Análisis descriptivo

Figure 16: Simun's Visceral Switch #1 (n.d.) is a light-switch whose operation requires a level of physical exertion that is more commensurate with the result of the action i.e. the energy consumed by the light. (photo: Miriam Simun, used with permission)

Overview

“Future fabbing” is a workshop-based practice in which workshop participants generate future scenarios and then rapidly develop lo-fi prototypes for products and/or services that might exist in those scenarios. The practice evolved in response to what Smith - a futurist and strategy consultant - perceived as the limitations and failings of the conventional methods employed in his industry.

“Too often in the past, … the futures community has been stuck in two-dimensional responses [to clients’ problems]”, and these methods fail to get clients to engage deeply with the material. He notes that clients, and those of a younger generation in particular, increasingly seek “tactile, experiential ways of communicating concepts … and not just communicating but involving [them] in the exploration factor.”

Smith cites design fiction as a significant conceptual influence on the thinking behind the future fabbing practice. “Design fiction for me … is a way of representing speculative concepts in a more rich fashion than … narrative scenarios...” - it is using the “processes of design to help illustrate and

communicate, and also allow users to interact with [a] speculative environment.”

However, future fabbing is explicitly conceived of as a collaborative process of making to be performed in the context of a small group workshop.

Product

Workshop participants are encouraged to produce tangible prototypes, generally lo-fi mock-ups representing possible future products or services (figure 17). Smith stresses the importance of the physicality of the medium to creating a sense of engagement among participants, stating that it’s important to him that “the participants hands are on it from beginning to end”:

It’s allowing people to … stand up, reach across, move things around, become involved. … If you sat on your hands you couldn’t participate in [the] process. It … forces a physical interaction that I think is really important. … If you have five people around a table and each of them are holding an element of [the] story, they are literally putting their piece into the mix. (Smith)

Process and Roles

Figure 17: Future fabbing workshop participants demonstrate their prototype. (photo: Scott Smith, used with permission)

The future fabbing process is based on the model of a typical foresight scenario development process, except that, as Smith puts it, he has tried to “open both ends up...”. By this he means that the participants have the opportunity to author both the narrative scenarios, including identification and selection of the inputs (e.g. trends, drivers) to those scenarios, and to develop lightweight prototypes representing products, services, or other artifacts that might exist in those

scenarios. The process of narrative construction may be based on a card-based, game-like process, and the output prototypes constructed using readily available materials (figure 18). “There’s a fabrication process at the narrative level and a fabrication process at the scenario level at the end.” The process is designed to be lightweight and iterative, such that it might be repeated several times during the course of a day.

The producers and consumers are one and the same. Ideally, all stakeholders to the output are involved in the process of creation: “It’s important to have many people involved at the front end of the process, because … that makes them better consumers of the output.”

Motivations

A future fabbing workshop has several objectives. One is to enhance clients’

ability to work with possibility. Smith believes that the process of making tangible representations of possible futures helps “move [the] understanding or

experience of possible futures closer to my user”, giving them “a more effective

means of digesting and contemplating the possibilities...”. Referencing an idea which he attributes to Bleecker and Sterling, he explains: “What I’m concerned with is how do you leap over … cognitive barriers to help people better

conceptualize possible futures...”¹

1 This is likely a reference to the phrase “Design seeks out ways to jump over its own conceptual walls...” (Sterling 2009:3)

Figure 18: Tools and materials for use in a future fabbing workshop. (photo: Scott Smith, used with permission)

Another objective is to bring people together to build common vision. The

collaborative process creates “a space for argument and discussion to come to a common understanding of the story”. Key to the practice is that participants quite literally construct their collective future worlds. In conversation Smith references the notion of “social constructionism”, which might be interpreted as a suggestion that future fabbing is almost a literalization or a making explicit of the underlying processes of social construction occurring within a group. Having everyone in the group involved in the process is about the “building of a narrative that forces the blending of ideas”; it is “a kind of democratization of foresight.”

Smith speaks of the success of a workshop primarily in terms of the level of engagement of the participants, which he gauges in part by “the level of activity in the room, the level of discussion … the heat of the exchange.” He considers the outcome – “does somebody take an element of one of these ideas and actually put it into play?” - as being of secondary importance.

Intended Audience

Given that future fabbing generally unfolds in the context of a workshop, and that, as previously noted, the producers and consumers are one and the same, the workshop participants are by definition the intended audience.