Exploring Anticipatory Ethnography

The foundational properties of design fiction and design ethnography are mutually consistent. By combining these properties in symbiosis, Lindley, Sharma and Potts (2014) named a practice: anticipatory ethnography. This paper builds on that work and puts the construct to the test practically. In order to make this paper accessible as a standalone piece, here we offer an abridged account of anticipatory ethnography.

Design fiction – Speculative design practices have no direct interest in producing a finished article for production, sale or implementation. These speculative designs aim to challenge assumptions, be critical, and stimulate conversations (cf. Bleecker 2009; Dunne and Raby 2013; Tanenbaum 2014; Lindley and Coulton 2014; Lindley, Sharma, and Potts 2014). Design fiction sits within the taxonomy of speculative design, differentiated from other speculative design practices by its invocation of, and dependence on, ‘diegetic prototypes’ (Kirby, 2010). In the context of design fiction ‘diegetic’ refers to of diegesis, and diegesis refers to the world within which a story takes place. Hence, a diegetic prototype is a prototype that exists within a ‘story world’. Although other speculative design approaches, for instance critical design, may craft story worlds too, design fictions tend towards doing this with people at the core and with a character of neutrality (as opposed to criticality). In doing so they allow for a discursive space to emerge from the “diegetically situated” designs, people, and environments (Lindley, Sharma, and Potts 2014:246).

Figure 1. The nature of design fiction’s speculations. This diagram (Coulton, 2015), a descendent of PPPP (Dunne & Raby, 2013), which in turn is inspired by Voros’s Cone of Possibility, is well suited to describing design fictions. First we see that the entire spectrum of past, present and future possibilities are ‘filtered’ by the people at the center. Second it accepts that there are multiple people each with their own interpretation of the spectrum. Third it gives equal weight to perception of the past; an essential part of how one interprets futures. Fourth, the original spectrum in Voros’s cone included probable, plausible, possible and preferable futures, here it has been refined to a simpler duality of plausible and possible.

Because diegetic prototyping in design fiction naturally creates diegetic situativity, the techniques, methods and intentions of design ethnography are applicable and may be used as a way of analyzing and operationalizing the discursive spaces that design fictions aim to create. Meanwhile design fiction’s inherently speculative character, and focus on the future, offers a site for ethnographic study that is temporally free from ethnography’s usual ties to the present.

Design fiction is relatively immature and as a practice is still imbued with methodological uncertainty. Lindley’s (2015) ‘pragmatics framework’ goes some way to mediating the potential confusion inherited by this uncertainty, by proposing three categories which describe the differences between types of artifact that are referred to as design fiction:

1. Intentional design fictions – artifacts that are created as a design fiction.
2. Incidental design fictions – artifacts that can be interpreted as a design fiction.
3. Vapor fictions – usually marketing materials that resemble design fictions.

The pragmatics framework paper considers how design fiction relates to Sir Christopher Frayling’s typology for art and design research (1993). The following types of research are considered:

1. Research for design – a contextual search intended to support a specific design, research leading up toward an artistic or design endeavor.
2. Research into design – studying the theory of design, usually a paper-based activity, not necessarily involving any design or making work, per se.
3. Research through design – production of knowledge as a direct result of a design and/or making process.