inflated deflated futures

inflated deflated future(s) or... why futurists fail to predict futures nicolas nova - Liftlab / near future laboratory design engaged - october 2008 Hi, my name is nicolas nova. I am a user experience and foresight researcher, working both for Liftlab and the near future laboratory. I am not a designer, but I work with them on two angles: (1) sharing and discussins insights coming from the field studies I am doing, (2) workin on foresight projects about the future of certain services/objects.

failed future This is why I am interested in the relationship between foresight and design, namely how people imagine the future and what role these representations play in design. This talk is a sort of a “stuctured” rant against failed futures. I tried to collect some examples of “failed futures” (which correspond to failed products) as well the causes of these issues. I am interested in why these failures occur (opening up black boxes: bruno latour) and will try to summarize some of the underlying reasons based on past user research. What I mean by failure is generally the lack of adoption for a great idea, more or less feasible technically speaking. And also, the ﬁeld I consider here is consumer electronics/ICT, I won’t talk about jetpacks or such ﬂying cars (although the same process applies)

You know these nice representation you ﬁnd in future report, this is the Gartner Hype Cycle

a future? inflated deflated I am personnaly interested in that part, when the “future” inflates and also when it “deflates”

*teh* videophone The videophone is certainly a prominent example. The sort of device you had to have in a flying car. It was actually called the “picturephone” in 1964 when presented by AT&T at the New York World's Fair. 27$ per 3 minutes kind of prevent people from using it. And, as we will see with other examples, the company kept spending billions of $ in this project. AT&T finally decided to look at other markets in 1970 by selling this device for business purposes (for teleconference). But it failed again because of low-bandwidth to transfer image and sound. Even with the 1992 picturephone, there were still 5 seconds lag between voice and image! Further attempts of videophone service did not perform very well either and it took almost 40 years to figure this out.

the only viable use: deaf users But of course, some people have a REAL interest in the videophone http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/hannakjonsd/2715529862/

In the end, this is what emerged: a device on which you could stick real pictures. (more seriously the equivalent of the picturephone is the use of video in VoIP calls)

*teh* intelligent fridge The “intelligent fridge” is another recurring failure of interest to me. It started with the V-sync quot;Internet Refrigeratorquot; in 1998, which has been followed by a succession of similar projects by others from the industry (Electrolux, Whirlpool) or from more engineering areas (Cisco). On that slide you can see the V-sync quot;Internet Refrigeratorquot; and Whirlpool Centralpark. The value proposition in general is to turn your fridge into something “smarter”, which means adding (1) microchips so that you have “computing power”, (2) a screen (to browse the internet, check the weather, search for recipes or compose a powerpoint), and above all (3) the genius of “allowing users to order groceries over the Internetquot;. Of course this machine, with its diverse incarnation, never really took off. User studies showed that the device was well accepted but the problem that it was quite expensive to buy and people did not want to invest money to have so little advantage. See quot;User Acceptance of the Intelligent Fridge: Empirical Results from a Simulationquot; by Matthias Rothensee.

“smart watch”: microsoft SPOT Another good example if Microsoft’s Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT) initiative as being quot;aimed at improving the function of everyday objects through the injection of software.quot; Smart wristwatches are the ﬁrst SPOT-based application (2003). They offer advanced features such as automatic time adjustment based on location, customizable watch faces, and access to continually updated content (through FM radio subcarriers) such as news, traffic alerts, weather reports, stock quotes, and sports scores, instant messaging, etc. -- plus, of course, all the capabilities expected of a modern wristwatch such as chronometer, calendar, alarm, and timer functions. They failed party because you had to change the battery on a highly regular basis (like every 1-2 months) and the target group of that watch were more eager to change watch than batteries...

people-locator? another holy grail that I am interested in... all these friend-ﬁnder, there are tons of them...

3D Web? that one is also pretty obvious, i won’t address that

in general, forecasts are only 20% to 25% correct (Steven Schnaars) > there are lots of futures some ﬁgures e.g. (1) Schnaars, S. (1989). Megamistakes: Forecasting and the Myths of Rapid Technological Change. The Free Press: New York. (2) Asplund, M. & Sandin, R. (1999) The survival of new products. Review of Industrial Organization, 15, 219–236 (3) Van der Panne, G., C.P. van Beers & A. Kleinknecht: 'Success and failure of innovation: A literature review', in: International Journal of Innovation Management, Vol. 7, No. 3 (September 2003), p. 309-338.

overoptimism, people smiles on the pics recurring reinvention of the wheel little knowledge of similar attempts (or convinced that new project is totally different) persuasion that this “proximal future” is the holy grail/end point sincerity! common characteristics Some common characteristics shared by such “failed futures”.

(some) causes summary of causes I found/referenced about failure (past experience, literature)

trapped in the zeitgeist Designers, inventors, engineers, society is trapped in the spirit of the time... the ideas shared by people always revolve around some common values as well as obsession with certain things (60s: space race, nuclear; 1980s: the coming of virtuality, 2000s: participation/user- generated content, “we are the media”...)

trapped in the zeitgeist the future can only be about user-generated content

time is not stable Change is not linear and very slow, we love too much continuity and certainty you can’t extrapolate the past, postcasting is wrong, the recent past is rarely a reliable indicator of the future. Big changes (black swan/wild card) occur: kodak (APS) and the digital cameras arrived...

short term, long term Besides, the change you think you will create is so big in the short term. As Paul Saffo expresses, after Roy Amara, We tend to over-estimate the speed of short-term adoption and under-estimate the diffusion of the technology (”Never mistake a clear view for a short distance”). In addition, things aren’t accelerating and every society has always complained that things were getting faster, even in the 16th century.

“interactions among the various trends are comonly ignored, and unexpected developments by deﬁnition are not taken into account” (John Paulos) interaction between changes As John Paulos put it: “futurists such as John Naisbitt and Alvin Toffler attempt to ‘add-up’ the causes and effects of countless local stories in order to identify and project trends”. But “interactions among the various trends are commonly ignored, and unexpected developments, by deﬁnition are not taken into account”

bad understanding of “users” THIS IS WHERE the link with DESIGN/UX is even more important and sometimes the notion of “user” is even wrong. Now let’s move to examining more deeply some reasons of design failures... “futures” which failed at the time they were designed... some causes that I list based on my experience as a user experience researcher

Family X postponed the return to home and intelligent fridge ordered too much milk Granny went to the local store Electricity black- out the average human myth The “average guy myth”: (a) doesn’t exist, (b) exceptions kills the product/service (even worse with networked devices). The importance of exceptions in design.

making things more natural The perpetuation of bad ideas that looked appealing at first glance and fail to do any good. This virtual assistant thing is one of my favorite, it seems to be based on the dream of dull managers who think the future is definitely in quot;naturalquot; interfaces: things that look directly similar to our experience in the world (same story with people who want to design 3D book shop in second life). The problem is that the definition of what is quot;naturalquot; is contingent as well as culturally- centered. Moreover, technologically, how quot;natural interactionsquot; (e.g. voice, presence of visual representation as in videophones, etc.) can be translated or supported by technology is often a failure

making things more natural? This is even more worse because lots of folks want to “naturalize” technologies; we tend, as humans, tend to perceive them as following a certain path, and the more natural, the better. In the video game industry for instance, the trend is to mimick reality as close as possible.

is that natural? what is natural shifts over time The definition of what is natural generally depends on your history and context: for us, it’s “natural” that light appears when we press a button but for people back 100 years ago it was not the case. In addition, there is a banalization process: the first time you use a cell-phone, a GPS, an augmented reality device or that you take a train sitted in the wrong direction... you’re stunned and find the experience original, it’s not “natural”. But then, the way you experience and perceive technology change over time, as it becomes more and more encapsulated in your daily life. My point here is that what is natural shifts over time. See David Nye: Technology Matters: Questions to Live With.

the utilitarian fallacy There is also this tendency to think that people want/must have product to optimize their life. There is this utilitarian model that comes from previous paradigm in computer sciences (when people were designing spreadsheet software). The old model of “utilitarist computing” is translated or directly applied to designing systems for cities, navigation, personal management of communicating objects... This why we end up with “value proposition” such as optimizing your “navigation” in the city, “food ﬂows in the fridge”... and terribly boring stuff like that. I oppose this utilitarian model to something more meaningful to people, hence the weird animals in the fridge on the right.

where is our “2000”? let’s ﬁnd some weird angles At the same time, it’s sa if we lost our “2000”, in the past we used to have these glorious endpoints (1984, 2000, 2001...). What I am interested in and what we try to achieve with Julian through the near future laboratory. My impression is that we need to ﬁnd our “2000”s or at least discuss about new angles, weird endpoints to create futures meaningful to people.

thanks nicolas@nearfuturelaboratory.com

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inflated deflated futures

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