Counter Factuals & Matt Wards Design Evolution

Counter Factuals and design evolution were two ideation methods discovered during research into 'design fiction'.

The first method used was the 'Counter Factual', which tries to imagine the state of design in an alternative world/universe that would have been created had a major event never happened or happened differently. I used the event: 'What is we had never invented mobile networks and instead they were point to point? i.e. What if we had to have a device for every person we wanted to talk to?

I used this counter factual as my device does take a step away from being able to communicate with multiple people, and instead presents a device which can only be used to communicate to one person. This is counter-intuitive to the way that communication has developed over the past few years: we are able to keep in touch with more and more people in a wider variety of ways.

I tried to imagine the implications of this world, and what the device would look like, how it would work and how we might treat it differently or behave differently. It is essentially like having a walkie talkie for every person. I presented a set of questions:

1. Would we be more selective about our friendship circles?
2. Would we associate said person with their phone? There would be no address book.
3. Would we become more attached to the phone that represented the person?
4. Would we adapt to these restrictions?
5. Would we even sello-tape phones together to keep them together?

 I then looked at possible difference that would exist

• There would be no caller ID. Their ID would be the Phone itself.

• Phones may be more customisable to improve differentiation ability
• We wouldn't be able to carry all of the phones around; we'd have to be more selective about who we'd be available to. We would literally be carrying these people around.
• Form factor! Could a photo be stuck to each one? Could the shape/colour be changed?
• There would be fewer buttons-all that would be needed are connect/hand up buttons?
• Does my concept need fewer controls than if it was part of a larger network? Yes! You don't need to select who to connect to!

Aligning my project to the counter factual presented in this exercise has allowed me to evaluate some aspects that i hadn't thought about: the importance of form, customising, the number of controls needed and how would people select who to communicate with. I wouldn't imagine that they'd have one for every person they know, and they may have to be more selective with who they choose to pair with. It is an intimate system, and people may find it less valuable or intrusive if they had lots of them. 

Below is a design evolution sketch. This is by Matt Ward, and i have adapted it to my project. Instead of using two designs for evolve; I have used three. I did not just draw between them to combine aspects, but also allowed new ideas to come through inspired by previous designs.

I think it is as important to see what maintains about a design as what disappears. The textual communication disappeared immediately, but the tactile manipulation possibilities were explored. Why is this? Engagement with other people in real life is tactile. Text based messaging is just an approximation of this to easy communication on-line or on phones. 

Embedded buttons, the use of water and mood lighting were ideas that came through. 'Making things talk' could be useful with tactile manipulation and toy hacking.