Design Fiction Research Articles

From Imagination to Innovation: Using Participatory Design Fiction to Envision the Future of Accessible Gaming Wearables for Players with Upper Limb Motor Disabilities

The interest in enhancing video game interactions through wearable technology has grown, yet accessible gaming with wearables remains underexplored. This study employs participatory design fiction, enabling disabled gamers to envision a future with tailored gaming wearables while critiquing technology. We conducted a two-phase study. Phase one involved in-depth interviews with upper limb motor disability participants; we developed a fictitious gaming wearable by analyzing the data using reflexive thematic analysis. A smaller group iterated on the wearable in phase two to ideate on ideal futures with accessible gaming wearables. Using data and dialogic/performance analysis, we crafted a design fiction diegetic prototype as a tech review video. This research highlights disabled gamers' unique needs and experiences around gaming wearables. It offers an innovative diegetic prototype for accessible gaming tech. Our methodological contribution merges narrative inquiry and dialogic/performance analysis in participatory design fiction research, providing a valuable approach for future studies.

Advancing Pedagogical Innovation: Integrating Design Fiction into AI Education

Advancing Pedagogical Innovation: Integrating Design Fiction into AI Education

미래 이슈에 대한 문제 해결력 함양을 위한 디자인픽션 활용 미술교육에 관한 연구

This study explores an art education program that uses design fiction to help adolescents develop problem-solving skills for future societal issues. Through a literature review, the concept of design fiction was clarified, and a design process was developed for educational settings. The process includes understanding and categorizing future issues, selecting key issues with the card sorting technique, encouraging creative thinking through “what-if” questions, and creating and presenting scenarios and prototypes. The program was tested with 42 first-year high school students, and 10 expert evaluations confirmed that the students demonstrated problem-solving skills related to future issues. This study suggests that using design fiction in education can creatively enhance students' understanding of the future and their problem-solving abilities, contributing to art education that prepares them for future challenges ultimately.

‘Help!? My students created an evil AI’: on the irony of speculative methods and design fiction

ABSTRACT This article contributes to moving forward current discourses about speculative methods by explaining how they can become critical in practice. It explores how the collaborative construction of speculative technological solutions (in this case relating to AI in education) can reveal an implicit acceptance of restricting imaginaries. In three design fiction workshops, a total of 36 teacher students were given the task to create an AI-powered technical solution to a self-identified and urgent problem in education. These design workshops revealed several interesting ‘ironies’ relevant to both actual technical development as well as speculative methods about technological futures. The ironies include an ‘ironic imitation’ of the discourses and norms that are perceived as surrounding contemporary technology. These workshops further reveal and question discourses about desirable learning, and as such these ironies are productive in illuminating power asymmetries, thereby creating space for important failures, resistances, and disruptions.

On manipulation by emotional AI: UK adults' views and governance implications.

With growing commercial, regulatory and scholarly interest in use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to profile and interact with human emotion ("emotional AI"), attention is turning to its capacity for manipulating people, relating to factors impacting on a person's decisions and behavior. Given prior social disquiet about AI and profiling technologies, surprisingly little is known on people's views on the benefits and harms of emotional AI technologies, especially their capacity for manipulation. This matters because regulators of AI (such as in the European Union and the UK) wish to stimulate AI innovation, minimize harms and build public trust in these systems, but to do so they should understand the public's expectations. Addressing this, we ascertain UK adults' perspectives on the potential of emotional AI technologies for manipulating people through a two-stage study. Stage One (the qualitative phase) uses design fiction principles to generate adequate understanding and informed discussion in 10 focus groups with diverse participants (n = 46) on how emotional AI technologies may be used in a range of mundane, everyday settings. The focus groups primarily flagged concerns about manipulation in two settings: emotion profiling in social media (involving deepfakes, false information and conspiracy theories), and emotion profiling in child oriented "emotoys" (where the toy responds to the child's facial and verbal expressions). In both these settings, participants express concerns that emotion profiling covertly exploits users' cognitive or affective weaknesses and vulnerabilities; additionally, in the social media setting, participants express concerns that emotion profiling damages people's capacity for rational thought and action. To explore these insights at a larger scale, Stage Two (the quantitative phase), conducts a UK-wide, demographically representative national survey (n = 2,068) on attitudes toward emotional AI. Taking care to avoid leading and dystopian framings of emotional AI, we find that large majorities express concern about the potential for being manipulated through social media and emotoys. In addition to signaling need for civic protections and practical means of ensuring trust in emerging technologies, the research also leads us to provide a policy-friendly subdivision of what is meant by manipulation through emotional AI and related technologies.

LONGEVITY: NOW AVAILABLE IN CANS! A PERFORMANCE LECTURE APPROACH TO ADDRESSING LONGEVITY ISSUES FROM A RESPONSIBLE INNOVATION PERSPECTIVE

This article describes the development of a theatre- and design-based Performance Lecture whose goal is to develop reflexivity around the theme of longevity and innovation in secondary and university level students. Theatre is an art form that aims at developing self-reflection and reflexivity in both audiences and participants, opening the door to reflective learning which, if combined with critical design and design fiction, offers an effective medium for addressing many dimensions of Responsible Innovation (RI). The workshop involves the presentation of a fictional “near-future” product, a drink called "Longevity". The drink contains nanobots that once ingested can be directed (with an app) to stimulate the body to produce certain compounds, allowing the user to control different properties in their blood “in flow”. This innovative use of technology offers more bodily efficiency, leading to a longer life. This methodology was primarily developed during the A Society for All Ages. Longevity-driven design Masters course at Milan Polytechnic (2022-23) and the Interaction Design and Service Design Masters courses at Milan Domus Academy (2023), and is grounded in grassroots approaches to Responsible Innovation.

Pathways to democratized healthcare: Envisioning human-centered AI-as-a-service for customized diagnosis and rehabilitation

The ongoing digital revolution in the healthcare sector, emphasized by bodies like the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is paving the way for a shift towards person-centric healthcare models. These models consider individual needs, turning patients from passive recipients to active participants. A key factor in this shift is Artificial Intelligence (AI), which has the capacity to revolutionize healthcare delivery due to its ability to personalize it. With the rise of software in healthcare and the proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT), a surge of digital data is being produced. This data, alongside improvements in AI’s explainability, is facilitating the spread of person-centric healthcare models, aiming at improving health management and patient experience.This paper outlines a human-centered methodology for the development of an AI-as-a-service platform with the goal of broadening access to personalized healthcare. This approach places humans at its core, aiming to augment, not replace, human capabilities and integrate in current processes. The primary research question guiding this study is: “How can Human-Centered AI principles be considered when designing an AI-as-a-service platform that democratizes access to personalized healthcare?” This informed both our research direction and investigation.Our approach involves a design fiction methodology, engaging clinicians from different domains to gather their perspectives on how AI can meet their needs by envisioning potential future scenarios and addressing possible ethical and social challenges. Additionally, we incorporate Meta-Design principles, investigating opportunities for users to modify the AI system based on their experiences. This promotes a platform that evolves with the user and considers many different perspectives.

Towards a Conceptual Model of Users’ Expectations of an Autonomous In-Vehicle Multimodal Experience

People are expected to have more opportunities to spend their free time inside the vehicle with advanced vehicle automation in the near future. This will enable people to turn their attention to desirable activities other than driving and to have varied in-vehicle interactions through multimodal ways of conveying and receiving information. Previous studies on in-vehicle multimodal interactions primarily have focused on making users evaluate the impacts of particular multimodal integrations on them, which do not fully provide an overall understanding of user expectations of the multimodal experience in autonomous vehicles. The research was thus designed to fill the research gap by posing the key question “What are the critical aspects that differentiate and characterise in-vehicle multimodal experiences?” To answer this question, five sessions of design fiction workshops were separately conducted with 17 people to understand the users’ expectations of the multimodal experience in autonomous vehicles. Twenty-two subthemes of users’ expected tasks of multimodal experience were extracted through thematic analysis. The research found that two dimensions, attention and duration, are critical aspects that impact in-vehicle multimodal interactions. With this knowledge, a conceptual model of the users’ in-vehicle multimodal experience was proposed with a two-dimensional spectrum, which populates four different layers: sustained, distinct, concurrent, and coherent. The proposed conceptual model could help designers understand and approach users’ expectations more clearly, allowing them to make more informed decisions from the initial stages of the design process.

Reflecting on Algorithmic Bias With Design Fiction: The MiniCoDe Workshops

Reflecting on Algorithmic Bias With Design Fiction: The MiniCoDe Workshops

HACK YOUR AGE: OLDER ADULTS AS PROVOCATIVE AND SPECULATIVE IOT CO-DESIGNERS

This research explores whether the co-design of provocative prototypes with older adults can scaffold critical thought concerning ethics, trustworthiness, security and privacy of age-oriented Internet of Things (IoT) products and services, and associated data-driven technologies (DDT). By inviting 15 adults defining themselves as ‘experiencing or anticipating old age’ to co-design IoT and DDT which addressed their hopes and fears for the future, we encouraged them to imagine a revolution in ‘technology for aging’. Three workshops utilized theatre and design research approaches including speculative design (Dunne, 2013) and co-design of provocative prototypes and social design fiction (Pilling, 2019), to stimulate discussion around imagined futures for aging and technology. Participants modelled the internet as they understood and imagined it. They were then introduced to sensors, actuators and machine learning through interactive demonstrations. Four randomly formed groups ideated ways these technologies could be applied to earlier identified hopes and fears for the future of aging. Creative technologists then created prototypes of these ideas over two weeks of feedback and iteration with participants. Participants wrote and performed performances incorporating these prototypes, which explored cybersecurity and cyberharm (Agrafiotis, 2019). Six participants also partook in post-workshop semi-structured interviews. Methods developed in this research scaffolded critical thought concerning the ethics, trustworthiness, security and privacy of age oriented IoT, and associated DDT, regardless of experience or existing knowledge. Participants found it easy to interrogate the ethics, privacy and security of their speculations because, while they may not have been technically scalable or feasible, they understood them.

Privacy and utility perceptions of social robots in healthcare

Many Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) researchers are exploring the use of healthcare robots. Due to the sensitive nature of care, privacy concerns play a significant role in determining robot utility and adoption. While HRI research has explored some dimensions of privacy for robots in general, to our knowledge, no prior work has empirically studied how human-like robot design affects people's privacy and utility perceptions of robots across different healthcare contexts and tasks. We conducted a 3 × 3 × 3 study (n = 239) to understand these relationships, varying robot Human Likeness (HL) (low, medium, and high) and scenario/task type (hospital waiting room/robot check-in support, hospital patient room/robot mobility support, home care/robot neurorehabilitation support) via a mixed between-within subjects design. To our knowledge, this is one of the first studies that operationalizes complex constructs of privacy, healthcare, and HL across multiple realistic healthcare contexts, with a high degree of cognitive fidelity. Our results suggest the tasks and contexts in which privacy is considered in healthcare contexts with robots is more impactful than other factors like robot HL appearance. In particular, some settings include more complex tradeoffs between privacy and utility for robots than others. For example, HRI researchers and practitioners who want to build healthcare robots intended for the home may encounter the greatest challenges for balancing privacy risks. Finally, for the community, we demonstrate that design fiction animations can be a useful way to facilitate cognitive fidelity for supporting studies in HRI and serving as a bridge between narrative methods and the use of real-world robots.

What could the Railway teach us about Progress?

Propelled by steel, charcoal and steam the railway once carried the story of progress and the rise of the developed modern society. While the orient express nurtured a vivid, mythical aura during more than a hundred years, it seems like future stories about the railway mainly gravitate around hyperloops and increased speed. How come the narratives around railways have become so futile? How come imaginaries about progress have got stuck? With the help of critical imagination and the method of design fiction, this article will set out on an imaginary journey to re-storying the future railway and discuss how this could help us rethink progress. Alternative paths will be explored that allow room for stories depicting train rides in slower paces and complex rhythms and materials, a rich melting pot for diverse and vivid sub-cultures, bottom up grassroot services, experimental sharing cultures, touring theater companies, maker movements, and new citizen-driven cooperatives.

Merging Minds and Machines: The Role of Advancing AI in Robotics

The relentless pursuit of creating intelligent robotic systems has led to a symbiotic relationship between human inventiveness and artificial intelligence (AI). Artificial intelligence is a theory. It is the development of computer systems that are able to perform tasks that would require human intelligence. This abstract explores the pivotal role that AI plays in advancing the capabilities and applications of robotic systems. The integration of AI algorithms and machine learning techniques has launched robotics beyond mere automation, enabling machines to modify, alter, adjust, learn, and interact with the world in ways previously deemed science fiction. Design fictions that vividly imagines future scenarios of AI or robotics in use offer a means both to explain and query the technological possibilities. Examples of these tasks are visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. The three key dimensions of AI’s role in robotics are Cognitive Augmentation, Human-Robot Collaboration, and Autonomous Intelligence. The abstract also discusses the societal implications of this AI-driven advancement in robotic systems, including ethical considerations, job market impacts, and the democratization of access to advanced technology. The convergence of human intellect and artificial intelligence in robotics marks a transformative era where machines become not just tools, but companions, collaborators, and cognitive extensions of human capabilities. Researchers are taking inspiration from the brain and considering alternative architectures in which networks of artificial neurons and synapses process information with high speed and adaptive learning capabilities in an energy-efficient, scalable manner. The indispensable role of AI in shaping the future of robotic systems and bridging the gap between human potential and machine capabilities is highlighted. The major impact of this synergy reverberates across industries, promising the world where robots become not just mechanical contraptions / defective apparatus but intelligent partners in our journey of progress.

Future Mobility Scenarios with Design Fiction: Autonomous Vehicles as Social Agents

This article aims to envisage a future world with Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) from a speculative perspective and uses design fiction as a method. Even though there are future studies about how AVs are going to be operators in the traffic by taking the role of the driver, this article suggests that AVs are going to be referred not only as transportation vehicles but also, they will become a part of social life through their increased agencies. We argue that this might be a significant concern for the areas that are in relation with the design of AVs considering socio-technical transitions towards future. Two design fiction workshops with designers were organised to develop future scenarios including AVs. As a result, the scenarios created by designers were analysed and characteristics of the scenarios were identified considering the social and contextual aspects of the storyworlds. Finally, the study discusses design considerations for AVs based on the future contexts and lifestyles as well as the social role that AVs can fill by changing the meaning of journey in the future scenarios.

Design(ing) fiction in the studio

Design(ing) fiction in the studio

Drones and Beyond Human Environments

Discussions of beyond-human worlds have primarily considered post-anthropocentric models in response to climatic breakdown. However, we must also account for an increasingly techno-mediated experience in the landscape of everyday life through emerging pervasive and ubiquitous robotics in the built environment, particularly drones and their wider social impact. This paper presents two methods of understanding: speculative ontography for more-than-human understanding and design fiction as an alternate and heterogeneous world-building task that moves beyond corporate technological visions and “captured” futures. These methods are set in context with two specific diegetic prototypes: “Game of Drones,” a drone-gamified civic enforcement tool, and “Drone Logi*,” a drone logistics game for more-than-human alternative visions. The design fiction approaches develop an understanding of emerging robotic sentience within broader constellations and services.

Seeds for New Beginnings? Ecological Uncertainty, Blurry Ideology, and Speculative Design at the Universitas Symposium, 1972

Abstract In 1972, designer Emilio Ambasz (b. 1943) organized the symposium “The Universitas Project” at MoMA in New York City. The issue at stake was how the field of design should tackle the possibly irresolvable societal, political, and ecological problems of post-industrial society. Ambasz proposed a new design approach, which he named design as a mode of thought, with the aim of building a new research-education institution for design that could tackle the wicked problems ahead. In order to articulate his proposal, Ambasz turned to the speculative realm: discursive design critique, metaphysical cybernetics, design fiction, and storytelling. By critically engaging with some of the participants’ conference presentations, the article first discusses how the concept of the environment was reconfigured by the emerging ecological catastrophe. Then the article discusses ideological responses to the Universitas Project to show how the seemingly different ideological positions between French so-called “radical left” and American “right-wing technocrats” were grounded in the same; all-encompassing uncertainty and a strive for open-endedness. Finally, the article analyses Ambasz’s design fiction writing and the speculative nature of the Universitas and thereby identifies the Universitas as a rare moment in the history of design in which design stopped engaging in the status quo and turned towards a speculative future for finding seeds for new beginnings. The article re-visits the Universitas in order to support a presentist argument: that speculation, discursive design critique, and storytelling might not be sufficient methods on their own to tackle the forthcoming accelerating wicked uncertainties that lie ahead.

The Literary Method of Urban Design: Design Fictions Using Fiction

The Literary Method of Urban Design: Design Fictions Using Fiction

AI Consent Futures: A Case Study on Voice Data Collection with Clinicians

As new forms of data capture emerge to power new AI applications, questions abound about the ethical implications of these data collection practices. In this paper, we present clinicians' perspectives on the prospective benefits and harms of voice data collection during health consultations. Such data collection is being proposed as a means to power models to assist clinicians with medical data entry, administrative tasks, and consultation analysis. Yet, clinicians' attitudes and concerns are largely absent from the AI narratives surrounding these use cases, and the academic literature investigating them. Our qualitative interview study used the concept of an informed consent process as a type of design fiction, to support elicitation of clinicians' perspectives on voice data collection and use associated with a fictional, near-term AI assistant. Through reflexive thematic analysis of in-depth sessions with physicians, we distilled eight classes of potential risks that clinicians are concerned about, including workflow disruptions, self-censorship, and errors that could impact patient eligibility for services. We conclude with an in-depth discussion of these prospective risks, reflect on the use of the speculative processes that illuminated them, and reconsider evaluation criteria for AI-assisted clinical documentation technologies in light of our findings.

L-Space and Large Language Models

From the intersection of computational science and technological speculation, with boundaries limited only by our ability to imagine what could be. Design fiction is an approach to understanding and speculating about alternate futures. One part of this can involve creating representative artifacts or prototypes from the future, as if they fell through a time warp to the present day. This column is a piece of such speculative fiction, set in 2025.