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Lindley reflects on these types of design research vis-à-vis design fiction: “Design fiction’s inherent relationship with the future and disinterestedness with materialization of ‘product’, means that the practice has an implicit relationship with research of one kind or another […] so these categories allow us to describe, with adequate precision but without undue constraint, what role design fiction may be playing in any given research or design process” (2015).
In this paper we explore how anticipatory ethnography can utilize incidental design fictions as part of a research for design process. In other words our exploration uses a pre-existing artifact, which coincidentally has the same properties as a design fiction, to produce the type of actionable insights that may be useful in a commercial design environment.
Anticipatory ethnography – Anticipatory ethnography emerged from an ‘idea-ballet’: two distinct practices – design fiction and design ethnography – pirouetting around one another creating the silhouette of a new, and unique, whole. The idea is a conceptual alignment between design ethnography’s reconfiguration of traditional ethnography, and design fiction’s approach to diegetically prototyping the future using fiction as a medium. There are many synergies between these two distinct practices: stimulating insightful dialogue; supporting design processes; appreciating action and context’s symbiotic relationship. If we consider design ethnography’s ties to the present (Crabtree, Rouncefield, and Tolmie 2012:170), remember the temporal disinhibition of design fiction (Bleecker 2009), and finally pay regard to the consonance of the properties of each practice (Lindley, Sharma, and Potts 2014), then the value proposition of anticipatory ethnography is complete.
In its original formulation three ‘modes’ of anticipatory ethnography were proposed. Each mode is based on observing a design fiction artifact, but at different phases of its production and/or consumption. The modes involve observations of:
- The process of creating a design fiction.
- The audience of a design fiction interacting with it.
- The design fiction itself.
Mode 3, studying the content of the design fiction itself was, for a variety of reasons, identified as “the most attractive both theoretically and practically speaking” (Lindley, Sharma, and Potts 2014:248). This mode does not require anticipatory ethnographers either to make a design fiction themselves, to gain access to the production of a design fiction, or to interview other people interacting with a design fiction. It relies only on a researcher directly engaging with a design fiction artifact. These characteristics make the third mode the most straightforward.
Why care about the future? – Because the future is so uncertain, how much, if any, design resources should focus on the future? This question is of course highly relevant, but an in-depth exploration of it is beyond the scope of this paper. Briefly, our position is that as technologies become more advanced and the techniques of design and production more refined, the latency between a design idea being conceived and its having the potential to impact upon the world is decreasing. Consider the dramatic adoption of technologies like the web, social networks, and smartphones, for instance. Put metaphorically, a design concept that was prototyped yesterday, may become viable tomorrow and go into production at the weekend. If it might be the next Twitter, iPhone or Reddit, would it not, in spite of all the uncertainties, be imprudent to ignore its potential impact next week? In the words of Andrew Feenberg: “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” (2002).
THE PRACTICALITIES OF DOING AN ANTICIPATORY ETHNOGRAPHY
This section describes the decisions taken and the approaches adopted by the authors in order to move the theoretical construct of anticipatory ethnography toward a practical method that could be replicated. Although this is an academic study, the intention is that this method should be applicable to commercial design processes, either directly or with subtle adaptations. To recapitulate: the scope of this paper is to describe the practicalities of doing an anticipatory ethnography with a piece of incidental design fiction, as research for design (i.e. to support a design process).
Notes on Incidental Design Fictions
David Kirby, in developing the notion of diegetic prototypes, a concept central to making design fiction work, quotes the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, “Space may be the final frontier but it’s made in a Hollywood basement”. The lyric highlights Hollywood film producers’ skill at crafting fictional worlds. Bearing this in mind the incidental design fiction the authors elected to focus on for this research came from Hollywood. The authors worked with Spike Jonze’s acclaimed 2013 film, Her. Watching Her would enable the reader to gain a greater insight into this study. Before progressing into further detail about the reason for selecting Her, below, the paper will elaborate on what qualifies Her as a piece of incidental design fiction.
The most popular definition of design fiction is “the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change” (Sterling 2012). Lindley, Sharma and Potts comprehensively deconstruct this definition, as it relates to anticipatory ethnography (2014:240–243). Lindley and Coulton offer a paraphrased version “a design fiction is (1) something that creates a story world, (2) has something being prototyped within that story world, (3) does so in order to create a discursive space” (2015). It is easy to see how these definitions apply to Her. The movie creates a story world (Her’s critical acclaim would suggest it did this successfully). The diegetic prototypes within the story world of Her are abundant – some of these will be elaborated on later when we discuss the insights produced. Julian Bleecker, writing on design fiction, notes how these props, and the stories they tell, are so affecting (2010):
“[A] good story with its props may be more effective at materializing an idea than an engineering prototype. We might wonder why more engineers are not drawn to storytelling as a way to prototype their ideas, rather than circuit building or software prototyping. As a means to communicate and disseminate an idea, not much works as well as the circulation of a compelling story. Hollywood and the entertainment-media network has taught us this much, at least.”
Figure 2. Diegetic prototypes in Her. Left we see the portable device that Theodore uses to interact with his operating system, Samantha. Top right we see the same device placed with the camera facing outward so Samantha can see the world, Theodore uses a safety pin to position the device in his clothing, also highlighted is the ear bud that allows Theodore to hear Samantha speaking in private. To the bottom right we see Theodore ‘installing’ the operating system on a familiar-looking desktop computer.
The third and final property of a design fiction is the creation of a discursive space. This is where Sterling’s definition differs slightly from Lindley and Coulton’s. Sterling simply says that these diegetic prototypes are invoked to suspend disbelief about change (2012). Lindley and Coulton (2015) modify this such that the reason for that suspension of disbelief is accounted for: to create a space for discussion (and thus to facilitate the emergence of insights). Any good fiction should, if it is done well, engender some kind of suspension of disbelief: that is what good storytelling does. However when we use that storytelling not solely for its originally intended cultural purpose but apply it in design fiction terms, then that suspension of disbelief helps create a discursive space. Putting this point very simply, a good story should act as a stimulus for further conversation.
Looking more closely at the quality and content of the movie itself, Her exhibits an affecting diegesis, and, although this is an intrinsically subjective arena, in the opinion of the authors the movie certainly invites a suspension of disbelief about change (cf. Farago 2013; Vanhemet 2014). The film is laden with a range of diegetic prototypes, in fact one of the lead characters – the artificially intelligent software called Samantha – is a diegetic prototype herself. Although the artificial intelligence side of the film transcends the usually mundane and everyday quality of design fictions (as well as pushing the limits of plausibility), the other diegetic prototypes are clear extrapolations from today’s technology. Examples include a smartphone-like device, a wireless ear bud/microphone for interacting with the mobile device and electronic services such as online dating, letter writing, and video gaming. The setting of the film too played into our hands, although the interior architecture, external environments and sets are clearly ‘different’ from today, they are not so dissimilar as to prevent the suspension of disbelief. Exterior filming in both Shanghai and Los Angeles helps to create a comfortable but ‘other’ feeling.
While Her is one good academic test bed for anticipatory ethnography, there is a range of other possibilities. If a design fiction relevant to the ‘thing that is being designed’ exists, it would be apt to work with that resource. For example, Her, which features a diegetic prototypes of voice interfaces, would be a logical site for research about that technology, using anticipatory ethnography. Similarly, the movie Robot & Frank or the television series Humans may be fertile ground for research about robotic appliances, using anticipatory ethnography, as they both feature diegetic prototypes of domestic robots. Where such a relevant design fiction resource does not exist, however, the method described here is not viable. The ‘Reflecting on the Method’ section will return to this question and discuss ways in which anticipatory ethnography could be used when a relevant incidental design fiction is not available.
Details of the Method and Deriving Actionable Insights from Her
Explaining the concepts of anticipatory ethnography and the nuances of design fiction requires significant wordage, in part because of the nascence of each idea and partly because of their novelty. In contrast, describing the method is, thankfully, less complicated. The method described here is not the de facto anticipatory ethnography method but rather one intended to test the feasibility of anticipatory ethnography in the simplest way possible – in effect a rapid prototyping of the anticipatory ethnographic method.
A group of four ‘anticipatory ethnographers’ watched Her in its entirety. Among the group of four, two were trained design ethnographers, whilst the other two had previously participated in design research. While watching the film verbal dialogue between the researchers was minimal, and post-it notes were used to capture observations of the characters and action. Immediately afterwards the group went through an affinity mapping process (Kawakita 1982) developing themes from the raw observations, and moved toward producing actionable insights. Since this was an academic endeavor, the authors did not have a specific client brief to work towards, and the range of insights produced was incredibly broad. In order to make the account of the produced insights more coherent, the authors have limited what is included in the paper to those insights with the potential for further research exploration. Each category begins with a general note on the space, including some links back to the content in Her, and concludes with a list of insights.
Sound, voice and audio interfaces – In design fiction terms, the system that facilitates the character Theodore’s (human) interactions with Samantha (artificial intelligence) is a diegetic prototype of an advanced voice interface. Similar technologies have existed for some time in the form of speech recognition with appropriately programmed responses. More recently applications such as Siri, Google Now, and Microsoft’s Cortana offer pseudo-intelligence voice recognition systems underpinned by big data and ubiquitous connectivity. Despite offering elements that appear intelligent, these systems are far from adaptable. Similarly, Bluetooth headsets are a staple for anyone wishing to use their mobile telephone while driving or using their hands. The design provocations contained within the diegetic prototypes in Her, however, demonstrate that these interfaces are far from satisfactory (in terms of both function and aesthetics).
Despite the video revolution that we have seen on the web, facilitated by increasing bandwidth and the ease with which video content can be created, the web remains primarily a text-based medium. Other contemporary services like ‘Chat Roulette’ utilize easily available video cameras and bandwidth to connect users on the fly. Meanwhile, internet-telephony is so commonplace that ‘to Skype’ has become a verb. However, a purely voice-based communication has significantly different properties from text-based methods, this looks like a space ripe for development, particularly in terms of interacting with machines.
‘Conversations’ directly with services, digital corporations or platforms, are incredibly rare. Although, as a customer of Amazon, for example, one can easily speak with a person who is working on behalf of Amazon, it is rare (or impossible) actually to speak with Amazon itself. Whether this possibility would be predicated on artificial intelligence, or on some kind of ‘wizard of Oz’ style deception, the authors feel that there is space for innovation here. If you could have a conversation with Facebook, Twitter, Vine, or LinkedIn, what would you say?
- Contemporary voice interfaces are unsatisfactory; they are unintuitive, slow down information exchange, and don’t substantively alter the way we interact with computers. Although they attempt to make our interactions more natural, they feel unnatural.
- Despite inherent issues voice-controlled computers are ubiquitous (Siri, automated answering services, etc).
- Contemporary smartphone ‘Bluetooth headsets’ (or ear-buds) are unsatisfactory; their functions are limited, and their use is somewhat stigmatized (i.e., they’re ‘not cool’).
- The web primarily operates around text-based media, whilst voice is a powerful and evocative medium that remains underrepresented.
- Systems, machines, servers, and networks do not engage in ‘conversation’ with their users. Is this an oversight, or due to technological challenges?
- The gender, voice, and nature of a personified computer or information system, will impact on how it acts in the world and alter the way interactions occur.