Scaling Up HCI’s Prototype Evaluations

HCI possesses a unique ability to prototype technology-augmented futures and study human life in them "in action", thereby "time-traveling" to possible futures. However this ability is seriously underdeveloped: HCI’s evaluations are often technology-driven, focusing on the interactions with a novel technology and downplaying the influence of other factors that may have affected that future. Thereby social, economic, environmental, and political factors – all of them very much in the remit of CSCW agenda – for example, tend to be forgotten. We find that CSCW would be perfectly positioned to address this omission in HCI research practice. Based on this opportunity for CSCW, we analyse how HCI’s future-oriented research activities could be improved, and suggest ways to incorporate methods developed in futures studies and future foresight into HCI methodology.