Let's Talk Futures: A Literature Review of HCI's Future-Orientation

TL;DR

This literature review analyzes how HCI research envisions the future, revealing a shift from techno-centric views to more diverse, uncertain, and human-centered perspectives, and proposes opportunities for the field to broaden its future-oriented contributions.

Contribution

It introduces the SPIN framework for analyzing futures in HCI literature and highlights emerging trends that challenge traditional techno-deterministic visions.

Findings

Technology drives futuring in HCI but is increasingly challenged.

Emerging HCI research explores uncertainty and human experience.

Techno-centrism remains dominant but is gradually being contested.

Abstract

HCI is future-oriented by nature: it explores new human--technology interactions and applies the findings to promote and shape vital visions of society. Still, the visions of futures in HCI publications seem largely implicit, techno-deterministic, narrow, and lacking in roadmaps and attention to uncertainties. A literature review centered on this problem examined futuring and its forms in the ACM Digital Library's most frequently cited HCI publications. This analysis entailed developing the four-category framework SPIN, informed by futures studies literature. The results confirm that, while technology indeed drives futuring in HCI, a growing body of HCI research is coming to challenge techno-centric visions. Emerging foci of HCI futuring demonstrate active exploration of uncertainty, a focus on human experience, and contestation of dominant narratives. The paper concludes with insight illuminating factors behind techno-centrism's continued dominance of HCI discourse, as grounding for five opportunities for the field to expand its contribution to futures and anticipation research.