Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the ways in which we engage with the emergent future intuitively. Using the human-centered framework Thoughtless Acts, the author proposes a temporal extrapolation of the framework to explore the thoughtless ways in which we engage with the future in our daily lives.

Paper long abstract:

A dominant discourse in anticipation studies today is the urgent need to provide people with the requisite tools to anticipate and imagine alternative futures. Individuals and organizations have emerged to increase futures literacy with a burgeoning number of methods, methodologies, and frameworks. While this emphasis on education is critically important, perhaps lost in this discourse is an understanding of the myriad ways in which we engage with the future thoughtlessly. A more nuanced understanding of how we interact with the future without thinking is needed in order to inform on specific areas of opportunity for futures literacy initiatives as well as the exploration of how certain cultures may intuitively conceptualize and engage with temporal affordances.

Thoughtless Acts, a framework developed by Jane Fulton-Suri, proposes seven frames in which to organize observation and “see, don’t look.” These frames are: reacting, responding, coopting, exploiting, adapting, conforming, signaling. This model's intended use is to explore the complex ways in which humans interact with the built environment. In this paper, drawing on research in design futures and workshop explorations of this more expansive use of the framework, the paper proposes an anticipatory ethnographical model to surface the thoughtless ways in which we anticipate the world around us.

Paper short abstract:

From the perspective of anticipatory anthropology, this paper explores stakeholders’ engagement in the context of climate change adaptation strategies. We discuss outcomes from action-based scenarios research on the engagement of corporate stakeholders and on the role of personas in scenario design.

Paper long abstract:

As an anticipatory anthropology research direction, stakeholders’ engagement has been reported as a key issue of scenario processes in the context of climate change adaptation strategies (Cairns, Ahmed, Mullett and Wright, 2013). Within the methodological framework of action-based scenarios (Marchais-Roubelat and Roubelat, 2008, 2016), this paper discusses outcomes from an ongoing scenario planning action research on the engagement of corporate stakeholders in climate change adaptation, as well as the role of personas (Fergnani, 2019, Vallet, Puchinger, Millonig, Lamé and Nicolaï, 2020) in scenario design.

In a first section, we underline the importance of stakeholders’ engagement in anticipatory anthropology and climate change foresight literatures. In section 2, we introduce the methodological framework of the research and the three phases of the scenario design process: exploration, design, capability assessment. The proposed scenario method is based on the exploration of stakeholders’ moves, the design of sets of rules to exhibit stakeholders’ acts, strategies and organization, and their transformation over time. Section 3 presents sensitive action-based scenarios, which are part of the outcomes of a focus-group devoted to climate change crises. Section 4 discusses the issues raised by these sensitive action-based scenarios: the critical role of personal reports in the diffusion of adaptation practices, the core place of the development of assessment capabilities including the individual level, the community and participatory based organization of climate change adaptation strategies.

Paper short abstract:

How do we claim Black space in Virtual Reality (VR), in the metaverse? By focusing our attention on the power of the avatar, the graphical representation of a user’s character persona in VR and its interaction within intentional communities created in VR: with affordances & powers for liberation.

Paper long abstract:

Claiming Space for the Alkebulan-Africana Diasporan Avatar and creating the Astro Virtual Equalitarian Nation (AVEN)

How do we claim Black space in Virtual Reality (VR), in the metaverse? By focusing our attention on the power of the avatar, the graphical representation of a user’s character persona in VR and its interaction within intentional communities created in VR, our aspiration embodies the avatar with affordances or powers for liberation that bring, extend them back into the analog world. Claiming space in virtual settings and VR has historically already encountered one of its most racist moments against a Black actor developing the most ubiquitous Avatar personas of all time: Jar Jar Binks. The actor Ahmed Best playing Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars was one of the first virtual iconically Black alien avatars that provided the CGI (computer generated imagery) imprint for all other virtual characters on screen to follow. Literally, the DNA of a Black actor and their intergalactic persona provided the technological pathway for precursors for virtual character development in film and arguably in VR.

Jar Jar represents an Afrofuturetope. Afrofuturetopes are inspired by Mikhail Baktin’s ideas of chronotopes, spaces of cultural stories, practices we trace over space and time like the radioactive isotopes used in radiometric dating to determine the age of fossils, ancient artifacts. Inspired by Richard Iton’s notion of the “Black Fantastic” (2008), critical social spaces Black cultures create, Afrofuturetopes reflect the signals/circulation of future visions of ancestral intelligence, marginalized voices and the rediscovery of lost stories.

Paper short abstract:

This paper exists at the intersection of anticipation theory and ethnographic praxis, and presents ongoing fieldwork in the field of conversational UX design, where the "ontology of anticipation" is complicated by the market-driven nature of voice assistant design development.

Paper long abstract:

Academic evaluations of UX methods tend to be siloed within applied anthropology communities or favor a quantitative / lab-based approach when presented in human-computer interaction (HCI) forums (Robinson et al, 2018). Although HCI has a long history of academic dedication to the concept of usability (e.g., Baecker, 1989; Kasik 1982; Gould & Lewis 1985; Norman 1983), it lacks substantive discussion of UX as a social practice concerned with anticipating and reacting to the needs of others. Further, it commonly fails to address the ways that UX as a business strategy contributes to the digital divide. In this paper, I will explore the ways that anticipation theory is reflected in the decision-making of usability experts focused on conversational voice assistants (CVAs, like Alexa and Google Home). My analysis is based on ongoing ethnographic research and interviews with conversational UX professionals and is focused on usability as an (anticipatory) practice of daily negotiation. I argue that anticipation is one of the main discursive strategies of usability work but is complicated by a lack of system transparency and discoverability for voice assistants. While UX work, at its best, tries to avoid thinking for others by involving testers at all stages of the design process, it frequently designs towards a dominant user model and constructs a form of conversational exchange that almost nobody finds usable (yet).