Day 2-Future Orientations to Everyday Life: Futures Anthropology as a Methodology

— Shout out to Jem, Chris, and Lou and it’s a delight to be here in person

— There are over seven billions versions of earth right now, as shown in this scene from Jordan Bolton’s Imagined Futures

  • It shows people’s perspectives, all across the earth at same time
  • The message here is that we experience time differently, and if you look at person to your right and left at this conference, you know everyone experiences the same event in slightly different ways
    • There is a variation in lived experience and how shaped the past

— I’ll focus on how past experiences and relationships, influences our lives and defineswho we are

  • For example, in the movie Past Lives, a girl immigrates from Korea to Canada and moves to NYC
    • Get classic romance of how experiences impact present and how we are temporal beings

— Our default move is to think about past with time [40% conversations about past]

  • How often do we consider how future impacts the present?

— UXR is inherently future oriented

  • We are making products for the future, and we need to understand what people expect, what might occur, and think about what might come next for the future

— Working for changes to come, from problems to solve, are all things that happen at a future date

— But we lack a way of thinking how expectations of future impact present, and framework for what future means for communities we serve

  • We are blocked in cleanly disentangling past, present, future
  • We need a deliberate way for researchers to use and apply and own

— Why do this?

  • We are in a period of collective trauma and reckoning, as we are emerging from the pandemic and moving from deep uncertainty in post-crisis world
    • The pandemic revealed vulnerabilities in societal infrastructure and with global geopolitical events, future will be very uncertain

— We see even more people coming out as specialists, emerging to capitalize on uncertainty, to be more resilient, identify risks, and make sense of future changes

 

— Today, we need to advocate for futures literacy, and understand role of future in terms of what we see and do

 

— We already have unique skillset, but need framework to apply it, as how we orient ourselves to future, impacts how we experience the present

  • How we behave and act in present, is what we might hope in the future, and possibilities to conceive might even exist

— So I’ll be going through six orientations towards the future

— My framework is based on The Anthropology of the Future by Rebecca Bryant and Daniel Knight

 

— What it is summary, and what

 

— So what are anthropologies of the future?

  • Cross-cultural approach that examines how individuals and society envision and express future
  • Emerged over 50-60 years, through terms like anticipatory anthropology

— It is humanity focused

  • Ethnographic lens
  • Weak signals to hint at treating future
  • Set-in present and different future orientation

— Here’s what it is not

  • Not predicting future
  • Aids us in avoiding singular perspective conversations, and not dealing with imaginary scenarios and analyzing trends

— The above is the domain of other future study areas, in the org, so we know that market research is doing cultural trends analysis, business analysts writing risk management reports, data science is writing predictive analytic models, and strategic foresight is doing scenario planning exercises

 

— Next slide of mapping out what it looks like

— Common future studies method include:

  • Horizontal Studies: Time-scale from present to distant futures
  • Vertical Studies: Nature of tools and techniques from imagination to evidence

— On far right of spectrum, focus is on deep future and making sense of it, and where things can happen

— Mid-range, is trend forecasting at what data can tell us to extrapolate and what will happen in next year or quarter

  • More empirical

— Present, is where most current user research takes place. It deals with what is current state of events and pain-points right now and what’s going on now

  • Futures anthropology sits as bridge between present and near futures
  • Successful UXR acts as bridge between problems of now and strategic possibilities of what comes next, with Futures Anthropology as tool in space

— What are futures orientations though?

— Anyone recognize these items?

  • View-Masters introduce as tool to see stereoscopic 3-D images

— Gave way to look at images differently

— You would rotate view-master, and what you see would change as you become more oriented to different scenario

— This is what future orientations look like

— The first state is expectations

— It’s a specific future state, that is visible, yet out of reach, where ideas about what is to come are based on past experiences

  • Describe what things ought to be, i.e. where conference took place

— We are here in present, and reinforce distinction that what happens now, and what will happen

  • Looking to understand what will happen and what might change
    • X will happen because of event Y. i.e. I had amazing bagels in NYC in the past, and will have it in the future

 

— Anticipation is a sense of what should be done in preparation, amidst uncertainty of particular conditions

  • What we can do to respond to particular future state— preparing for rainy weather
    • Fear and anxiety are affiliated with anticipation, as what we expect to happen is not what we want, so how do we press forward?
  • We are acting towards an end, even if a bit vague

— Third orientation is speculation about a future state that will happen, but at edge of your past experiences

 

— Speculation is the pause between expectation and anticipation, and filled with conjecture to fill in gaps

  • It shows up in gap moments of UXR, where a person hovers a button, thinking about what it does

— The fourth state is potential, and deals with not yet actualized possibilities that could occur in future, but remain dormant

  • It’s motionless and can stay that way
    • Possible and plausible expectation of different choices or paths
    • Think of soccer player on field trying to project options to pass ball to team members
  • One action and one click and different potentialities across field of what to do

— Hope is a positive affect that results of pursuing potential into actuality and satisfaction as result of action, like optimism and generating towards something in the future

  • When you see someone on breakaway with hockey puck, they hope for goal— different body reactions result

— The sixth state, destiny, is a sense that future outcome will be reached eventually, no matter route taken

  • It’s hope, but in a more fixed deterministic way
  • Overarching narrative to build story

— Those are six future orientation that are overlap and distinct

  • i.e what you anticipate is now, can be what you hope for

— Different ways of playing with them

— So what does this look like in practice

 

— Share problem of Leveling Up, Housing Communities, meant to kick-start regeneration process across UK

  • Local authorities and apply for funding and submit an application
  • Awarded government funds and how process can be more efficient and equitable through transformation

— Looking at one external applicant, can guess different future orientations to look at UXR. For example:

  • Expectation: Applications as being hard to understand
  • Anticipation: Using third-parties and templates to gather information, and engage with others
  • Speculation: Would solution be eligible for funding, and if aims well received

— Futures can be mapped out over a user journey,

  • Negative expectations hurt at beginning, and speculation spikes after application submitted

— Showed have multiple entry points to open up conversation with future

  • Talking with design team and content to address expectations, and interactions that can be built
  • Invest in futures that address anticipatory actions— and build buy-in to show it can strategically prioritize certain features as well

— Ask what UX is overall?

  • Can we design this to generate hope as opposed to speculation
  • And risks of not meeting user expectations

— More get accustomed, can enter future chat, and identify robust action to provide greatest amount of value

— Uncertainty as playground that places us to explore plurality of futures that can exist

  • Not everyone has access to these future orientation, which can be less optimistic and innovative
  • We also need to let framework come out of communities we work with, in, and for

— Ways of knowing that can reveal future orientations we don’t know exist

— Take these orientations over to you, and if looking for way to remember them, I recommend the acronym ‘SHAPED’

 

— To come back around, to seven billions of lunch

— To come back to beginning of talk, we have seven billion futures right now, and can apply framework and disentangle insight for now and in long term and amplify more visions of what future can return

  • Whose futures we pay attention to matters

Q&A

  1. What are your thoughts of with future orientation of hopelessness?
    1. Tried to hint at that with inverse orientation
    2. Comes down to continue to work alongside those communities and hard to understand what differences are, but what ethnographic approach works as well
      1. How do we grasp ways of being working with and spotlighting their voice
    3. Immense expert knowledge for communities we are working with— goal to democratize future and get visions of marginalized a little bit louder
  2. How can futures anthropological approach to reshape org structure to provide adaptability?
    1. Definitely opportunity for reflexive approach, and adopt certain future orientation, and how to collect data
    2. Lens and spotlight of us and overarching narrative
    3. So much space to have different ideas, and let’s chat and think about how to use it in our predicament
  3. Given field might be disrupted by new tech, what have you noticed in yourself?
    1. I don’t know just, and coming off the amazing AI chat in previous talk
    2. Still using as AI tool to help with transcripts of specific things and specific user group identified and more certain words that are triggered or connected to different orientations
      1. Need to come back to it
  4. Framework for documenting user journeys across different future orientations?
    1. No nice 2×2 matrix, but cues and signals might vary, so consider what will help get to that and what is more projective and insert into process to understand what people are hoping for
    2. Nothing to share, but hope offers building framework and share with note-takers
  5. How did you apply what you spoke about?
    1. Did usability testing and analyzed hesitation in user’s answering certain questions, and not knowing what would happen
      1. Prompting them to dig deeper
    2. Different notes around what body knowledge is, and different angles and can work with discussion guides, and make room to incorporate fully into practice
  6. How to apply futures anthropology, for those who feel they really do’t have a future?
    1. Futures thinking is about capacity to aspire, and not all of us have that capacity in our lives,
      1. In work with marginalized communities, and humbling to recognize that people living in places around world that were not designed for them
      2. Take moment to check you bias and positionality, and amplify what is it that people are looking for, whether creative outlet or otherwise, to build capacity for people to aspire to