Collaborative Design Fiction

Three undergraduate student members of the STS Futures Lab collaborate on a design fiction as part of the Co-Imagining Futures research project--imagining a plausible future related to the topic of information technology education and gender parity. Here, they work on a quick design fiction prototype at the end of a half-day workshop conducted with an invited expert on information technology education.

Collaborating on quick design fictions facilitates critical thinking about plausible sociotechnical futures, including discussion about what makes a particular future plausible or not, and what kinds of factors might shape it in different directions. The design fiction becomes a useful artifact to negotiate different ideas and visions of a plausible future, and to then have further conversation about it.

Here, students are participating in the Co-Imagining Futures research project. Their participation in this research is a learning experience for them, but is also critical to the research itself: they are excellent mediators between the various experts in the workshop.