The Near Future Laboratory Process
The Near Future Laboratory is a hands-on research and innovation lab and analytic think-tank. We are a technology-based practice that combines strategy and analysis with prototyping and scenario building to create insight into the near future possibilities for digital life.
We see an opportunity for a different kind of design and research practice that operates between traditional long-term research studies and short-term commercial product development. In between — 12 months to 4 years — is a gap we call “the near future.”
The near future a time, but it is also a place — a setting occupied by slightly older digital kids, slightly older baby boomers and a slightly different social world. Its a setting through which new ideas can be thought through and tried out. Its a place where speculation, innovation and the development can happen without constraint. It’s a place where new ideas, however unlikely or unusual, can be rehearsed, played out. Living in the near future today provides a better understanding of the possible worlds we may inhabit, allows us to think about new kinds of social practices, and provides the analysis necessary to discover what sorts of opportunities for innovation might exist in the near future.
As a practice, The Near Future Laboratory works through a simple process of brainstorming themes, creating scenarios that place the themes in everyday life, constructing “social objects” (functional prototypes) that allow people to experience the scenarios, and finally a book of this near future world that provides in-depth analysis of the theme as revealed through the project process.
Themes
by brainstorming “themes” relevant to some speculative near future social world. Themes might be pragmatic and specific, such as health and fitness. Or, they may be more provocative, such as a theme we are presently working on — “new interaction partners” where we consider how we might interact with other, non-human participants within digitally networked worlds.
Scenarios
Scenarios are developed to describe these themes as short narratives — perhaps a story or a passage from an existing science-fiction novel, or an article from a daily newspaper. These narratives are meant to bring life to the theme and help imagine how it would exist in the everyday world. The narratives “socialize” the theme, breathing life into it so that one can imagine how it would be part of one’s everyday life.
Social Objects
With the help of these scenarios, the themes are given concrete form through some number of “social objects” that evoke the scenario and themes. This is likely a prototype device or software that helps play through the scenario. The prototype social object is designed and constructed as a fully-functioning gadget — whether a screen-based software application, networked web applet, or a handheld networked device. The purpose of the prototype is to experience the scenario as completely as possible. These social objects are more than just inert product designs, they are actually fully functional. They are meant to be experienced by real people in order to gain more insight into the research theme. The objective here is to learn about the theme through the real-world experiences of real-world people.
The Book of this Near Future
Finally, there’s The Book. The Book of this Near Future is a richly illustrated and thoughtful analysis of the entire project. It provides everything from research motivation, technical and implementation details, diaries from prototype users, trend analysis and summaries of findings and insights.
The Book is meant to serve as both a summary document as well as a source or insight about the theme and process. It contains pragmatic details of the technical aspects of the process, but also highlights the important lessons learned through the experiences of participants, conclusions, possible directions for other development projects and a bibliography of related research, books and articles. In part The Book reads like a product or software manual for some future device. It also reads like a guidebook to a new, unexplored city.
As with all the work we do, we avoid prognostication or forecasting. Our goal is to describe, construct and experience aspects and images of specific possible futures. Rather than assuming that there is a specific future “out there”, this process is our way of “authoring” certain visions — intuitive or speculative. The Book of the Near Future, artifacts from the near future in the form of prototypes, diaries from people who “lived in” the near future through the use of the artifacts, and all the other inscriptions and notes that develop over the course of the process.
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