About sailor messages, café and Lift11 in Geneva

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I ran across these post-its notes at Café Sport in Horta, Azores. They feature various questions and messages about sailing crew. You want to go to Marseilles? Bermudas? You have certain kinds of skills, help yourself.

These inscriptions are interesting as they show the social importance of certain places where people could access this kind of messages. Sailors know that if they show up at this café, they might meet like-minded people to help them. Life being what it is, social interactions are generally asynchronous, which is nicely supported by the yellow inventions of 3M: post-its notes (printed and folded A4 papers too).

The place enable a sort of filtering: in terms of people who come over here, and in terms of messages that can be exchanged. One of the dream of location-based platform designers (and the social media crowd) is to enable this kind of touchpoint with digital tools. This is by the way a topic we will address at Lift11 in Geneva.

The importance of futility in innovation

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Convinced that innovative artifacts always seem futile at first, I am a long-time observer of weird patents or odd pet gear.

A curious article in the IEEE Spectrum entitled "Whimsy and Invention: Why ridiculous inventions are a good thing", highlights the importance of weird peculiar objects such as "A laser pointer to divert a cat? A plastic sphere of silence, for tête-à-têtes in noisy bars? A rocket belt, for escaping boring tête-à-têtes? An atomic-powered airplane? A life-expectancy watch? An electric spaghetti-twirling fork? A tiny generator of random noise, to secrete in a friend's office to drive him crazy? An air-bag bodysuit for motorcyclists?".

The IEEE Spectrum column gives some interesting lessons about all these odd artifacts:

"The more closely you scrutinize the process of invention, the less confident you will be of understanding it. We are told, for instance, that invention typically begins in one person's exasperation over a defect in the standard way of doing things. Oh, really? Then there must be a great deal of exasperation concerning the care and feeding of pets. (...) Again and again this pattern recurs: What begins as a lark develops into a major invention. Remember back when big-iron jockeys dismissed the early personal computers as mere toys? They had a point: The first PCs really were toys. Now, though, PCs and their handheld descendants rule the world. Facebook, begun as a way to keep up with members of the opposite sex on the Harvard campus, is now also poised for world domination. (...) We see the reverse pattern as well, when what begins with serious intent devolves into a form of whimsy. Take the antimissile laser: After decades of work and tens of billions of dollars of government funding, the technology has yet to prove itself on the field of battle. Yet substantial aspects of that technology have found application in protecting backyard barbecues from mosquitoes"

SOmething encountered in Lyon few years ago, I have not clue about its use.

Why do I blog this? I sometimes feel a bit lonely when I discuss with clients about the importance of futility in environmental scanning/user research. This kind of arguments (and examples) are very good to show them why it's relevant to take into account weird innovations.

This discussion echoes with the notion of "needs" and the desperate quest lead by big companies to find "new needs". Looking for these so-called new needs is not a matter of asking people what they want or asking them what they would crave for. Instead, observing how products and services that may seem futile at first can be adopted, domesticated, appropriated and tweaked for other purposes is a better strategy.

Location-Based Social Media and the automation bias

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Reading this blogpost left me wondering about some companies/people that do not understand the notion of "active check-in" on Foursquare (or now Facebook Places). See for yourself: "The active checkin requirement is one thing holding back location-based social networks (also called “geosocial” networks) from widespread adoption. (According to Forrester, only 4% of Internet users have ever used them.)". It reminds of the opinion about Foursquare stated by this analyst: "It seems like the marketplace has taken a step back 5 years. All of a sudden people seem to be convinced that this kind of technology -- where you have to actually remember to tell people where you are -- is the best thing since sliced bread. (...) The crucial flaw with FourSquare et al., is that it's based around manual push notifications." For this kind of analyst, an explicit interaction (doing a check-in) is perceived as backward and lame. In engineering circles, this sort of argument is highly common and I would refer to it as the "automation bias", i.e. the firm belief in automating whatever human activity that can be transferred to computers/machines (which is grounded in strong positivist ideas about progress obviously). The comments I quoted above do not acknowledge the reason why interaction designers have chosen this solution over, say... CellID triangulation or a nearly magical GPS signal detection. Readers here have certainly read my opinion about this topic here, there (or in French). But I think it's worth repeating the claims here:

  1. Of course, decreasing users' burden is an important adoption factor, I fully acknowledge it. However, automating this can be perceived as a threat by people who feel that they will loose control of their personal data. It can also be problematic for some individuals because this automatic feature will make explicit situations they don't want to make public. Technologies should be "conservative of face" as described by Adam Greenfield some time ago: wherever possible they not unnecessarily embarrass, humiliate, or shame their users. See for example this comment in the original Mashable blogpost: "I go places that I am not always proud of (think Waffle House at 2:30am) and at that point (think less than sober) I can see myself forgetting to turn the auto check-in off. (...) there has to be a better way for it not to be obtrusive, but still controlled.". Letting people doing manual check-in is more respectful of people's habits and, above all, it enable people to lie (which has always been a good adoption factor). This is why the proposition to have an intermediary solution is interesting: " the app would have some sort of pop up/notification that lets you know you are in a check-in-able location"
  2. What is showed in my research: self-reporting one's location has a value in itself. Declaring your whereabouts is not just a piece of information, there is also an intention attached to it. Say I'm in a Bar and the name of this place is sent to my colleague, it's both a statement about where I am and an act of communication that tells others that they can act upon this information (to draw inferences about my availability or my willingness to interact socially for example).

Having said that, the problem is not about the manual check-in but instead, it's about the extent to which people use this feature. I know "checkin fatigue" is important... but doing it manually means that the place where people check-in are more meaningful to others... since Foursquare removed the leaderboards (and hence the incentive to gain as many points as you can), users I have interviewed said that they stopped checking-in everywhere (supermarkets...) and only made their position available when they wanted to meet others or access to certain information. I am curious about this and we are currently launching a user study of Foursquare to understand this kind of issue.

Lessons learned from studying Nintendo DS appropriation

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A Nintendo DS attached to a luggage encountered in Marseille the other day.

Some excerpts I found interesting from a user study about the Nintendo DS appropriation by kids written by J. Alison Bryant, Anna Akerman, Jordana Drell:

"handheld gaming systems, and particularly the Nintendo DS, are coveted entertainment devices. As older children in the household “graduate” to newer versions, the younger members of the household inherit their old systems. This opens up the opportunity to create games for the younger audiences, particularly preschoolers. (...) Preschoolers cannot read, which means that all instructions need to be in voiceover and include visual representations. (...) Text instructions take up minimal memory, so they are preferable from a technological perspective. Figuring out ways to maximize the sound and graphics files we have while retaining the clear visual and verbal cues that we know are critical for our youngest players is a constant give and take. (...) Preschoolers may use the DS stylus or may use their fingers, or both! (Although they are not very accurate with either. (...) Although preschoolers do not have trouble holding the small stylus, they do have difficulty making small movements that require fine motor skills. This means that the “hotspots” for interaction within the game must be forgiving for them (i.e., larger). (...) While rhythm games seem ideal for the DS, and are very successful with older demographics, preschoolers find it difficult and frustrating to tap in a rhythm or on a beat. (...) The microphone is a big hit with preschoolers! They love to yell or blow into it and see the game respond. (...) Combining directional pad mechanics with stylus movements is a problem for young children. (...) Two-step processes (i.e., drag the item over here and then tap on it) are not as successful with preschoolers. (...) Preschoolers love immediate (and positive) responses to their actions (...) Replayablity is key with both parents and preschoolers. (...) Being able to re-use graphics or sound for new variations on a game is a good way to make the game feel “new” to the child."

Why do I blog this? Certainly useful material to be shown in my course about user research in interaction design. The findings echoes a lot with similar ethnographical exploration I conducted for a video game studio in the past. This sort of insights also have implications beyond gaming, there's a lot to draw from the paper about the research paper: methodology, implications for design as well as ideas for mobile computing services.

Why mobile phone users engage in vivid nonverbal communication that do not benefit their communication partner

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An interesting read for a Friday afternoon: “Not crazy, just talking on the mobile phone: Gestures and mobile phone conversations” by Carolyn Y. Wei from Google research.

The paper addresses why mobile phone users engage in vivid nonverbal communication behaviors that do not benefit their communication partner, e.g., gesturing, smiling, and nodding their heads. The insights presented here are not coming from a user study. Instead, they are derived from a literature review about nonverbal aspects of mobile phone use and on the communicative functions of nonverbal behavior (such as the use of gesture in speaking when the partner is not visually present and how it can influence conversations).

Some excerpts I found interesting:

"Much of the literature about gesture in conversation suggests that it has cognitive benefits for the speaker. (...) The gestures can help speakers think through a complicated task, explain complex relationships, and find substitutes for missing vocabulary. Gesture has a definite purpose in communication and is not performed merely for color. It is easy to see why mobile phone users engage in these nonverbal behaviors to aid themselves as they speak even without an audience in sight – it is instinctual and probably spontaneous. (...) speakers intend gestures to help their listeners better understand communication. They use gesture in concert with words and to convey semantic meaning. Further, they tailor gestures relative to the listeners. Gestures are purposefully designed for the listener – with fewer and different gestures used with people who are not face-to-face. Thus, the gestures employed by mobile phone users are probably more muted than they would normally be in face-to-face conversation. (...) Despite all these studies that suggest speakers gesture to help themselves think and to help their listeners, there seems to be inconclusive evidence about whether the gestures actually help listeners."

And about all of this can influence mobile phone design:

"Mobile phone design can be sensitive to nonverbal communication behaviors. (...) Gesture could be taken advantage of in a similar way to create innovations in mobile phone design, especially to improve the “user experience” for surrounding people. A simple design could be a phone that alerts nearby listeners that the user is speaking on a mobile phone, perhaps by turning on a signal whenever the phone is engaged. One example of this might be a phone that is linked to a wristband, and the wristband visibly glows whenever the phone is in use. (...) Mobile phone design can also respect existing research that suggests gestures are more meaningful to the speaker than the listener, and thus focus on innovations that aid the speaker. An example of this kind of design would be a mobile phone that senses gestures or other nonverbal behaviors and compares them with the words being spoken. If the words being spoken match the amount and nature of gesturing, then the phone might alert the user that she is performing well."

Why do I blog this? because the paper highlights interesting insights about the role of non-verbal communication in cell-phone usage... which is something that has always fascinated me when observing people on the street.

Field research for interaction design: slides from my course

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This year, at the Geneva University of Arts and Design (HEAD-Geneva), I gave a course about field research in interaction design. It was a combination of lectures, readings and applied projects. The point was to engage student from this Masters in Media Design in understanding and applying field research for design purposes. Moreover, I tried to push them as much as possible in turning the results from their exploration into material that can be relevant for design (beyond mere "results"). See the slides below, it's the version that I will update/expand/modify for next year's courses for the same program and in different design school who asked me to do it. There is certainly room for improvement but it was good to spend some time with all these students and see how they can appropriate these elements. My role here was not to turn them into ethnographers. Instead I wanted to see them taking these techniques and using them for their own projects/purposes.

[slideshare id=2232469&doc=1-cours-intro-091015111228-phpapp02]

[slideshare id=2376480&doc=2-cours-methodo-091029111036-phpapp01]

[slideshare id=2650467&doc=3-cours-photo-091204111132-phpapp01]

[slideshare id=2915537&doc=4-cours-itw-100114120531-phpapp02]

[slideshare id=3551690&doc=5-cours-analysis-100325110149-phpapp01]

Into the night with Jason Rohrer + Chris Crawford

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Yesterday, I watched the latest episode of the documentary series called "into the night" on Arte (the French/German television). The point of this series is to have two intriguing people and get them to talk to each other. In this episode, the conversation happens between the Indie game designer Jason Rohrer and legendary game designer Chris Crawford over the course of a day during the GDC 2009 in San Francisco.

The 52-minutes documentary shows Crawford and Rohrer playing and discussing different indie titles, show their approaches to one another, and wonder about the evolution of game design. There are some funny moments where the "old fart game designer" (as Crawford defines himself) complains that he has seen "everything under the sun" and that all the games today are "derivative or some old variation of hand-eye coordination"... but he admits that Rohrer's stuff is new and original. However, the overall impression is that both of them seems to be trapped... as shown by the uncertainty expressed by Crawford's difficulties with interaction storytelling or Rohrer's cluelessness about what to do in the future. Quite sincere indeed but a bit sad for the game industry.

Two aspects in the discussion struck me as important, with regards to my interest in game design. They're very short and maybe not that conclusive, but at least they surface interesting issues.

First, the brief conversation about space and game design is insightful. Crawford is interested in how Rohrer sees spatial metaphors. Rohrer shows an excerpt of Passage in which the player can choose to join a companion who appears in the game. Once you do that, you realize you can't get into certain spaces of the maze where two people won’t fit. Rohrer defines it as a spatial trade-off. Crawford then wonders: "What is most important about your approach... you're taking out the spatial navigation, which is always done too literally and you turn it into a metaphor and explore what kind of metaphor can be created. How far do you think it can be pushed?". Rohrer then describes why he is so much interested in 2D games (as opposed to 3D) showing how the level of Pacman enables to see the whole environment (in contrast to FPS in which you only see what is around you).

Second, I find important that these two game designers are interested in interaction rather than glossy graphics ("graphical sugar"). As claimed by Crawford: "the entertainment lies in the interaction, not the presentation... you have to make the interaction entertaining, it should influence your experience (...) I am very dismissive of the techie approach to game design (...) Do not be prescriptive, be descriptive".

Why do I blog this? quick summary of what I felt when watching this documentary about game design... from a standpoint that can be seen as an alternative to mainstream video games. The uncertainty expressed by the two designers here is stunning and left us wondering about the possibilities for the future.

Design by Use and object repurposing

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Design by Use: The Everyday Metamorphosis of Things by Uta Brandes, Sonja Stich and Miriam Wender is a wonderful book I've read recently about object appropriation or reinvention and the role of design into this.

The book basically gives a design perspective to how people redefine objects, which is very complementary to what Michel de Certeau described in The Practice of Everyday Life (see some excerpts in this earlier post). The authors defines various notion such as:

  • "intentional redesign", when "objects are used differently from their intended purpose"
  • "non-intentional design" (NID), by exploring "similar forms are used for the same purpose even if they were not created to fulfill the same function (...) If, in the spirit of NID, things are used for purposes other than they were intended for, this is not due to a misinterpretation of their original function, but is instead rooted in our ability to see beyond this and discover abstract or open forms."

As described in this review in Metropolis:

"Just as Roland Barthes posited that readers (rather than authors) create meaning in a text, here it’s the user’s intentions that matter. Brandes throws down a gauntlet, writing, “Each object must be investigated from two opposing perspectives: from the perspective of design and from the perspective of use.” In other words, people aren’t thinking about the concepts that lead to products; they’re simply looking for things that fulfill specific needs. Once designers begin to take that indepen dent agenda into account, she argues, “then we can expect a qualitative and open design approach as a result.”

Brandes also pleads for simple things, since they are the easiest to transform into ad hoc solutions. The more complex a design, the more needs it’s supposed to fit, but the harder it is to rejigger to meet your own. Knives may be made for eating, but Brandes reminds us that they serve as quite good letter openers. And in that vein, how many times have you used a chair as a bookcase, a lamp stand, or a bedside table? (The chair in my bedroom is not at all as Ebert Wels intended it when he designed it in 1928; instead, it’s bedecked in sweaters and ski pants.)"

Some inspiring quotes:

Why is this interesting? well, this quote from the Metropolis article speaks for itself:

This “design misuse,” “post-use,” “post-design,” “nonintentional design,” or whatever you decide to call it, can create evocative, meaningful objects—more meaningful, in fact, because of the user’s par tici pation in the process. The British sculptor Richard Wentworth once said, “I find cigarette packets folded up under table legs more monumental than a Henry Moore. Five reasons. Firstly, the scale. Secondly, the fingertip manipulation. Thirdly, modesty of both gesture and material. Fourth, its absurdity and fifth, the fact that it works.”

Robot memory in Blade Runner

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Roy Batty, in Blade Runner, who tells Deckard about the things he saw in his life and how all those memories would vanish. He is about to die and give this memorable final speech:

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those ... moments will be lost in time, like tears...in rain. Time to die."

...when a replicant/robot loved his life and tells what it meant.

Why do I blog this? a curious quote to be used at some point.

Networked objects 2010

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An update for myself. Various networked objects that I've ran across recently and that seems to be curious for my projects: Analogue Tape Glove (Signal to Noise)

"This interactive sound installation deals with "exploring the physical connection between people and technology". A tangible user interface is provided in the form of a glove, worn by the participant as they are invited to interact with an analogue tape surface. As the glove comes in contact with the tape, sound is generated and can be manipulated via touch and movement. The pre-recorded sound on the tape is a random collage of compiled material including a range of musical styles & found recordings. According to its creators, the work “explores the somewhat obsolete medium of tape through a playful and sonically interesting experience."

Daily Stack (sebastian rønde thielke and anders højmose)

"The simple design allows users to help track their work flow by creating physical representations of their tasks. The design consists of a small base and a series of wood blocks that each have a different colour and shape. Each colour represents a different task and the time interval is determined by the size of the block. The user stacks their tasks on the base, committing to them. the base contains electronics that communicate with a computer, tracking time and tasks in progress digitally. The user can even go back through their archive and look at previous stacks. the design helps the user better visualize their time, helping them make the most of it."

Slurp:

"Slurp is tangible interface for manipulating abstract digital information as if it were water. Taking the form of an eyedropper, Slurp can extract (slurp up) and inject (squirt out) pointers to digital objects. We have created Slurp to explore the use of physical metaphor, feedback, and affordances in tangible interface design when working with abstract digital media types. Our goal is to privilege spatial relationships between devices and people while providing new physical manipulation techniques for ubiquitous computing environments."

Kokonatchi / ココナッチ (University of Tokyo and Waseda):

" Looking something like a hybrid stress ball and giant butter bean, Kokonatchi connects to your computer via a USB lead, sits on your desk, wiggles and lights up when a new tweet enters your account feed. It contains RGB LEDs which change color according to the context or ‘emotion’ of the tweet, and vibrates or ‘shivers’ when it is scared"

Olars (Lars Marcus Vedeler)

"Olars is an electronic interactive toy inspired by Karl Sims' evolved virtual creatures. Having thousands of varieties in movement and behaviour by attaching different geometrical limbs, modifying the angle of these, twisting the body itself, and by adjusting the deflection of the motorised joints, results in both familiar and strange motion patterns."

OnObject:

"OnObject is a small device user wears on hand to program physical objects to respond to gestural triggers. Attach an RFID tag to any objects, grab them by the tag, and program their responses to your grab, release, shake, swing, and thrust gestures using built in microphone or on-screen interface. Using OnObject, children, parents, teachers and end users can instantly create gestural object interfaces and enjoy them. Copy-paste the programming from one object to another to propagate the interactivity in your environment."

Species (Theo Tveterås and Synne Frydenberg)

"Interactive toy that tunes in on bacteria frequency and amplifies it."

Why do I blog this? a kind of messy list but it's sometimes good to collect curious projects and see how they compare to what has been done in the past. Some interesting new trends ahead in terms of interactions: augmentation by other channels than visual representation, new forms of object connectivity (slurp), the importance of original material (wood, textiles). It's not necessary brand new in 2010 but what's curious is that the implementation and the usage scenario are intriguing and beyond classical utilitarian ideas.

Joypad memory game

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The game controller project moves slowly but we're definitely onto something. We'll release soon an iPad/iPhone application that would correspond to a visual corpus to all the joypads. Each pair of pages will describe one of the 42 official joypads along with various data: date, brand, corresponding console, total surface, action button surface, d-pad surface, connector pin type, wire length, weight, etc. But there's more.

Given that Laurent Bolli had a curious machine that enabled us to print badges for participants at the Lift10 conference in Geneva, we repurposed it and create a Memory/concentration game with all the gamepad visuals we had. Each card features a graphical representation of the game controller as well as information about the joypad surface (total surface, action buttons, menu buttons, d-pad surface, etc.). A first prototype of the card game here:

Maes-Garreau Point/horizon

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Read at Kevin Kelly's blog:

"The latest possible date a prediction can come true and still remain in the lifetime of the person making it is defined as The Maes-Garreau Point. The period equals to n-1 of the person's life expectancy.

This suggests a law: Maes-Garreau Law: Most favorable predictions about future technology will fall within the Maes-Garreau Point. (...) Because the official “Future” -- that far away utopia -- must reside in the territory of the unimaginable, the official “future” of a society should always be at least one Maes-Garreau Point away. That means the official future should begin after the average lifespan of an individual in that society.

Why do I blog this? referencing material for my book about technological failures/failed prophecies about innovation.

Letter box agency and new metaphors in service design

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An interesting new form of signage recently appeared in our cities.

See this example in Geneva: few weeks ago, letter boxes in Geneva featured stickers telling people that they will be moved. Interestingly, as shown on the example above, the message was not just a message from the Swiss Post telling me that "The letter box will be moved to XXXX". Instead, there was a speech bubble expressing that "I am moving" to show that letter boxes were in the process of being transferred to a new location. Then, this week, a brand new yellow box was located in the announced place; and it featured another message: "Let's know each other" with two signatures: "Your new letter box" and "Postmail".

Why is this interesting? Well, some aspects I find intriguing:

  • The fact that the message is given from the letter box perspective (see the use of the first person and the term "relocation"), as if the object was given a form of agency by the Post institution. I don't mean here that objects never had agency but let's say there is a stronger acknowledgement of what is delegated to the object. The use of the speech bubble meme also reinforces this trend.
  • The temporal aspect of this is strikingly curious: from the relocation announcement to the new place, there are different ways to interact with the box. First people need to know that their old pal will move and that a new one will be located in a different place (see the new box design).

Why do I blog this? these observations led me to wonder about how service design is evolving. New metaphors are being employed and it's curious to run across them in a city. Beyond this, I am also intrigued by the way objects are more and more anthropomorphized and how people perceive this sort of communication.

Overall, my intuition is that this sort of communication is far more effective than what robot designers are putting in place. It's IMO another example of using basic means to convey certain messages (see recent examples).

Finally, this kind of observation shows that there seem to be a common thread in my interests lately: human-object interactions (human-robot interaction?), artifact agency, user's understanding of objects, etc. Surely some good material for projects about robots, networked objects and blogjects. What is funny and relevant here is to think about how to give objects agency using basic elements such as smiley faces (Gerty) or speech bubbles. Will this be a new idiom for objects? Should robots look like human/animal or should they be stay as things and communicate through simplified devices? Let's discuss this with friends in the robot industry.

ATM, vending machines and proxemy

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Observing lines of people awaiting their turns to be attended is always curious. See some examples below that shows various distance between the person using the vending machine and the next person in line:

Why do I blog this? "Proxemy", a topic I have often addressed here few years ago corresponds to the the physical distance we maintain during interpersonal interaction (see Edward Hall's writings). It can depend on cultural characteristics and contextual factors of course.

What is interesting is that this concept (and the aforementioned examples) can be applied to the design of mobile services (and of course the usage of mobile devices also influence proxemics in a certain cases).

"Challenge design orthodoxy and prevailing technological visions"

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From the introductory text by Anthony Dunne for the "Design Interactions show 2010":

"Last year, the futurologist Stuart Candy visited the department and showed us a wonderful diagram he used to clarify how we think about futures. Rather than one amorphous space of futureness it was divided into Probable, Preferable, Plausible and Possible futures. One of the most interesting zones was Preferable. Of course the very definition of preferable is problematic — who decides? But, although designers shouldn’t decide for everyone else, we can play a significant role in discovering what is and what isn’t desirable.

To do this, we need to move beyond designing for the way things are now and begin to design for how things could be, imagining alternative possibilities and different ways of being, and giving tangible form to new values and priorities. Designers cannot do this alone though, and many of the projects here benefit from collaborations, dialogues and consultations with people working in diverse fields such as ethics, philosophy, medicine, political science, fiction, psychiatry, economics, life sciences and biology.

This space of probable, preferable, plausible and possible futures allows designers to challenge design orthodoxy and prevailing technological visions so that fresh perspectives can begin to emerge. It is absolutely not about prediction, but asking what if…, speculating, imagining, and even dreaming in order to encourage debate about the kind of technologically mediated world we wish to live in. Hopefully, one that reflects the complex, troubled people we are, rather than the easily satisfied consumers and users we are supposed to be."

Why do I blog this? an interesting description of how design can contribute to futures research.

Design fictions about artifacts from the future (and the future's past)

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Being interested in technical objects and futures research, I have listed here various approaches that I find interesting (it's not exhaustive). Artifacts from the future (Wired)

In each issue of Wired magazine, at the end of the book, there's a page called "artifact from the future" that consists in a heavily photoshopped photo of an object supposedly common in the future. These visual elements depicts designers, researchers, pundits' prognostications about how the world "will look like in 10, 20 or 100 years". Yes, it's "will" not "may", as shown in this article. See some examples systematically listed by sceptycal futurist Stuart Candy

There's a lot of alternative ways to create similar account of the future. Think for instance about Future Feed Forward which looks like The Onion. But it's even more interesting when tools are made available to people who would want to create their own narratives with something like this The newspaper clipping generator (as a side note, I love their warning "Please do not use the names of real newspapers or persons").

Artifacts from the past

Of course, creating visual props of the future is one thing but there's a curious other possibilities: looking at present objects from a distant future. Some sort of archaeology from the future: you put yourself in the shoes of an observer who would find an object from the 21st Century and who would try to infer its meaning and usage. If you try to do this, an interesting issue will rapidly arise: how the future from which you have a point of view is like? Indeed, if you want to describe something, you need to have certain values/norms/standards/contextual elements to compare the object from the past to the practices of the future you're supposed to live in. Reading this French graphic novel called Constellations (first volume is downloadable here in PDF), I ran across these two pages at the end of the booklet (the banana is just meant to leave the booklet opened while I take the picture):

After the story itself, the two authors (Daryl and Popcube) invited friends as guest to give their perspective on their work. One of them, called Run, designed these two pages which show how artifacts from the past (a Rubik's cube, a vacuum cleaner, a Winnie-The-Pooh mug) were perceived by people from the future. The action takes place in a post-apocalyptic world in which - of course! - things from the past are no always available or in use because the industrial chain has vanished, because electricity is scarce and above all because people forgot about them. Each narrative (in French sorry) can be perceived as intriguing account of how people project a certain meaning based on surface characteristics: shapes, colors, characters, handles, etc. The Rubik's Cube is no longer understood as being a puzzle but the author shows how it is helpful to calculate using colored cubes and shape-shifting. At first glance, it looks very naive and done for the lulz but it's far more insightful than that; and I think undertaking this kind of activity is valuable for both design and futures research. This two pages should IMHO be a mandatory outcome of an exercise for my design students to force them thinking about affordances, form/function dialectics or research avenues.

Besides, this example reminds me that I should really spend more time digging what Michael Shanks is doing at Stanford Humanities Lab because it may be close to this angle.

Objects from the future produced in the past

The last category I find interesting during the sunny sunday morning is the idea of exploring objects from the future proposed in the past (this is triggered by my interest in design failure). Recently I collected lots of material from cyberpunk universes described in the 80s. The most interesting items came from my Role-Playing Games books which presented visually some cyberpunk artifacts to be used by characters. See some examples below (extracted from Cyberpunk 2020):

Why do I blog this? looking for curious exercises to be done in workshops or during my courses next year.