Designing tools for exploring pluralistic future visions

Participatory design methods to build future visions require ways of capturing the complexity of the discussion, rather than just synthetizing the results into a single, narrative vision. The Atlas of Imaginary Future Visions was designed as an interactive artefact adopting a cartographic approach for documenting layers of information within and across speculative urban visions that emerged from co-design workshops.

In Section 6.3.6 of this chapter, I provided an overview of the recurring themes that emerged from the workshop series, as well as a sample of individual and workshop- specific ideas. I showed that, while patterns of data can be used to understand

individual conversations. The synergies and discrepancies between general themes and specific issues may help in understanding the value of artefacts of VCUF as a way of representing conversations about futures as a whole, but also in their individual parts. This, in turn, demonstrates the potential of bringing speculative design, participatory practices and information visualisation together, as proposed in Part A of this thesis. Information Visualisation techniques allow designers to play with the granularity of data, the framing of the information, and the point of view of the observer, to build

composite visions that show the overarching message when seen from afar, but that reveal small details when observed more closely. Designing the Atlas encouraged me to experiment with these dimensions. Doing so made me aware of the impact that design choices have on the overall message, and the quality and type of information that is displayed. Playing with the data from the workshops and experimenting with ways of visualising them was instrumental in informing the definition of a number of dimensions that describe the design space of artefacts of VCUF (as it will be described in Part C). I also encountered some challenges when making the Atlas. These were mostly related to the technical aspects of using information visualisation methods to represent futures. Unlike other cases of speculative visualisations (Kim and DiSalvo 2010), what is visualised in the Atlas are conversations about imaginary possible worlds, rather than data about present or predicted situations intended to provoke a debate about futures. Visualising information about speculations involves finding ways of visualising

uncertainty (Spiegelhalter, Pearson, and Short 2011) as well as various degrees of modality (on what “will”, “could” or “might” happen). The issue of visualising uncertainty in VCUF will be further elaborated on in 9.2 (Part C)

Information Visualisations employs diagrams to highlight hidden patterns of information (Scagnetti et al. 2007). But diagrams (sometimes involuntarily) suggest certainty and accuracy. This is why I chose in this work to include surreal illustrations that leave room for subjective interpretations and questions. The visions of futures that have been generated in the workshops are in fact explorative scenarios, rather than plans that provide clear directions or strategies.

Finally, I would like to conclude the discussion of these findings with an observation on the unfinished nature of the Atlas of Future Imaginary Cities and of composite visions in general.

The ultimate purpose of cartographic atlases is to include in one artefact the entire geographic knowledge of the World, so that readers exploring its pages can be certain that all the places that are known at the moment of compiling the Atlas can be found in the book. Conversely, the Atlas of Imaginary Cities does not encompass all the existing knowledge about possible futures, but rather invites readers to explore uncharted spaces for further discussion. After all, any project seeking to open the space of visualisation to a plurality of voices is inevitably unfinished, as there will always be more voices that could be included in an open-ended conversation.

6.5 THE DESIGNER BIAS: A CRITICAL ISSUE

Throughout the project, we have been aware of an important limitation in the approach: the power of making meaning that the designer as map-maker has throughout the process of compiling the Atlas.

The overall research schedule set by the project investigators involved two separated phases of participatory workshops and analysis of the results. This meant that

The manual process of analysis employed in this project (6.3.4) shares its limitations with other examples of conventional content analysis. Since categories are assigned by

researchers studying a text, they very much depend on the way the content is understood and interpreted by those who conduct the study.

By tracing the patterns of information that emerged from the analysis on a map, I, as a designer, made a series of choices that influenced the message received by the reader. At the same time, however, this practice was necessary in this context to make visible patterns of information that would otherwise remain unseen.

But what could be ways of involving participants in the production of artefacts of

VCUF? This possibility will be explored in the Design Experiment #3: Birmingham Park Summit (Chapter 8 of this section)

6.6 LOCATING THE IMAGINARY CITY

During the workshops, we asked participants to imagine “a future UK city”, without providing them with specific geographic requirement. While elements of existing cities were often brought in as comparison (mostly London, but also Swindon, Singapore, or Scandinavian cities), all the groups chose to design a new city from scratch. The

imaginary regional map in the Atlas shows the differences in topography, size, and urban plans of these cities.

Decontextualized cities are spaces of the imagination, that, like Calvino’s Invisible Cities (1979), visualise values and concerns about the future, more than the characteristics of their buildings and infrastructures. But what is the value of VCUF when applied to a specific context? The project presented in the following chapter (Design Experiment #2: Sharing Cities) shows how some of the methods developed for this project were used to

understand the relation between social practices and the urban environment in situated conversations with local experts.