TBD Catalog
What is 'the future', when 'the future' arrives as a printed junk mail catalog of yesterday's vision of the future?
Work
Selected work showing how futures become tools for decision, alignment, and risk exposure.
This is a short, directional set of case studies rather than a full archive. Each one is included because it helps explain how I make uncertain futures specific enough for leaders to inspect, debate, and act on.
A Newspaper from an Artificially Intelligent (Near) Future
This project is a Design Fiction artifact that imagines a world where artificial intelligence is mundane, woven seamlessly into the fabric of everyday life. We used this as one of the prompts/provocations leading into a two-day workshop on AI policy, governance, and strategy. Through the newspaper we explored the implications of AI futures through speculative narratives and future artifacts. This was created over the course of a couple of weeks leading up to the workshop itself. Each artifact in the newspaper (e.g. advertisements, classified ads, news articles, etc.) was created to provoke and inspire the workshop participants to think about the implications of AI futures. Each was also an extrapolation of current trends in AI and machine learning, as well as a reflection of the broader societal, ethical, and policy implications of increasingly pervasive intelligent systems.
Prototyping the OMATA One
Prototyping the Omata One in this early instance was a way to work through some of the ideas in hardware. I had a fairly clear idea of the functional requirements, but needed to work through them in a grounded way rather than just drawing boxes and arrow on sheets of paper. I'd descxribe this as a macro board representing the major subsystems tha twould need to be implemented. It gave me something to point at and say, "This is what I mean by the Omata One", and could feed directly into the engineering specifications. It was a way to work through the engineering requirements and get a better sense of the overall system. (This all from the perspective of engineering dept.; of course there are the brand aspects and such, but first you need a thing that does what it says it does — later you can make sure the character of it as a brand is right and consistent. But, if the thing doesn't work, then the brand is irrelevant.)
OMATA Annual Report From The Future
A representation of a company using the Design Fiction archetype of an Annual Report as seen from its anticipated, speculated future based in the analytics and rational representations of the company's Financial Model.
Hello, Skater Girl
“Hello, Skater Girl” grew from a year spent with women skateboarders in Southern California. It records a scene that mainstream skate culture routinely overlooked, while taking seriously the particular work of gaining access, spending time, and becoming recognized and respected as a skate photographer. The resulting book I created brings photography, cultural research, immersion in a community, and independent publishing together as one form of representation and sense-making.
Corner Convenience
I proposed a Design Fiction workshop and design sprint for Arizona State University's Center for Science and the Imagination annual Emerge Festival. The goal was to provide an introduction to Design Fiction to attendees by actually doing a Design Fiction project. In this case, I proposed a short design sprint spending half a day in a seminar setting discussing possible futures of the corner convenience store, which is on its own a wonderful container of hopes, fears, dreams, and desires of a culture. The objective was to develop insights through discussion and some light research in 1/2 a day and then quickly translate these into a list of things you might find in a corner convenience store — and then construct these as props we could use in making a few tiny films that could exhibit the artifacts and what they implied about future products one might find in a corner convenience store from some possible future.
Car and Driverless
A 72 page full-color Design Fiction magazine from an autonomous vehicle future based on internal strategic vision and roadmaps, industry focus, market analysis, and STEEP foresight research.
Quick Start Guide for a Self Driving Car
Imagining a future of self-driving cars using the humble quick-start guide as a container of the implications and contingencies of the autonomous way of life.
The Work Kit of Design Fiction
Third (or fourth?) edition of a physical ideation card set developed originally to help facilitate the workshop that led to TBD Catalog. Designed, developed, and manufactured internally, the Work Kit of Design Fiction has sold over 3000 units over the years, with this particular edition being our most popular.