Joseph Lindley

Anticipatory Ethnography: Design Fiction as an Input to Design Ethnography

Here we consider design ethnography, and design fiction. We cast these two approaches, and the design endeavor itself, as forward-looking processes. Exploring the means by which design ethnography and design fiction derive their value reveals the potential for a mutually beneficial symbiosis. Our thesis argues that design ethnography can provide design fiction with the methods required to operationalize the practice in industry contexts. Meanwhile design fiction can provide design ethnographers a novel way of extending the temporal scope of the practice, thus deriving actionable insights that are applicable further into the future. “While we are more than ever aware of both the promise and the threat of technological advance, we still lack the intellectual means and political tools for managing progress.” Andrew Feenberg

Design Fiction: How to Build a Voight-Kampff Machine

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.

Why the internet of things needs object orientated ontology

Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of connected devices with inputs and outputs operating in, and on, the physical world. The network is simultaneously fed by, and feeds into, data streams flowing across digital-physical boundaries, connecting sensors, servers, actuators, devices, and people. ‘Things’ of all types, lightbulbs, doorbells, kettles and cars, discretely-but-visibly do their jobs. Meanwhile in the unseen digital domain, where data swirls imperceptible to humans, the atmosphere is thick with the rapidly-moving data packets and content that constitute inter-machine chatter. Contrasting the visible calm in the physical world with obscured bedlam in the digital otherworld sets the scene for the argument we present in this paper. Applying Object Orientated Ontology, IoT designers may reimagine data, devices, and users, as equally significant actants in a flat ontology. In this paper, we exemplify our arguments by creating a Design Fiction around a reimagined ‘smart kettle’.

Vapourworlds and design fiction:the role of intentionality

Abstract: 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.

The IoT and Unpacking the Heffalump’s Trunk

In this paper we highlight design challenges that the Internet of Things (IoT) poses in relation to two of the guiding design paradigms of our time; Privacy by Design (PbD) and Human Centered Design (HCD). The terms IoT, PbD, and HCD are both suitcase terms, meaning that they have a variety of meanings packed within them. Depending on how the practices behind the terms are applied, notwithstanding their well-considered foundations, intentions, and theory, we explore how PbD and HCD can, if not considered carefully, become Heffalump traps and hence act in opposition to the very challenges they seek to address. In response to this assertion we introduce Object Oriented Ontology (OOO) and experiment with its theoretical framing order to articulate possible strategies for mitigating these challenges when designing for the Internet of Things.

Playful Research Fiction: A Fictional Conference

Fiction has long been important to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research and practice. Through familiar tools such as personas, scenarios and role-play, fictions can support the exploration and communication of complex psychological, social and technical requirements between diverse collections of designers, developers and end-users. More recently, HCI and design research has embraced the development and evaluation of make-believe technologies as a way to speculate and study the possible future effects of technological innovation, since it enables us to unpack and understand the implications of technology that does not yet exist. In this chapter we explore the weird relationship between fiction and technology research through the lens of a fictional conference, a playful project that gathered ideas about fiction in research through fictional research, and explore the fluid relationship between the real and unreal in HCI.

Design Fiction: Anticipating Adoption

This tutorial highlights the potential of design fiction with Game of Drones, a fictional user trial of an imagined Drone Enforcement System. The authors explore a potential future use of drones for civic enforcement activities and advance a program for developing design fiction as a research method. This method provides a means for exploring the societal, technological, and political nuances of possible futures so researchers can better consider possible adoption pathways for emerging technologies. This tutorial is part of a special issue on drones.

Shared Ethnography of Shared Cities

This paper aims to foreground issues for design ethnographers working in urban contexts within the smart-city discourse. It highlights ethnography’s role in a shared urban future by exploring how ethnographers might pave the way for envisioning digital infrastructure at the core of Smart City programs. This paper begins by asking whether urban development practitioners can design for inclusive interaction with Smart Urban Infrastructure. The research suggests how ethnographers can work with ‘cities’ to rapidly develop diagnostic tools and capture insights that inform design processes with both utility and inclusive interaction as their key values. This involves rethinking how we consider places where space and information intersect. This work led to developing rapid means to assay a site and sensitize to contextual issues by tapping into heuristic expertise innate in city dwellers. This means doing ethnography in parallel with publics as opposed to performing ethnography ‘on’ them. Hence we discuss a fresh ethnographic perspective that can be especially useful in this context; shared ethnography.