This is the presentation deck used during Prototyping Images of the Future, an introduction to the nascent discipline of Speculative Design, explored in the context of an informal, participatory workshop employing the Ethnographic Experiential Futures approach to Foresight.

1. Prototyping
Images of
the Future

2. Prototyping Images of the Future
8:30 - 8:40
Arrive & Settle In
8:40 - 8:50
Introductions & Overview
8:50 - 9:45
Guided EXF Field Guide Activities
9:45 - 10:00
Group Debrief

3. Introductio
ns

4. Workshop Design & Facilitation
Adam Zeiner
@_dezein
With assistance from
Tyler McCoy
@tyleryoga
Special thanks for initial feedback to
Jake Dunagan
@dunagan23

5. Avenues to get involved
www.meetup.com/ATX-Speculative-Futures
Speculative Futures Meetup - Austin
www.futures.design
Design Futures Initiative
www.primerconference.com
PRIMER Speculative Design & Foresight Conference

6. Overview

7. "Optimism is a strategy for making a better
future. Because unless you believe that the
future can be better, you are unlikely to step
up and take responsibility for making it so."
- Noam Chomsky

8. Why Images of the Future?
This is meant to serve as a tangible means of thinking
critically about the future, both in terms of what it
could be and what we want it to be.

9. Why Images of the Future?
The intersection of Design and Futures produces artifacts,
applications and interactions intended to provoke dialog in an
accessible manner.
Ref: Aisling Kelliher, Daragh Byrne; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328714001980#!

10. Why Images of the Future?
Images of the Future, whether they are vision statements
or scenario forecasts, inspiring or terrifying, can have
profound impacts on the goals we envision and on the
strategies we adopt.
Ref: Vision Foresight Strategy LLC; www.visionforesightstrategy.com

11. Preferred Futures
Moving from Foresight (a means of understanding and anticipating
change in society) towards Aspiration (moving beyond exploring
what could happen to reconsidering what you want to see happen).

12. Preferred Futures
Moving from Foresight (a means of understanding and anticipating
change in society) towards Aspiration (moving beyond exploring
what could happen to reconsidering what you want to see happen).
Aspiration is the realm of what we call “preferred futures”
Preferred Futures involves rethinking what we want as a “vision”
based in part on new insights and inspiration we’re generating.
Ref: Vision Foresight Strategy LLC; www.visionforesightstrategy.com

13. Terms_&_Con
cepts

14. Foresight
Foresight is best understood as insight into how and why
the future might be different from today.
Ref: Vision Foresight Strategy LLC; https://www.visionforesightstrategy.com/foresight

17. Speculative Design (⅓)
Speculative Design is a discursive practice, based on critical
thinking and dialogue, which questions the practice of design.
Ref: Ivica Mitrović; http://speculative.hr/en/introduction-to-speculative-design-practice/

18. Speculative Design (⅔)
We use Speculative Design to describe work that uses design
(products, services, scenarios) to address challenges and
opportunities of the future. We tend to look 5-10+ years forward
and speculate on how things could be and what future we want or
don’t want based on these scenarios.
Ref: Phil Balagtas; https://blog.optimalworkshop.com/what-is-speculative-design

19. Speculative Design (3/3)
However, Speculative Design as an approach can take this
critical practice one step further, towards imagination and
visions of possible scenarios.
Speculative design is also one of the most representative
examples of the new interaction between various
disciplines.
Ref: Ivica Mitrović; http://speculative.hr/en/introduction-to-speculative-design-practice/

20. Ref: Elliott P. Montgomery; https://twitter.com/EPMID/status/962039029997817858

21. Futures Studies
Futures studies is an academic field that is concerned with
understanding and anticipating change in society… in order
to help others conceive and pursue more desirable futures.
Ref: Vision Foresight Strategy LLC; https://www.visionforesightstrategy.com/foresight

22. Futures Research (⅓)
Futures researchers track technical innovations, value shifts,
geopolitical tides, environmental perturbations, economic
developments, demographic patterns, and other trends of change.
Ref: Dr. Wendy L. Schultz, Infinite Futures; http://www.infinitefutures.com/aboutif.shtml

23. Futures Research (⅔)
From data generated they create scenarios of possible alternative
futures, which are then used as contingencies within strategic
planning.
Ref: Dr. Wendy L. Schultz, Infinite Futures; http://www.infinitefutures.com/aboutif.shtml

24. Futures Research (3/3)
Working as facilitators, futures researchers can help communities
and organizations envision their preferred futures and compare
those visions with current trends & scenarios of possible futures.
The process leads to practical planning and often policy-making.
Ref: Dr. Wendy L. Schultz, Infinite Futures; http://www.infinitefutures.com/aboutif.shtml

25. Experiential Futures
The design of an experiential scenario, intended to provide a
tangible means of interacting with a possible future scenario.
Ref: Stuart Candy, Jake Dunagan;
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303815839_Designing_an_Experiential_Scenario_The_People_Who_Vanish
ed

26. Ethnographi
c_Experient
ial_Futures

28. Visioning via Incasting
Incasting refers to projections or creations built
within an existing frame of reference, thinking up the
specific details of a possible future based on a more
general scenario description.
Artifacts like Images of the Future are one of many
possible outcomes of this process.
Ref: Infinite Futures; http://www.infinitefutures.com/tools/inclassic.shtml

29. Ethnographic Experiential Futures
Ethnographic Experiential Futures, or EXF, is a
design-driven, hybrid approach to Foresight aimed
at increasing the accessibility, variety and
depth of available images of the future.*
https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2017/06/ethnographic-experiential-futures.html

30. EXF Field Guides
Developed by Stuart Candy and Kelly Kornet.
Stuart Candy is an Experiential Futurist,
Director of the CMU SitLab, and Associate
Professor at the CMU School of Design
Stuart Candy - Speculative Design and Experiential Futures:
https://www.slideshare.net/futuryst/speculative-design-and-experiential-futures
Kelly Kornet is a Design Researcher & Futurist
Kelly Kornet - Reconstructing Resilience: http://www.reconstructingresilience.ca/?page_id=54

31. General Scenario Description
In the way of prototyping images of the future, a
narrowed focus on a particular future(s) should
be identified:
Transportation Infrastructure in
Austin; Near-term future, 10-15
years; 2028 - 2033

32. 1 _ Map
2 x 5 min. partner interview sessions

33. Greyson, Making the Futures Present
“Making the Futures Present” is the prototype of a proposed
personal futures technique that begins by exploring ‘the world out
there’ before ‘the inner world’.
By the end of a three-phase interview cycle each participant
receives a personalized high-fidelity prototype.
That artifact or experience intentionally provokes the
participant’s perception of the expected future.
Ref: Greyson, Amy Helen Margaret (2017) Making the Futures Present. [MRP]:
http://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/1441/

34. Candy & Dunagan, Foundfutures
Chinatown
A futures-oriented community dialogue initiative created by Jake
Dunagan and Stuart Candy which took place in Honolulu.
The centerpiece and culminating event of the project was a community
workshop exploring Chinatown’s past, present, and futures.
To set the stage for this workshop within the community,FoundFutures
worked with multiple teams of designers and artists to create and
execute several distributed installations throughout Chinatown
Ref: Jake Dunagan & Stuart Candy: https://www.scribd.com/doc/298048071/Dunagan-and-Candy-2007-FoundFutures-
Chinatown

35. Candy & Dunagan, Foundfutures
Chinatown

36. Candy & Dunagan, Foundfutures
Chinatown

37. Textor’s Ethnographic Futures Research
A method invented in 1976 which futures researchers employing a
sociocultural approach can use with a sample of interviewees to
elicit their perceptions and preferences among possible and
probable alternative futures for their society and culture.
EFR is an adaptation of the spirit and method of cultural
anthropology and ethnography to the needs and constraints of
futures research.
Ref: Robert Textor:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222843387_The_ethnographic_futures_research_method_An_application_
to_Thailand

38. Kornet, Causing an Effect
A futures exhibition and research project that draws from
individual foresight, design research, and design fiction to build
understanding for activists working in future-minded ways.
The research aims to generate images of the future, give voice and
build empathy for activists, and create a space for strategic
conversation around the future of North American industrial
communities.
Ref: Kelly Kornet: https://issuu.com/kellykornet7/docs/kelly_kornet_causinganeffect_mrp_ap

39. Kornet, Causing an Effect

40. 2 _ Multiply
2 x 3 min. partner interview sessions

41. Situation Lab/Extrapolation Factory,
1-888- FUTURES
1-888-FUTURES is a service that takes a future dream, vision or
problem, renders it tangible as a “future present”, and delivers
it to a specific individual.
Ref: Extrapolation Factory & Situation Lab: http://1888futures.com/

42. Situation Lab/Extrapolation Factory,
1-888- FUTURES

43. Greyson, Making the Futures Present
Kornet, Causing an Effect

44. 3 _ Mediate
20 min. to prototype

45. move from Setting
(scenario concept)
→
Scenario (particular
hypothetical)
→
ideas for 1:1 scale
Situations or Artifacts

46. Think about
prototyping
something
experiential

48. Situation Lab/Extrapolation Factory,
1-888- FUTURES
Kornet, Causing an Effect
Candy & Dunagan, Foundfutures
Chinatown
Greyson, Making the Futures Present

49. 4 _ Mount
10 min. to discuss approaches

50. Kornet, Causing an Effect
Greyson, Making the Futures Present
Candy & Dunagan, Foundfutures
Chinatown
Situation Lab/Extrapolation Factory,
1-888- FUTURES

51. 5 _ Map
5 min. to discuss

52. Kornet, Causing an Effect
Greyson, Making the Futures Present
Candy & Dunagan, Foundfutures
Chinatown

53. Group_Debri
ef

54. Discuss (⅓)
This (as with other forms of Design praxis) is a methodology that
can be applied to an identified problem utilizing a set nuanced of
tools and techniques.
Share what you created.
Let’s relate this to Design and Design Research.

55. Discuss (⅔)
May seem fantastical; but is based in logic and people and their
mental models
This fringe area is based in logic and everyday life/reality

56. Discuss (3/3)
Would you disseminate these artifacts into the world?
If so - How?
If you put it out - you’d observe people’s reactions - what kind
of reactions would you want to get?

57. Adam Zeiner
@_dezein
itsdezein@gmail.com
Tyler McCoy
@tyleryoga

58. Avenues to get involved
www.meetup.com/ATX-Speculative-Futures
Speculative Futures Meetup - Austin
www.futures.design
Design Futures Initiative
www.primerconference.com
PRIMER Speculative Design & Foresight Conference

59. possibly of interest
http://superflux.in/index.php/cartographies-of-imagination/#
Superflux - MAPLAB: Cartographies of Imagination
https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/mod/overview/
MIT Media Lab - City Science: Mobility On-Demand
https://civicsmart.city/
Emerson College - Engagement Lab: Making a Civic Smart City
https://engineering.nyu.edu/research-innovation/centers-and-institutes/connected-cities-smart-
mobility-towards-accessible-and
NYU - C2SMART: Connected Cities for Smart Mobility
http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/secret_history_of_the_future/2018/09/from_horseless_carria
ges_to_autonomous_cars.html
Secret History of the Future: The Fault in Our Cars
https://www.wired.com/story/scooters-cities-fees-mobility/?mc_cid=3be8a5cb46&mc_eid=58be77e1c7
MILKING SCOOTERS FOR CASH HELPS CITIES BUILD FOR THE FUTURE

60. into_the_fu
ture