services. Second, the paper shows how to derive the proposed service design and analysis framework from the extracted observations through expert analysis, then an overview of the framework is explained. Finally, the paper presents feasibility analysis of the proposed framework through a new digital service named Mindful Reminder as a case study for refining the service through focus group discussions. The approach described in the paper is to report a concrete process through which extracted observations can be converted into intermediate-level knowledge that can be used to design alternate reality experiences. Traditionally, the process for generating intermediate-level knowledge has not been well-documented; however, documenting the process is very important in theorizing the design of alternate reality experiences and helps effectively develop a variety of emerging advanced digital services that will offer alternate reality experiences in the future.
... Therefore, instead of engaging design fiction in terms of the use and utility of designing solutions to problems, participatory design fiction practices might better be thought of as convening a 'discursive space' (Lindley, 2015) which plays an influencing role in a cycle that incorporates representations of the past and future, but may only be interpreted in the present (Gonzattoa, van Amstela, Merkleb, & Hartmann, 2013). These spaces might invite pupils into an expanded debate on new educational artefacts or arrangements that incorporate questioning and opening discussion around the values and criteria which inform the assessments by which decisions are made. ...
This article reports on one part of an on-going project, the Near Future School, which aims to translate and explore the potential of participatory design fiction practices for use with young people and those that work with them to explore near future scenarios of education that open up alternative and plural futures in the context of processes of foreclosure in a neoliberalising society. The focus here is to explore the practical and ethical issues of developing a speculative form of governance, using the philosophy of Benedict de Spinoza, as an act of imaginative world building through participatory design fictions. The research raises a series of questions and issues relating to understanding how design fiction's multiple inheritances, from fiction and design or art and design, need to be better understood and enacted within participatory design fiction processes.
... In design contexts, counterfactual thinking can be found in design fiction and speculative design cultures that use material constructs (media design) to create visions of the future: a "discursive space within which new forms of cultural artefact (futures) might emerge" (Hales 2013). Gonzatto et al. (2013) state that design fiction as practiced in future technological scenarios often is too utopian or depicts the future as a continuity of the present status quo, instead of a social change. They state that designers can use materiality to open up these scenarios to a broader audience in a participatory process, which allows to move from naive to more open-ended critical alternatives for the past, present and future. ...
This paper discusses counterfactual scripting to critically inquire and give form to Participatory Design (PD) processes in an age of ubiquitous participation. In its often superficial application in various societal domains, the processes and instruments for participation are often cut loose from their political context. The stories of what has happened in a PD process are told through a clear storyline that develops logically via different design moves towards a well-defined plot; leaving out any alternative narratives. Inspired by counterfactual history, we reject this teleological perspective and explore counterfactual scripting as a way to give renewed attention to the political context in PD. We do this by giving form to the design process as a pluralistic process that not only focuses on the future, but creates alternatives for the past to speculate about the future. We evaluate counterfactual thinking in a participatory architecture and urban planning process.
... For example, DiSalvo argues that to be anything more than a bland provocation then design fictions must utilize tropes to make ideas relatable [11]. Gonzatto et al. remind us not to forget social factors and that we must "acknowledge the uncertain unfolding of history" in order to have any meaningful interrogation of the future [16]. Lindley proposes a set of terminology to help authors specify the intent behind their design fiction practice, from critical research-centric approaches, to corporate vapour fictions [33]. ...
This paper considers how design fictions in the form of 'imaginary abstracts' can be extended into complete 'fictional papers'. Imaginary abstracts are a type of design fiction that are usually included within the content of 'real' research papers, they comprise brief accounts of fictional problem frames, prototypes, user studies and findings. Design fiction abstracts have been proposed as a means to move beyond solutionism to explore the potential societal value and consequences of new HCI concepts. In this paper we contrast the properties of imaginary abstracts, with the properties of a published paper that presents fictional research, Game of Drones. Extending the notion of imaginary abstracts so that rather than including fictional abstracts within a 'non-fiction' research paper, Game of Drones is fiction from start to finish (except for the concluding paragraph where the fictional nature of the paper is revealed). In this paper we review the scope of design fiction in HCI research before contrasting the properties of imaginary abstracts with the properties of our example fictional research paper. We argue that there are clear merits and weaknesses to both approaches, but when used tactfully and carefully fictional research papers may further empower HCI's burgeoning design discourse with compelling new methods.
... There are those that argue that speculative design is actually primarily all about the present in that it is the point in time in which humans can take action and the role of the speculative presents or futures, coupled with our view of the past, is what influences the actions taken or the discourse created (Gonzatto, van Amstel, Merkle, and Hartmann 2013). ...
s games are inherently about exploring alternative worlds this paper proposes the utilisation of games as a medium for speculative design through which players can explore scenarios that represent plausible alternative presents and speculative futures The paper reviews futures orientated design practices such as Design Fiction, Speculative Design, and Critical Design alongside complimentary research areas in games studies such as Critical Play, Persuasive Games, and Procedural Rhetoric to create a frame for using games as speculative design practice. The aim of this design frame is to create debate and facilitate productive future practice through which designers can develop games that encourage user reflection by enabling players to reflect upon the complex challenges the world now faces.
... It is worth being somewhat cautious, though, of how well these objects function in terms of issue articulation and transformation. A number of commentators have expressed worries that some of this work is didactic without offering empowering solutions (Kiem, 2013;Gonzatto et al., 2013;Thackara, 2013;Prada and Oliveira, 2014). One problem is that many of the objects of critical and speculative design exist only within art gallery settings and do not become actively involved in facilitating material publics. ...
Cultivating resilience while navigating uncertainty is crucial for refugees. In the Netherlands, after receiving asylum and the right to work, refugees are often urged to adapt or evolve in hopes of successfully integrating into the Dutch economy. How do forced migrants who pursue work in creative enterprises help us rethink the relationship between forging new lives and uncertain futures? In this paper, resiliency of refugees is presented as a process of creative performance and experimentation. Efforts taken by refugees to explore, or ‘self‐potentialize’, new future creative pathways suggest that resilience is overly simplified when defined as a pursuit of resistance to integrate and conform into established creative industries. The stories of two refugees living in Amsterdam showcase how resiliency is future‐oriented, processual (Pink & Seale 2017), and connected to the preservation of one's ‘capacity to aspire’ (Appadurai 2013). ‘Future‐making’ is embedded into their creative pursuits and weaved into their ongoing journeys of personal and professional development. Ethnographic inquiry into the perspective of refugees pursuing work in the creative economy sheds light on the complexities and nuances of rehearsing alternative imagined futures.
The Internet of Things (IoT) has garnered heightened interest and momentum in recent years. These connected devices have extended the concurrent rise of data collection and processing within the everyday objects that cohabit our human lives. Though technology has always changed the way we live our lives these ‘smart’ devices are adding new challenges—particularly concerning privacy and security—not previously experienced when using their older ‘dumb’ predecessors. These challenges are not always apparent to their human cohabitors and often only come to the fore when something untoward happens as a consequence of the data being collected.
These objects are not to blame, they exist in their worlds governed by their own rules established by their creators rather than their users. Designers have traditionally been taught to present these objects as neutral participants in our human lives; there to help, but not supersede. However, these objects exist within many independent and interdependent assemblages of human and non-human actants that go beyond the previously experienced human-object relationship.
Through this discourse, I highlight the overall aim of this thesis to ask questions around our traditional practices of design concerning IoT. In particular, this research strives to do many things: it attempts to intertwine philosophical debate with the act of design; it moves towards an argument of rethinking design orthodoxies around human-centeredness in favour of object-oriented-ness; it explores an alternative side to the phenomenon of the IoT, arguing for agency in a post-anthropocentric perspective of the world and its implications; it tries to bridge the gap between practice-based design research and theory by passing through a veil of philosophical intrigue. But at its core, is an advocacy for the presence of a playful attitude within the practice of design, arguing for an attitude of playfulness as an integral part of the design process. How being playfully charged to create artefacts can usher in unique perspectives for design and technology.
The research is enacted through an iterative Research through Design ideology, using a transdisciplinary approach of Ludic and Speculative Design practice that explore alternative perspectives towards the design of IoT. It is conducted through an exploration of Object-Oriented Philosophy as a means to enact a metaphorical ‘carpentry’ of artefacts that practice philosophical arguments through their execution. In the process of designing three artefacts—a model for a philosophical view of IoT, a board game, and a bespoke deck of tarot cards—this research builds upon the idea of More-than Human-Centeredness for the design of IoT, by introducing the creation of bespoken method assemblages as a means for playful design exploration. It concludes on a debate around the implications and potential of design thinking in a post-anthropocentric perspective through the inclusion of playfulness and philosophy as assets for design, and, the use of philosophical carpentry as a methodology for understanding the nebulous nature of IoT.
This chapter presents pioneering approaches to creativity through science fiction, before developing some features of design fiction. John Arnold used a method inspired by science fiction to stimulate the creativity of young researchers. He proposed to project himself into the environment of an imaginary planet, Arcturus IV, in order to project problems and establish original solutions. Design fiction is a practice that has been developed increasingly in organizations that use the science fiction imaginary world in order to innovate. It allows a diversification of sociotechnical concepts through original works produced in an innovative framework. The institutionalization of science fiction, or science fictionalization, is the consequence of design fiction. Technotypes, like identity archetypes, belong to an ancestral psychology. Their study provides an understanding of how the economy works, as innovations are linked to an analysis and discovery of these technotypes. Technotypes are the result of a recollection of ancestral events and the activation of fundamental archetypes.
A área de Design de Interação recorrentemente é abordada por práticas de projeto que tornam invisíveis as contribuições de diversos atores envolvidos no processos de design. Em projetos de interação de plataformas digitais, estas práticas são frequentes, refletindo ideologias de projetos que estão ligadas a sistemas econômicos e a relações de poder, que invisibilizam a materialidade de relações de trabalho, assim como dos projetos feitos pelos assim chamados de “usuários”. Este trabalho de conclusão de curso busca reconhecer e caracterizar a dimensão projetual invisível, construída ao longo do tempo, presente em plataformas digitais. Este estudo se desenvolve majoritariamente a partir das concepções de Infraestrutura da Informação e de ação infraestruturante, sendo complementadas com os conceitos de ação metaestruturante, metadesign e meta-organizações. O trabalho empírico consiste na combinação de diferentes abordagens etnográficas, a fim de re-construir a narrativa escondida em registros encontrados em uma plataforma livre para trabalhos cooperativos. No decorrer dos capítulos, são exploradas as relações ecológicas tecidas por diferentes atores ao se organizarem em grupo, assim como da interferência dessa meta-organização no projeto de interação da plataforma estudada. Também é analisado o papel da ideologia projetual no desenvolvimento de plataformas digitais e de como estas proporcionam autonomia projetual para diferentes Coletivos Autogestionários na produção de suas Identidades Visuais. Como resultado, identificamos uma relação projetual que se difere da literatura convencional de design de interação, a que denominamos de Infradesign.
In Organisationen unterschiedlichster Art herrscht seit jeher der Wunsch vor,
Entwicklungen frühzeitig zu erkennen oder möglicherweise selbst anstoßen zu
können. Klassische Werkzeuge der Zukunftsforschung stoßen im Angesicht einer
prinzipiell offenen Zukunft jedoch immer öfter an ihre Grenzen.
Speziell der Bereich des Designs ist dabei weiter, die Science-Fiction dient hier
dem Zweck der Inspiration zur Gestaltung als auch der Spekulation um mögliche
Zukünfte. Insofern stellt sich an dieser Stelle die Frage, inwiefern dieser Beitrag
der SF für die Gestaltung von Produkten nicht auch für Geschäftsmodelle
genutzt werden kann.
Um diesen Beitrag freilegen zu können, wurde das Genre der SF sowie das
Konzept des Geschäftsmodells auf theoretischer Ebene untersucht und
miteinander in Bezug in Bezug gesetzt. So konnten verschiedene Synergien und
potentielle Beiträge der SF auf inhaltlicher und prozessualer Ebene identifiziert
werden, die für die Gestaltung von Geschäftsmodellen hilfreich sein können.
Im Folgenden wurde eine Methode konzipiert, die bestehende Ansätze adaptiert
und als reflexive Schleife auf dem Format der Design-Fiction ansetzt, um den
inhaltlichen Beitrag identifizierbar und durch ethnographische Praxis lesbar
und nutzbar zu machen.
As objects become smart, communicative and even agentive, what happens to the fight for recognition of these qualities in animals, those other ‘nonhumans’? As humans learn to think of objects in new ways, how might this affect the lives of animals, and our relation with/to them? In this essay, we are interested in beginning a different conversation about the Internet of Things and robots by looking at them from the perspective of animal studies, that is from a perspective that values the experience and lives of nonhuman animals and that is alert to the ways in which human activities, including discursive activities, damage or end those lives.
The smart city infrastructure will soon start to include smart agents, i.e., agentic things, which co-exist and co-perform with human citizens. This near-future scenario explores the flexible types of collaborations and relationships between the human and nonhuman citizens. Drawing on current technology forecasts and AI/robotics literature, we created five fictional concepts for reflecting on themes we deem important for such collaborations: responsibility, delegation, relationship, priority, and adaptation. The promises, challenges and threats of these themes are discussed in this paper, together with the new questions that were opened up through the use of design fiction as a method.
Participatory design is in essence very malleable as any design technique could lend itself to it, as long as users and stakeholders are involved. Design fictions however, have more often been used as either a vehicle for critical designs, or as a sheer design tool, created by designers for designers as a means to drive ideation. In the 2010s however, the HCI community has opened up for using design fictions in conjunction with participatory methods and in parallel, researchers have started to explore the practices of creating and using fictions more thoroughly. In response to this, this workshop aims to explore if, how, and when in the design process participatory design practices and design fictions can be combined. We aim to create a first overview of the combined Participatory Design / Design Fiction process, including a set of practical examples. In this we invite not only interaction design researchers and practitioners, but also participants from related fields such as creative writers and artists in general.
There is a long tradition of designers creating visions of technological futures. We contrast the properties of two related types of future envisionment, whose commonality is using ‘world building’ to showcase or prototype technological concepts. We consider commercial visions that depict potential future products within possible future worlds, and by extending the concept of Vapourware we term these ‘Vapourworlds’. We contrast Vapourworlds with Design Fictions, a class of envisionment that inherits qualities of criticality and exploration from its familial antecedents’ radical design and critical design. By comparing these two approaches we intend to shed light on both. Superficially these world building endeavours appear similar, yet under the surface an underlying difference in intentionality permeates the substance of both practices. We conclude with a position that by highlighting the contrasts between these practices, mutually beneficial insights become apparent.
This paper argues that design fiction is a powerful term in part because it is malleable. A wide range of differing design fictions are emerging and we pursue a spatial metaphor to provide a map based on literary approaches. Following Margaret Atwood we trace design fiction back to marvel and wonder tales such as the Arabian Nights through to the science fiction of the nineteenth and twentieth century. We suggest science, magic, ambiguity and irony as the cardinal points of design fiction. We then apply these four different approaches to design fiction to the concept of a divorce app for older people. We argue that currently design fiction is dominated by scientistic and ironic design fiction and suggest that magic and ambiguity are currently under explored.
There is a long tradition of designers creating visions of technological futures. We contrast the properties of two related types of future envisionment, whose commonality is using 'world building' to showcase or prototype technological concepts. We consider commercial visions that depict potential future products within possible future worlds, and by extending the concept of Vapourware we term these 'Vapourworlds'. We contrast Vapourworlds with Design Fictions, a class of envisionment that inherits qualities of criticality and exploration from its familial antecedents' radical design and critical design. By comparing these two approaches we intend to shed light on both. Superficially these world building endeavours appear similar, yet under the surface an underlying difference in intentionality permeates the substance of both practices. We conclude with a position that by highlighting the contrasts between these practices, mutually beneficial insights become apparent.
This paper introduces the concept of 'design fiction probes', critical narratives to elicit open-ended responses from potential future users of proposed technologies. Inspired and guided by academic literature, such a fictional narrative allows the reader to explore potential consequences of the use of technologies before they actually exist. The method is illustrated by a design fiction on the topic of smart houses and their potential applications for chronic conditions, such as dementia. Based on constant monitoring and automated responses, these technologies have been criticized on ethical grounds. As these devices are not yet widely commercially available, little is known about their real-world impact. By bringing together what is known to write a fictional account from acquisition to end of use, the design fiction can be used both for research or the design process. Potential uses are presented within this paper.
This paper discusses counterfactual scripting as a framework to critically inquire and give form to design decisions in Participatory Design (PD) processes. The stories of what has happened in a design process are often told in a clear storyline that develops logically via different design moves towards a well-defined plot. Counterfactual scripting is a rejection of this teleological perspective. Inspired by counterfactual history, counterfactual scripting gives form to the PD process via the creation of plausible alternatives for the past and speculations about the future. In this way, the (materialised) counterfactual script facilitates in the perception of a more pluralistic view of past and future. In this paper we form the basis for a framework of counterfactual scripting by connecting theory on decision-making in PD with theory on counterfactual thinking in history and design. This framework is applied and evaluated in a case study in participatory spatial planning.
Neste artigo partimos da compreensão crítica da tecnologia de Álvaro Vieira Pinto para elencar considerações sobre especulações sobre as tecnologias do futuro, denominadas como “futurologias”. Para Vieira Pinto, a técnica é um existencial humano, voltada à possibilidade deste projetar a si mesmo e seus modos de vida, e o debate sobre o futuro ocorre sempre em função de interesses correntes, historicamente circunstanciados. Entretanto, em futurologias produzidas recentemente, como os vídeos de “visão do futuro” da Microsoft Office Labs, temos a tecnologia ingenuamente posicionada como principal resolução de conflitos sociais, e o futuro, posto interessadamente, como uma continuidade das estruturas sociais vigentes, que aparentemente serão as mesmas do presente/passado. De um ponto de vista dos estudos em Ciência, Tecnologia e Sociedade (CTS), pela obra de Vieira Pinto, problematizamos esta apresentação da sociedade como passiva, “aguardando” artefatos de um futuro porvir. Apesar de se apresentar, aparentemente, como especulação descompromissada, as “futurologias” também podem operar em um viés colonizador dos esforços de projeção que visam transformações da sociedade. Elas ocultam significados das tecnologias, como o de esta ser densamente vinculada às realidades em que emergem, e abstraem o papel ativo das sociedades na construção de seus próprios futuros.
How can the ideas of timelessness and anachronism contribute to the decolonization of design practices in Latin America?
The question of ‘what works’ is currently dominating educational research, often to the exclusion of other kinds of inquiries and without enough recognition of its limitations. At the same time, digital education practice, policy and research over-emphasises control, efficiency and enhancement, neglecting the ‘not-yetness’ of technologies and practices which are uncertain and risky. As a result, digital education researchers require many more kinds of questions, and methods, in order to engage appropriately with the rapidly shifting terrain of digital education, to aim beyond determining ‘what works’ and to participate in ‘intelligent problem solving’ [Biesta, G. J. J. 2010, “Why ‘What Works’ Still Won’t Work: From Evidence-Based Education to Value-Based Education.” Studies in Philosophy and Education 29 (5): 491–503] and ‘inventive problem-making’ [Michael, M. 2012, “‘What Are We Busy Doing?’ Engaging the Idiot.” Science, Technology & Human Values 37 (5): 528–554]. This paper introduces speculative methods as they are currently used in a range of social science and art and design disciplines, and argues for the relevance of these approaches to digital education. It synthesises critiques of education’s over-reliance on evidence-based research, and explores speculative methods in terms of epistemology, temporality and audience. Practice-based examples of the ‘teacherbot’, ‘artcasting’ and the ‘tweeting book’ illustrate speculative method in action, and highlight some of the tensions such approaches can generate, as well as their value and importance in the current educational research climate.
This paper provides a historical account of cannibalism as used to explain how Brazilians integrate foreign cultural influences into their own culture and introduces a design praxis based on it. From Modernism to Digital Culture, cannibalism is a recurring tactic used to overcome cultural traditions without throwing them out. It proposes the hybridization of old and new forms in festive celebrations. Design Livre is an approach that combines the principles of Free Software with design methodologies, aiming to enable participation in the design process by anyone. Sharing source-code is not considered enough to enable such participation, thus Design Livre goes back to the level of metadesign-the underlining structures of design process-to subvert formalism and maximize appropriation. An example of a cannibal ecosystem developed by Faber-Ludens is described to instigate questions on intellectual property in design, co-creation, embodied relationships, and culture.
Current debates on design research, and its relation to other research fields and scientific disciplines, refer back to a fundamental distinction introduced by Herb Simon (Simon, 1996 (1981)): Design and design research do not primarily focus on explaining the world as it is; they share with engineering a fundamental interest in focusing on the world as it could be. In parallel, we observe a growing interest in the science studies to interpret scientific research as a constructive and creative practice (Knorr Cetina, 1999; 2002), organized as experimental systems (Rheinberger, 2001). Design fiction is a new approach, which integrates these two perspectives, in order to develop a method toolbox for design research for a complex world (Bleecker, 2009; Wiedmer & Caviezel, 2009; Grand 2010).
■ For decades, social scientists have seen money and religion in Brazil as two incompatible terms. In contrast, this article shows how money has always been present in Brazilian popular religion. This argument leads to a second point: a criticism of the interpretation of Brazilian Neo-Pentecostal churches as `money fetishists', religions of neoliberalism and globalization. Neo-Pentecostals in Brazil appropriate money not just for economic ends, but also with the political project of Christianizing the country. More generally, the article introduces a different perspective both from the classical discourse on money as an agent of globalization and modernity on the one hand, and a more recent literature on the personalization of money and alternative currencies, on the other. In both the discourses on modernity and personalization, nation-states are increasingly marginal. But the nation is still very much at the centre of the Brazilian Neo-Pentecostal project.
THE PITCH This paper will investigate the scripting of products and lifestyles, products as props, plot devices, and dramatic product genres. Thus, with consumer's busily deconstructing and re-appropriating products to conform to their personal scenarios, this paper questions why designers are arguably ignoring the possibility of allowing consumers to more actively invest their personal emotional stories into their products. Conceptual artists and designers such as Dunne and Raby, Noam Toran, and Paul Granjon have made steps towards a filmic design strategy. This paper will critique these and other provocations by placing them in a broader critical framework, and propose a 'speculative methodology' for narrative rich design informed by film director Alfred Hitchcock.
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