Science fiction prototyping

History and progress

The idea was pioneered by Brian David Johnson who, at the time, was a futurist at Intel working on the challenge his company faced anticipating the market needs for integrated circuits at the end of their 7–10 years design and production cycle. From this context, the roots for Science Fiction Prototyping can be traced back to a paper presented at the Intelligent Environments conference in Seattle in July 2008, "Using Multiple Personas In Service Robots To Improve Exploration Strategies When Mapping New Environments", describing multiple personas and irrational thinking for humanoid robots which inspired Brian David Johnson to write the first Science Fiction Prototype, Nebulous Mechanisms, which went on to become a series of stories that eventually morphed into Intel’s 21st Century Robot project. The first public Science Fiction Prototyping event was Creative Science 2010 (not to be confused with Creation Science), held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 19 July 2010. This event was also significant as it included the Science Fiction Prototype Tales From a Pod which became the first Science Fiction Prototype to be commercialised (by Immersive Displays Ltd, ImmersaVU). In 2011, a second Science Fiction Prototyping workshop was held in Nottingham (UK), Creative Science 2011, in which Intel made the first documentary about this methodology. Shortly afterwards the Creative Science Foundation was formed as an umbrella organisation to manage Science Fiction Prototyping activity, leading to a proliferation of events and publications; a more detailed account is provided on the Science Fiction Prototyping History web pages.

Methodology

The core methodology is the use of creative arts as a means to introduce innovations into science, engineering, business and socio-political systems. It doesn’t aim to forecast the future, rather it focuses on inventing or innovating the future by extrapolating forward trends from research or foresight activities (creating new concepts, schemes, services and products). The main (but not exclusive) methodology is the use of science-fiction stories, grounded in existing practice which are written for the explicit purpose of acting as prototypes for people to explore a wide variety of futures. These ‘science fiction prototypes’ (SFPs) can be created by scientists, engineers, business or socio-political professionals to stretch their work or, for example, by writers, film/stage directors, school children and members of the public to influence the work of professionals. In this way these stories act as a way of involving the widest section of the population to help set the research agenda. Johnson advocates the following five step process for writing Science Fiction Prototypes:

1. Pick Your Science and Build Your World
2. Identify the Scientific Inflection Point
3. Consider ramifications of the Science on People
4. Identify the Human Inflection Point
5. Reflect on what Did We Learn?

Full Science Fiction Prototypes are of the order 6-12 pages long, with a popular structure being; an introduction, background work, the fictional story (the bulk of the SFP), a short summary and a summary (reflection). Most often science fiction prototypes extrapolate current science forward and, therefore, include a set of references at the end. Such prototypes can take several days to write and for situations where ideas need to be generated faster (e.g. meetings), the concept of micro science fiction prototypes (µSFP) is used. Generally, µSFP are the size of a Twitter or Text message, being around 25-30 words (140-160 characters in standard English).

Applications

Science Fiction Prototyping has a number of interesting applications. The most obvious is for product innovation, in which the two earliest examples are Intel’s 21st Century Robot (an open innovation project to develop a domestic robot) and Essex University’s eDesk (a mixed-reality immersive education desk) both of which were introduced in the previous section. Beyond product innovation, Science Fiction Prototyping is also offering significant benefits to education. For example, in Canterbury Christ Church University (UK) Business School it is being used as a vehicle to introduce creative thinking in support of entrepreneurship courses. In San-Diego State University (USA) Department of Learning Design and Technology they have explored it as a means for motivating pre-university students to take up STEM studies and careers. At the University of Washington (USA), they have used it to facilitate broader contextual and societal thinking about computers, computer security risks, and security defense as part of an optional senior-level course in computer security. In the National Taiwan University (Taiwan), it is used to increase business school students' interests in science and technology for business innovation. The Business Schools of the universities of Leeds and Manchester (UK) are exploring its use in community development projects. Finally, it’s being applied to meet a significant educational need in China, where it’s mandatory for all science and engineering students to take a course in English language. In Shijiazhuang University (China) they are exploring the potential for Science Fiction Prototyping to overcome the dullness that some science students experience in language learning by using it as an integrated platform for teaching Computer English, combining language and science learning.