Envisioning future scenarios with more-than-human actors

Summary

In this teaching activity, students will generate future scenarios to imagine and analyse potential widespread consequences, long-term effects, ecological and societal impacts of their own or others’ designs beyond human contexts. The activity will lead students to envision at least one future scenario involving more-than-human actors that goes beyond what they would normally describe as the intended use of their design. By applying their understanding of potential consequences and effects on more-than-humans, they may rethink their designs and design decisions.

Motivation

When imagining and describing the intended use of a design concept, students may approach the design from a single, narrow perspective without realizing its potential impact on stakeholders beyond humans. Evidently, designs can have widespread consequences and long-term effects on human as well as more-than-human actors, both in positive and negative ways. If students lack an understanding of the broad ecological and societal impact of their designs, they run the risk of inadvertently causing more harm than good in the world.

For this teaching activity, envisioning criteria are used as a tool for developing future scenarios to analyse and explain a use situation based on four criteria: direct or indirect, human or more-than-human actors, time, values and needs, and pervasiveness. Each envisioning criteria will draw students’ attention to a particular socio-ecological-technological issue that is important yet easily overlooked (e.g., diverse geographics, political realities, unforeseen effects on indirect stakeholders).

Learning outcomes

After the teaching activity students should be able to:

• Generate future scenarios involving more-than-human actors to imagine and analyse potential widespread consequences, long-term effects and ecological and societal impacts of their own or others’ designs.
• Apply their understanding of potential widespread consequences, long-term effects and ecological and societal impacts on more-than-human actors to rethink their designs and design decisions. 

Teacher guidance

Preparations: 
Bring paper and pens and possibly print-outs of the envisioning prompts. If the teaching activity takes place online, a share digital sketch space is needed.

Step 1: Lecture, Group size: All, Time: 30 min
The teacher gives an introduction to the importance of being conscious of the widespread consequences, long-term effects and ecological and societal impacts of a design. To inspire the students, examples of utopian and dystopian scenarios are presented. The four envisioning criteria are introduced: actors (both humans and more-than-humans), time, values and needs, and pervasiveness. Examples of envisioning activities are presented as well as some examples of future scenarios. See the slides for inspiration. 

Step 2: Exercise, Group size: All, Time: 5 min 
Students are tasked with selecting a design project that involves more-than-human actors and envision a future scenario connected to the design. It may be a design project that they are currently working on or a design case chosen by the teacher. The students may work in groups or individually.

Step 3: Lecture, Group size: All, Time: 10 min
The teacher outlines the process and provides instructions, a time plan, and an introduction to the envisioning criteria. The expected outcome is described, which is at least one future scenario for the design, using the envisioning criteria. 

Step 4: Exercise, Group size: 3-5, Time: 60 min
Students imagine one or more future scenarios for a design by using one or more envisioning criteria (actors, time, values and needs, pervasiveness). They may develop both utopian and dystopian versions of these futures. The scenarios can be presented either as a short story or a video scenario. For inspiration, refer to the slides showcasing future scenarios and stories.

Activity 5: Share in class, Group size: All, Time: 30 min
Students present their future scenarios in class. Together they reflect on their designs and discuss whether the scenarios suggest any design changes. 

Questions for assessment

• What envisioning criteria did you apply when imagining and developing the future scenario, and why?
• In what ways did the future scenario help you to identify and analyse widespread consequences, long-term effects and ecological and societal impacts of the design? 
• How (if) did the future scenario influence your thoughts on the design and your design decisions? Did it prompt you to reconsider any aspects? 

Recommended readings

Friedman, Batya; and Hendry, David (2012). The envisioning cards: a toolkit for catalyzing humanistic and technical imaginations. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’12). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1145–1148. https://doi.org/10.1145/2207676.2208562

Nathan, Lisa P.; Friedman, Batya; Klasnja,Predrag; Kane, Shaun K.; and Miller Jessica K. (2008). Envisioning systemic effects on persons and society throughout interactive system design. In Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS ’08). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1145/1394445.1394446