futures

Intelligences

Research and Design in Controversial Spaces

Posted by  • 0 Comments

Presentation slide: photo of someone sketching mobile wire frames on a desk with colorful sticky notes and pens scattered around.
STEFANI BACHETTI Motorola Solutions [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] [s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Join EPIC to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] [s2If current_user_is(subscriber)] Join EPIC to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] Research within public safety and law enforcement in America highlights important issues and considerations for designers and researchers. Within this industry exists controversial points of views and high stakes consequences. How do we as researchers balance empathy in spaces where points of views don’t just differ, but actively clash? Who should we consider to be our true users within a product life cycle, and how do we ensure we are designing for the future rather than the present state of the world? This PechaKucha surfaces some of the strategies employed by the research and design teams at Motorola Solutions in a holistic effort to navigate these challenges. Photo credit: Motorola...

Intelligences

Rehearsing Imagined Futures: Creative Performance as a Resilient Process among Refugees

Posted by  • 0 Comments

Presentation slide: Photo of people dancing on stange.
NICOLE ALEONG University of Amsterdam [s2If is_user_logged_in()]DOWNLOAD PDF [/s2If] [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] Cultivating resilience while navigating uncertainty is crucial for refugees. In the Netherlands, after receiving asylum and the right to work, refugees are often urged to adapt or evolve in hopes of successfully integrating into the Dutch economy. How do forced migrants who pursue work in creative enterprises help us rethink the relationship between forging new lives and uncertain futures? In this paper, resiliency of refugees is presented as a process of creative performance and experimentation. Efforts taken by refugees to explore, or ‘self-potentialize’, new future creative pathways suggest that resilience is overly simplified when defined as a pursuit of resistance to integrate and conform into established creative industries. The stories of two refugees living in Amsterdam showcase how resiliency is future-oriented, processual (Pink & Seale 2017), and connected to the preservation...

Intelligences

Cybersecurity in the Icelandic Multiverse

Posted by  • 0 Comments

Photo of Megan McGrath presenting at EPIC2022. Projected slide says "Building a Strategic Multiverse"
MEGHAN MCGRATH IBM [s2If is_user_logged_in()]DOWNLOAD PDF [/s2If] [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] “Security in cyber space should be one of the main cornerstones of economic prosperity in Iceland, resting on a foundation of sophisticated awareness of security issues and legislation.” —Icelandic National Cyber Security Strategy Iceland makes a unique case study for cybersecurity in that it ranks among the world’s most connected nations as well as among the highest for social trust. Data that elsewhere is considered sensitive is shared freely by individuals and businesses. As a result, technology built in places with different cybersecurity paradigms may not function as intended in an Icelandic context. This work, undertaken with undergraduate and graduate students from the University of Iceland’s Computer Science department, employed ethnographic methods in a classroom setting to build cybersecurity awareness with a special emphasis on culture and to engage the broader community in conversations...

Intelligences

Building Resilient Futures in the Virtual Everyday: Virtual Worlds and the Social Resilience of Teens during COVID-19

Posted by  • 0 Comments

Line drawing of teenagers tanking selfies and the screens of their phones showing social media profiles
JULIAN GOPFFARTH Stripe Partners REBECCA JABLONSKY Google1 CATHERINE RICHARDSON Stripe Partners [s2If is_user_logged_in()]DOWNLOAD PDF [/s2If] [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] Virtual worlds have been central to an imagined future in which advances in technology propel new social practices. The recent focus within the technology industry on the “metaverse” is the latest iteration of imagined, utopian virtual worlds which have continually surfaced in literature, film, product development, and more since the 1960s. One might say that the concept of virtual worlds is resilient—but do these proposed virtual worlds actually make society more resilient? We argue that despite their endurance, these concepts present a deterministic vision of a singular future towards which humanity is inevitably progressing, revoking the agency, desires and resilience expressed by people today in their everyday realities. Building on original ethnographic research conducted with 31 teenagers in China, Germany and the...

Perspectives

What’s Next versus What’s Valuable: Perspectives on the Value of Ethnography in a Future-Focused World

Posted by  • 

by LOUISE VANG JENSEN & LEA MøLLER SVENDSEN, IS IT A BIRD A framework for ethnography and futures work that expands our understanding of the nature of change Ethnographers operating in the future-focused context of business consultancy face a core challenge. Our approach is holistic and human-centric, “based on the researcher sharing time and space with the people he or she wants to understand, establishing relationships with them and thereby experiencing life from their perspective” (Kirsten Hastrup et.al: Ind i verden, 2010). Our clients want to stay relevant in the future. They want us to predict future behaviours, aspirations and dreams; to demonstrate what will change, what will disrupt and how people will be different. We’re often confronted with the perception that ethnography is a toolkit limited to exploring present worlds, and therefore holding limited value to futures work and business strategies. This notion relies on a somewhat sci-fi view of the future as something disconnected from the now. As something...

Intelligences

Anticipating Shared Futures: Emotion, Connection & Relationships

Posted by  • 0 Comments

SARAH HEFFERNAN NCAD / Deloitte Digital [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)] [/s2If] [s2If !is_user_logged_in()] Join EPIC to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] [s2If current_user_is(subscriber)] Join EPIC to access video: → Learn about Membership → Browse Video Library [/s2If] PechaKucha Presentation—Unprecedented. Unprecedented. Unprecedented. How often did we hear that word at the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic? But was it really unprecedented? We’ve been warned for years that a pandemic was imminent. We know the world has been devastated by them in the past. So why did we declare Covid-19 unprecedented? And why wasn’t there a shared anticipation of it? Reflecting on an idea that was first sparked while working as a bungy jump operator, this PechaKucha explores how facts, figures and predictions are not enough when it comes to helping people anticipate and embrace the unthinkable. This discovery is layered with the grief I experience for a way of...