Experiencing Utopia. A Positive Approach to Design Fiction

TL;DR

This paper introduces a positive approach to Design Fiction by focusing on imagining, enacting, and evaluating utopias with participants to address critiques of negativity, contextlessness, elitism, and lack of evaluation.

Contribution

It proposes a novel positive methodology for Design Fiction centered on utopia, involving participatory enactment and evaluation to overcome existing critiques.

Findings

Participants can effectively imagine utopias.

Utopian enactments foster positive engagement.

Evaluation methods enhance the impact of Design Fiction.

Abstract

Design Fiction is known for its provocative and often dystopian speculations about the future. In this paper, we present an alternative approach that focuses primarily on the positive. We propose to imagine, enact, and evaluate utopia with participants. By doing so, we react to four main critiques concerning Design Fiction: (1) its negativity, (2) its contextlessness, (3) its elitist authorship, and (4) its missing evaluation methods.