The beginnings of a ‘Design Fiction’ bibliography

By Sam Kinsley

‘Design Fiction’ describes ways of using storytelling techniques, especially in the form of video, to make speculative design ideas feel real. I have collected together the various resources from which I have drawn my materials for the talk into a preliminary bibliography that may be of use to others interested in the topic. Please find it below:

Bannon, Liam, 2011, “Reimagining HCI: toward a more human-centred perspective” Interactions 18 (4), pp. 50-57.

Bardram, Jakob, Bossen, Claus, Lykke-Olesen, Andreas, Halskov Madsen, Kim, Nielsen, Rune, 2002, “Virtual Video Prototyping of Pervasive Healthcare Systems”, in Proceedings of the 4th conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques,  SIGCHI: ACM, London pp. 167-177.

Bergman, Eric, Lund, Arnold, Dubberly, Hugh, Tognazzini, Bruce, Intille, Stephen, 2004, “Video visions of the future: a critical review”, in CHI ’04 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, ACM, Vienna, Austria, pp 1584-1585.

Bleecker, Julian, 2009, “Design fiction: A short essay on design, science, fact and fiction”, Near Future Laboratory, Los Angeles, CA,

Bleecker, Julian, Nova, Nicolas, 2009 A synchronicity: Design Fictions for Asynchronous Urban Computing. The Architectural League of New York, New York, NY.

Buxton, Bill, 2007 Sketching User Experiences: Getting design right and the right design. Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA.

Dourish, Paul, Bell, Genevieve, 2008, “‘Resistence is Futile’: Reading Science Fiction alongside ubiquitous computing” Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, forthcoming.

Halskov, Kim, Nielsen, Rune, 2006, “Virtual Video Prototyping” Human Computer Interaction 21  pp. 199-233.

Johnson, Brian David, 2009, “Science Fiction Prototypes Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying about the Future and Love Science Fiction”, in Intelligent Environments 2009 – Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Intelligent Environments, Callaghan, V., Kameas, A., Reyes, A., Royo, D., Weber, M. (Eds.), IOS Press, Barcelona pp. 3-8.

Johnson, Brian David, 2011, “Love and God and Robots: The Science Behind the Science Fiction Prototype “Machinery of Love and Grace””, in Workshop Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Intelligent Environments Augusto, J. C., Aghajan, V., Callaghan, V., Cook, D. J., O’Donoghue, J., Egerton, S., Gardner, M., Johnson, B. D., Kovalchuk, Y., López-Cózar, R., Mikulecký, P., Ng, J. W. P., Poppe, R., Wang, M. J., Zamudio, V. (Eds.), IOS Press, Nottingham pp. 99-127.

Jones, Matt, 2011, “The Robot-Readable World” accessed online athttp://berglondon.com/blog/2011/08/03/the-robot-readable-world/

Jones, Matt, 2011, “”Sometimes the stories are the science…”” accessed online athttp://berglondon.com/blog/2011/11/21/sometimes-the-stories-are-the-science…/

Jones, Matt, 2012, “Gardens and Zoos” accessed online athttp://berglondon.com/blog/2012/01/06/gardens-and-zoos/

Kinsley, Samuel, 2010, “Representing ‘things to come’: feeling the visions of future technologies” Environment and Planning A 42 (11), pp. 2771-2790.

Kirby, David, 2008, “Hollywood Knowledge: Communication Between Scientific and Entertainment Cultures”. In: Cheng, D., Claessens, M., Gascoigne, T., Metcalfe, J., Schiele, B. (Eds.) Communicating Science in Social Contexts: New models, new practices. Springer, London, pp. 165-180.

Kirby, David, 2010, “The future is now: Diegetic prototypes and the role of popular films in generating real-world technological development” Social Studies of Science 40 (1), pp. 41-70.

Kirby, David, 2011 Lab coats in Hollywood: science, scientists and cinema. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Larsen, Larry, 2009, “Inside Microsoft’s 2019 Vision Video” accessed online athttp://channel9.msdn.com/posts/LarryLarsen/Inside-Microsofts-2019-Vision-Video/

Schulze, Jack, 2010, “Media Surfaces: Incidental media” accessed online athttp://berglondon.com/blog/2010/11/03/media-surfaces-incidental-media/

Sterling, Bruce, 2009, “Design Fiction” Interactions 16 (3), pp. 20-24.

Tognazzini, Bruce, 1994, “The “Starfire” video prototype project: A case history”, in Computer Human Interaction 1994, Adelson, B., Dumais, S., Olson, J. S. Eds) ACM Press, Boston, MA, pp 99-105.

Vertelney, Laurie, 1989, “Using Video to Prototype Interfaces” SIGCHI Bulletin 21 (2), pp. 57-61.

Zeller, Ludwig, 2011, “What You See Is What You Don’t Get: Addressing Implications of Information Technology through Design Fiction” Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6770  pp. 329-336.

I hope this bibliography will be useful for any of you guys love to do a deeper research in ” Design fictions” topic 🙂

Design Fiction/ Reading week 3

Design fiction is an approach to design that speculates about new ideas through prototyping and storytelling.

One of the thought leaders in science-fiction writer , a Hugo Award-winning, Bruce Sterling  explained design fiction as the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about change.

Fiction is not to create objects that are for storytelling, but to create objects that help think through matters-of-concern. Design fictions are propositions for new, future things done as physical instantiations rather than future project plans done through PowerPoint.

“Smart, creative, imaginative ways of linking ideas to their materialization really do matter, because the future matters, and we will use whatever means possible to do create these better worlds, including the simultaneous deployment of science, fact, fiction and design.”- Julian Bleecker in his essay Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction

 And can you have a design fiction within a sci-fi film? The answer is yes. For example, in 2001 A Space Odyssey, the guy’s holding what’s clearly an iPad. As he explained  that’s kind of a successful design fiction in the sense that it’s a diegetic prototype and which at the time your response were not just, “Oh, what’s that’s that?” But “That would be cool if it existed.”
    There is no better place to find out more about this topic than follow the latest news from ttps://twitter.com/bruces at Beyond the Beyond  🙂

 

Life Lesson

relax

 

Take life by the balls and be honest,

This one is pretty straight forwards, whatever happens just do it. Whether it is talking to a stranger, telling your boss you made a mistake or even just waiting to pay for a bill, stop putting these things aside and thinking about doing them later. Do it now, it always works out better, in every situation.

No getting angry.

You never get angry because of someone, anger is a decision you make, exactly the same one as when you are deciding what you want for dinner. Thinking about it this way, when you do get angry you are the only one to blame, and thing never work out better when you are angry. So why get angry ?

Don’t Stress.

Stop thinking about stressful things all day, from having to pay an overdue bill to worrying about how you are going to pass you school year. Stop it all now! Set aside a moment each day to thing about all these stressful things, and this way if they do cross your mind, just put them aside and sort it all out later.

Set yourself goals and never stop until you reach them.

A very effective way to get through big steps of your life quicker than most people. For example, you need a car. Every time you pull out your wallet to buy your daily snack think about the car, not about how much your snack will cost or how much it will change your savings, just think about the target and you will quickly get to your objective. Start by giving yourself one target, when you achieve that one set two new targets. The same thing goes for work, job applications, losing weight or building muscle, never give up!

“If today were the last day of your life, would you do what you’re about to do today”

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Every morning look at yourself in the reflection and ask yourself, “if today were the last day of your life, would you do what you’re about to do today” and if you find yourself with a negative reply too many times in a row you know that you must change something.

You must love what you do, this goes not just for work but for everything in your life, and at some point you will have to trust your gut, karma or whatever you call it. Just follow your heart. Somehow, even if it leads you away from what you are used too. No one wants to die, fail, end life. Yet death is the destination everyone shares. Do not run away from it, as it is inevitable, and in a certain way it is the very best part of life. It’s life’s revolution, it frees out the old to make way for the new. And this exact moment, the new is you.

Keeping in mind that not too long from now you will slowly become part of the old and disappear. So don’t waste time. Stop living other people’s dreams and go out to create your very own, never stop as long as your heart tells you to continue as somehow your heart already knows what you truly want to become. Everything else is pointless.