Interfacing with Collective Futures : Using Anticipation to Prototype Experiential Futures

Democratising future visions is an endeavour in which Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) prototypes can provide support. HCI prototypes can be used to materialise everyday aspects of possible futures into everyday interactions with technology to better engage socially diverse groups of stakeholders.
Traditional foresight has created an unbalanced situation by concentrating futures narratives on the input provided by experts. A greater problem arises when this imbalance reinforces agendas pursued by power structures and promotes the values of a privileged society.
To tackle this problem, Sam Kinsley suggests using anticipation to examine how problematic visions of the future are constructed. Anticipation serves to navigate uncertainty across possible futures and analyse unintended consequences of science and technology innovation. Through scenario development, technology assessment and prototypes, among other practices, anticipation constructs the future in the present. This exploration of uncertain futures helps balance expectations against the driving forces of society and make better-informed decisions about possible futures. Nevertheless, it is worth questioning whose expectations are noted and who are the beneficiaries of future-oriented decision-making.
In resonance with Kinsley's proposal, the emerging field of experiential futures tries to address the imbalance of generating future visions by engaging citizens to participate in the futuring process. To achieve a more inclusive futures-making process, experiential futures invites a diverse and democratically representative group to create and engage with everyday life aspects of the future.
By determining the possibilities in which experiential futures and HCI can co-produce collective futures, this paper proposes a set of considerations that could support a more democratic approach to future making. While the most direct implication of this approach is to empower citizens in critical futuring, this study aims to contribute to a corpus of research that calls to consider HCI as one more field for futures studies to add to its interdisciplinary umbrella.