Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology

Research in art and design - an un-discipline

Speculative Enactments are a novel approach to speculative design research with participants. They invite the empirical analysis of participants acting amidst speculative but consequential circumstances. HCI as a broadly pragmatic, experience-centered, and participant-focused field is well placed to innovate methods that invite first-hand interaction and experience with speculative design projects. We discuss three case studies of this approach in practice, based on our own work: Runner Spotters, Metadating and a Quantified Wedding. In distinguishing Speculative Enactments we offer not just practical guidelines, but a set of conceptual resources for researchers and practitioners to critique the different contributions that speculative approaches make to HCI discourse.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3025453.3025503

On Speculative Enactments

A TURTLE WHICH EXPLORER CAPTAIN COOK GAVE TO THE KING OF TONGA IN 1777 DIED YESTERDAY. IT WAS NEARLY 200 YEARS OLD. THE ANIMAL, CALLED TU'IMALILA, DIED AT THE ROYAL PALACE GROUND IN THE TONGAN CAPITAL OF NUKU, ALOFA. THE PEOPLE OF TONGA REGARDED THE ANIMAL AS A CHIEF AND SPECIAL KEEPERS WERE APPOINTED TO LOOK AFTER IT. IT WAS BLINDED IN A BUSH FIRE A FEW YEARS AGO. TONGA RADIO SAID TU'IMALILA'S CARCASS WOULD BE SENT TO THE AUCKLAND MUSEUM IN NEW ZEALAND.

アンドロイドは電気羊の夢を見るか? : Do androids dream of electric sheep?

Design Fiction has garnered considerable attention during recent years yet still remains pre-paradigmatic. Put differently there are concurrent,but incongruent, perspectives on what Design Fiction is and how to use it. Acknowledging this immaturity, we assert that the best way to contribute to the establishment of an evidence-based first paradigm, is by adopting a research through design approach. Thus, in this paper we describe ‘research into design fiction, done through design fiction’. This paper describes the creation of two Design Fictions through which we consider the relationship between narrative and Design Fiction and argue that links between the two are often drawn erroneously. We posit that Design Fiction is in fact a ‘world building’ activity, with no inherent link to ‘narrative’ or ‘storytelling’. The first Design Fiction explores a near future world containing a system for gamified drone-based civic enforcement and the second is based on a distant future in which hardware and algorithms capable of detecting empathy are used as part of everyday communications. By arguing it is world building, we aim to contribute towards the disambiguation of current Design Fiction discourse and the promotion of genre conventions, and, in doing so to reinforce the foundations upon which a first stable paradigm can be constructed.

Design fiction as world building

Tyrell: Is this to be an empathy test? Capillary dilation of the so-called blush response? Fluctuation of the pupil. Involuntary dilation of the iris... Deckard: We call it Voight-Kampff for short. Design fiction is a broad term that occupies a space within the wider miscellany of speculative design approaches and is appearing as a nascent method for HCI research. The factor that differentiates and distinguishes design fiction from other approaches is its novel use of world building and in this paper we consider whether there is value in creating fictional research worlds through which we might consider future interactions. As an example we build a world in which algorithms for detecting empathy will become a major compnent of future communications. We take inspiration from the sci-fi film Blade Runner in order to consider what a plausible world, in which it is useful to build a Voight-Kampff machine, might be like.

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Design Fiction: How to Build a Voight-Kampff Machine

This paper presents a design fiction created by the author – the Toaster For Life. The design is an initial prototype that seeks to embody Sterling’s concept of spimes which when viewed simply, are a class of near future, sustainable, manufactured objects designed to make the implicit impacts of a technological product’s entire lifecycle more explicit to its potential users. This paper argues that when properly understood, spimes act as a rhetorical device that can be used as a lens through which designers can speculate and reflect upon sustainable technological product futures whilst also critiquing the unsustainable production and consumption practices that define our current lifestyles. To make this case, the paper contextualises the Toaster For Life in relation to the spimes concept, the unsustainability of Internet of Things products and sustainable design praxis; and reflects upon the design fiction methodology used to highlight the potential benefits of such an approach.

/pdf/a-toaster-for-life-using-design-fiction-to-facilitate-21uaq6rssb.pdf

A Toaster For Life: Using Design Fiction To Facilitate Discussion On The Creation Of A Sustainable Internet of Things

There are numerous loud and powerful voices promoting the Internet of Things (IoT) as a catalyst for changing many aspects of our lives for the better. Think healthcare, energy, transport, finance, entertainment and in the home – billions of everyday objects across all sorts of sectors are being connected to the Internet to generate data so that we can make quicker and more efficient decisions about many facets of our lives. But is this technological development completely benign? Despite all their positive potential, IoT devices are still being designed, manufactured and disposed of in the same manner that most other ‘non-connected’ consumer products have been for decades – unsustainably. Furthermore, little of the discourse around the IoT recognises or responds to this growing issue. We hope this Little Book will kickstart this important conversation and help those creating future IoT products and services to consider new approaches that have sustainability baked-in. Further, we propose the re-characterising of IoT objects as spimes1 to provide an alternative approach for enabling sustainable IoT device design. Spimes are a potential class of internet-connected objects which, unlike present day IoT devices, would be designed such that they can be managed sustainably throughout their entire lifecycle, from their initial design and production, to having their components recycled and reused at the end of their life.

The Little Book of Sustainability for the Internet of Things

This paper unpacks Sterling’s concept of spimes and outlines how it can be developed as a lens through which to speculate and reflect upon the future of more preferable and sustainable technological products. The term spimes denotes a class of near future, sustainable, manufactured objects, and unlike the disposable products, which permeate our society today, a spime would be designed so that it can be managed sustainably throughout its entire lifecycle. This would have the goal of making the implicit consequences of product obsolescence and unsustainable disposal explicit to potential users. With the current rhetoric associated with the so-called Internet of Things promoting existing production and consumption models, the time is right to explore Sterling’s concept in greater depth. In doing so, this paper examines the meaning of the term spimes, distinguishes the concept from today’s Internet-connected products and posits design criteria for potential near future spime objects. The paper concludes with an initial evaluation of a speculative design fiction created by the author – the Toaster for Life – which seeks to embody several of the spime design criteria in order to facilitate audiences in considering the unsustainable people-product relationships which define present day behaviour, and also aid the author in reflecting upon the design fiction process itself.

Michael Stead

Papers

Design fiction as world building

Design Fiction: How to Build a Voight-Kampff Machine

A Toaster For Life: Using Design Fiction To Facilitate Discussion On The Creation Of A Sustainable Internet of Things

The Little Book of Sustainability for the Internet of Things

Spimes and speculative design:sustainable product futures today