Send message to Authors

Short abstract:

This paper reports the findings on a two-staged project that drew on speculative design fiction methods to explore the (co)creation of future digital technologies by children and industry professionals.

Long abstract:

This paper reports the findings on a two-staged project that drew on speculative design fiction methods (Dunne & Raby, 2013) to explore the (co)creation of future digital technologies by children and industry professionals. Stage 1 involved five 90-minute workshops with 42 children aged 4–10 years old, and Stage 2 saw two full-day workshops with 15 practitioners from media, tech, and game design backgrounds. The workshops with both children and practitioners followed a similar framework of playful activities. We first asked participants to draw as many ‘current digital technologies’ as they could think of, before proceeding to discuss what is a digital technology. We then had discussions about when the future is, before asking them to draw a future digital technology. For the children’s workshops, we playfully ‘transported’ them into the future (i.e., sometimes they wore ‘special hats’ and sometimes they stepped through a ‘portal’). And for the practitioner workshops, we ran a series of activities that presented the children’s reflections and drawings as inspiration to play with ‘unreality’ and speculate entirely new technologies. In both sets of workshops, we specifically asked participants to consider: what does this technology look like, what it is made of, when it will be available in the future, why do they want it, and why do they think others will like it. By analysing the drawings and reflections from both Stage 1 and 2, a key theme has emerged around the dichotomy between adult’s productization and children’s boundless interpretation, when speculating about future digital technologies.