Ice-breaker for a group of students who don’t know each other and are assigned to work together for a week on a future scenario for different sites in public spaces of Hasselt. The session should bring the students together and get them thinking creatively about futures.

Workshop for 2 groups of 18 students. Duration: 1h30 Setup: 3 tables, each for 6 students

Facilitators: Maja Kuzmanovic and Nik Gaffney

Participants: Ander Ayala, Britt Ballet, Caroline Verellen, Arjen de Hoon, Dries Janssen, Reine Driesen, Elies Indigne, Evaline Bailly, Annelies De Winter, Joeri Van den Eynden, Glen Callaert, Talitha Lenaerts, Maarten Bijnens, Jolien Govaerts, Axelie Lens, Mathias Berben, Jorre Heuts, Switten Gisele, Sari Ancaer, Katrien Grevendonck, Vanmierlo Erin, Laurens Lamote, Wouter Spaas, Cheuk Hin Chow, Lien De Koninck, Jolien Van Houten, Khafagy Sheryn, Remco de Vries, Loenders Robby, Kit Tam, Saan Appeltans, Joy Godfrey, Nackom Charlotte, Steven Thijs, Katrien Spaas, Teis De Greve + two students who joined at the last minute and five tutors.

Co-organiser: Sarah Martens, Karen Verschoren

Three different futures card games were chosen:

• The Thing from the Future: http://situationlab.org/projects/the-thing-from-the-future/
• Changeist and Torch Normative Design Fiction cards
• Near Future Laboratory Design-fiction-product-design-work-kit-0-tbd-d012

Design Fiction by Changeist and Torch Normative is a worldbuilding tool that has a long-form gameplay and produces a rich scenario. It consists of five types of trend/driver cards (STEEP) and four context cards (organisation, mission, constraint and target user). The game invites the participants to think broadly to design a world in which they then work on a design challenge.

The Thing From the Future by the Situation Lab is most 'gamelike' of the three decks as it has a competitive aspect: at the end of the game there is a 'winner'. It is also the only deck that invites a mixture of group and individual creation. The game works with four generic futures (grow, collapse, discipline and transform) with different time horizons (up to 1000 year). The futures are further specified with 'terrain', 'object' and 'mood' cards, giving a specific context for creating 'the thing' from that future. It is played in several rounds until the deck is exhausted (or until the time runs out).

The Design Fiction Kit by the Near Future Lab is the quickest of the three decks with simplest instructions. The goal is to design products based on three cards describing the object, an attribute and design action. The products are described, visualised and given a name, as they would appear in a product catalogue.

(NOTE: FoAM proposed four games, but the tutors rejected the Tarot Deck by Superflux as it was too specific for the context of their course)

• Introduction in the whole group: FoAM, Futures Lab @ Future Fictions, Why Futures card games, description of three different decks and people behind them. (5min)

• Introductions at tables: participants say their names, backgrounds and describe their expectations for this workshop and the rest of the Cross-Over week. (5min)

• Instructions at tables: facilitators explain each game and play one quick round together with the participants. (10min)

• Gameplay: one or more rounds of the game (45min)

• Visualisation/Storyfication: distillation of ideas as 1) a product catalogue, 2) newspaper headlines, 3) diary entry (15min)

• Presentation: participants present their ideas, images and stories to the whole group (15min)

• Reflection: one round of individual reflections on the process, the games and their effects on the individual/group (5min)

• Wrap-up: closing words by the facilitators (5min)

Changeist’s Design Fiction produced two worlds and two 'solutions' to their challenges. One group had a world plagued by heavy weather and biological determinism, which lead to a need for anonymity and an increase in xenophobia. They were an internet company with a constraint that they could not use the internet and mobile technology, working with rural populations to change their perception of work. The world was fragmented in family/clan sized villages separated by water. They were rather self sufficient, but required an 'off-line' internet (the online infrastructure collapsed), to exchange goods and information. The company created 'internet hubs' a physical version of the internet with human and non-human messengers and couriers who kept the exchange of material goods and immaterial knowledge alive.

The second group had a world suffering from cognitive pollution, flex working and distributed education, in a relatively stable climate. They were an organisation creating infrastructure and built environment, with a mission to connect children through free education and leisure. They created a protected off-line park where learning and play happened through connections with other children, where they were building on each others’ skills and knowledge to create complex projects as well as learn basics of maths, sciences and humanities. The park included leisure spaces as well, which were accessible by exchanging credits gained in educational courses and projects.

The Near Future Lab’s Design Fiction Kit produced a total of twelve objects (across two groups). The objects include (note: as we’re writing this summary we don’t have access to the material generated, so don’t have the exact names and drawings):

• HD sunglasses changing their focal length and darkness as required.
• A blogbot who would record and edit your life freeing you to fully experience it
• An Earbuddy, a cheap device for music sharing on the fly
• An oven able to cook ingredients at different times and temperatures
• A SIM-like game where people can play out their religious indifferences
• A key allowing you to access your musical memories
• etc.

Situation Lab’s The Thing from the Future was played in both groups for three rounds, having three 'winners' each. They included:

• Brain jewellery able to change our moods and emotions as needed
• Ubiquitous literature
• Pheromone postal system providing relief in a collapsed world
• Fake McDonalds boxes for transporting clandestine fitness equipment
• Homes made from discarded prosthesis to avoid heavily taxed property
• etc.

Changeist’s Design Fiction worldbuilding exercise appeared to be quite complex, so most students found it difficult. It took them a while to understand what the concepts and the process. They also struggled to memorise the content of the cards so they could work with it creatively. However, once it 'clicked' the discussions were much deeper and more reflective than in the other two games. The cards gave them a lot of material to work with and they felt that they should have had more time to develop it. For this game it might be necessary to either play with people who have a bit more experience with the foresight process, have a much longer introduction, or have a facilitator present at all times to moderate and guide the discussions.

Near Future Lab’s Design Fiction Kit is deceptively simple, but requires a reasonable understanding of the (product) design process, to avoid creating cliches. One group took a while to understand what they were doing and kept needing prompts from the facilitator to 'think out of the box'. The other was quick to understand the process and kept coming up and discarding ideas at a fast pace. The ideas came to life if there was someone in the group who could illustrate them. One of the groups had more people able to draw and has created 'pages of a product catalogue' inspired by the TBD catalogue, which was much more lively than when the ideas were just named and described. The reference book wasn’t used much. It is our intuition that the fun of it might be a bit lost with native speakers.

Situation Lab’s Thing from the Future took a while to explain, as it needed an introduction to 'generic futures', the rules of gameplay and the voting on the best idea. However, once the instructions and a quick dry-run round was played, the groups needed virtually no supervision, except for time keeping and coming up with an 'anonymous' voting system (they were too timid to outright vote one idea better than another, so we gave them pieces of paper on which they wrote a number of the idea they liked (1-6 starting with the person who presented their idea first). They folded the papers and gave them to the dealer or facilitator who unfolded them and pronounced the winner. We had a draw twice, in which case we divided the cards evenly between two people. Participants also most appreciated that they could take time to come up with individual ideas, rather than having to discuss them in the group. As we still wanted to encourage a creative group discussion, after three rounds we added 'visualisation time', where the whole group could develop the winning idea further, visualise it and add a heading or slogan to describe it.

Trying different games, longer workshop duration
Having different decks is a good way of getting an idea of different approaches to futures exercises. 1h30 is too short to let the groups experience all the games, but it would be our suggestion to allow the participants to try at least two games. In this case the workshop should be longer, 2-3h with a break between the games. Some groups felt that they needed more time for gameplay and visualisation, although we thought that as an icebreaker a play session of 45 minutes was sufficient.

Group composition
In this workshop it was important for each table to consist of two groups of three students with whom they would work for the rest of the week. this would allow the trios to get to know each other and already begin the co-creation process together. After the workshop we thought that it might have been interesting to split the trios and let each of the members try a different game, so that when they came together they would be familiar with a full set of futures approaches in this workshop.

Visualisation
It was surprising to see that drawing isn’t a common skill in design/arts/architecture students. It might have helped to have some images to help them visualise their ideas in collages/moodboards.

As many facilitators as there are games
We struggled to get all the groups going at the same time with two facilitators and three games. Although we provided written instructions by the authors of the games, the participants needed us to talk them through the process. It might have been a language issue, but in case it isn’t then we’d recommend to have as many facilitators as there are games.

Conclusion
This was an interesting, low overhead way to introduce participants to futures processes and to get to know each other as people with very diverse ideas. As a workshop it is definitely worth doing again.