Participatory Design Fiction Curator
Providing inspiration from Participatory Design fiction
Research
Anaëlle Beignon
Interaction Design
First year of the Two-year master
15 credits
Spring 2020
Abstract
Designers take inspiration about the future in order to shape values for their design practice, especially when new technologies are involved. Participatory design fiction is an approach that enables designers to reflect upon futures are created by designers. These narratives about technologies that come from non-designers are valuable for non-designers in the industry as inspirational material. Nonetheless, the distance between the academic research and designers in the industry makes difficult the spreading of design fictions produced by non-designers.
This thesis project explore the following: How might we design a digital infrastructure that integrates the end user's imaginaries about new technologies as inspiration and material for reflection in the design industry practice?
As well as: How might we enable the design research community to share results of their participatory design fiction experiments with the design industry in ways that benefit both parts?
I will present an investigation in the relations between the academic design researchers and the design practitioners by the means of co-design workshops, interviews, virtual ethnography and iterative prototyping. The outcome is an infrastructure which takes advantage of the existing practices of the design community on Twitter. By investigating these social media dynamics, I intent to create a bridge between academia and design industry for enabling critical inspiration from participatory design fiction outcomes. The final prototype is a Twitter account run by a bot which enables an autonomous collection of design fictions from non-designers shared on Twitter by design researchers with non-designers from the industry.
Table of Contents
Abstract ... 2
1.
Introduction ... 5
2.
Theory ... 6
2.1 Technological imaginaries / designing regarding the future ... 6
2.2 Shaping the design field’s imaginary ... 7
2.3 Participatory design fiction practices ... 7
2.3.1 Design fiction ... 7
2.3.2 Design fiction’s limitations ... 8
2.3.3 Participatory design fiction ... 9
2.4 Inspiration in design ... 10
2.3 Links between design academia and design industry ... 10
2.5 Synthesis and next directions ... 11
3.
State of the art ... 12
3.1 Online platforms for design inspiration ... 12
3.2 Sharing participatory design fiction workshops in academia ... 13
3.3 Conferences ... 15
3.4 Academia-industry connections on Twitter ... 15
3.5 Synthesis of the state of the art ... 16
4.
Method ... 16
4.1 Virtual ethnography ... 16
4.2 Prototyping ... 17
4.3 Co-design and design workshops ... 17
4.4 Semi-structured interview ... 17
4.5 Wizard of Oz ... 17
4.6 Ethics ... 17
5.
Design process ... 17
5.1 Virtual ethnography: what is design inspiration for design practitioners? ... 18
5.2 Early prototypes ... 19
5.2.1 Sketching ... 19
5.2.2 User journey ... 19
5.3 Questionnaire ... 20
5.3.1 Set up of the questionnaire ... 21
5.3.2 Results of the questionnaire about technological futures with non-designers ... 21
5.4 Workshop ... 21
5.5 Prototyping ... 22
5.5.1 A Twitter bot ... 22
5.5.2 Technical implementation ... 23
5.6.3 Presentation of the account ... 23
5.6 Testing ... 23
5.6.1 Wizard of Oz ... 23
5.6.2 Data from the test phase ... 24
5.6.3 Interview with the account’s followers ... 24
6.
Results and final design ... 25
6.1 The Twitter Curator, taking advantage of social media for sharing contents with
the design community ... 25
6.2 Stimulating exchanges between academia and design industry ... 26
6.3 Shaping a critical inspiration regarding technology ... 26
7.
Discussion ... 26
8.
Conclusion ... 27
9.
Acknowledgements ... 28
10. References ... 28
1. Introduction
Imaginaries, and in particular technological imaginaries, have a substantial impact on the ways that we as designers conceive new services, objects or interfaces. Indeed, in the design process, designers often come up with questions which mobilize -consciously or not- imaginaries which they are used to working with as designers (for example mass surveillance scenarios and privacy). It is therefore important to have critical discussions on these imaginaries that underlie design projects and can reflect specific moral beliefs which are integrated into design products.
But as Dunne and Raby (2013) evoke, design projects tend to lead to optimistic solutions with little consideration for non-technical issues which might occur with our designs (for example societal or psychological issues). This ‘solution-driven design’ has been criticized by Dobbins (2009) when he was working in the field of urban planning. He presents the word solutionism which he has elaborated when investrigating how smart cities were eluding important questions for going towards a solution. Approaches such as design fiction go against solutionism by producing designs that aim to question issues which relate to design and society. The artifacts and the literature produced in design fiction approaches enrich the
designers’ practice in general by prompting critical reflexivity on the technologies that are integrated in their projects. One of the critiques addressed to design fiction and conceptual design in general is that it is mainly the designers who are talking with designers here, and framing questions about the future mostly alone while the end-users are integrated as reactants to the designer’s concerns. This top-down dynamic is relevant for designers who want to share their concerns with the design community or people in general, but may be questionable if we consider that design fictions help shaping the design community’s moral values. Therefore, the technology’s end-users might also have preoccupations and moral standpoints regarding technological futures that could be taken into consideration by designers when reflecting upon the values embedded in their project. If designers can already rely on design fiction-based references which reflect designer’s questions and beliefs, how can they reach the end-users technological imaginaries?
Building on participatory design theory, participatory design fiction methods are opportunities for the designers to reflect not only on the designers’ objects of concern but also on what matters to the technology’s end-users. The technology’s end-users in this thesis comprise non-designers in all their diversity of point of views
regarding technology.
Design fictions from end-users are an opportunity for designers to be reflexive on their own imaginaries and on the ways they influence their design practice. If participatory design fiction methods have emerged to accompany design projects, the data collected is not shared with the design community under the same status as design fiction artifacts from designers. Design fictions from non-designers can be found in academic papers, and are sometimes segmentary, while design fictions created by designers can be found in design magazines or on the designer’s websites and shared easily with the design community. The design fictions created by or with the stakeholders in participatory design projects are valuable design material for the community and could be shared further with the design community in a way that is easy to access for the designers in their design practice.
In this thesis, I will address the question of inspiration in the design process for designers from the industry by creating an infrastructure that able them to access design fictions from non-designers as inspirational material for their design practice.
How might we design a digital infrastructure that integrates the end user's imaginaries about new technologies as inspiration and material for reflection in the design industry practice?
I will present the design process of an infrastructure which enables sharing with the design community design fictions from non-designers from participatory design fiction stakeholders. The infrastructure will consist of a bank of various visions of the future from the technology’s end-users which designers can use to reflect upon their ongoing design project or their design practice in general. This infrastructure aims to make easier the integration of participatory design fiction works in the design process and to engage collective reflections on the authors of the futures embedded in the design practice.
A secondary research question that has emerged from my design process is the communication between the design industry and the academia. Indeed, sharing academic content that can be used by designers from the industry addresses the issue of the existing bridges theory and practice in the design community and their potential weaknesses.
fiction experiments with the design industry in ways that benefit both parts?
From an interaction design approach, this project focuses on the experience of designers when looking for inspiration. It leverages questions of interdependency of designers in the industry and designers in the academia, and proposes a solution that sustains the already existing dynamics of exchanges and resource sharing in the design community.
In this ten-week project, I explored the ways designers from the industry get inspiration while confronting it to the ways design researchers share knowledge with the whole design community. This has been done by conducting a design workshop with industry designers and virtual ethnography on social media platforms. I finish by implementing a prototype and testing it to gather feedback from the users.
The report first goes through theory related to technological imaginaries, design inspiration and participatory design. Then the state of the art presents existing examples of platforms for inspiration and platforms of mediation between the academia and the industry. A method section goes through the different methods I have employed and clarifies the ethical considerations relating to this design project. The design process section develops the results of the different methods I have employed, and how they nourished each other to come up to the implementation a final prototype and its test. The results section clarifies the outcomes of the research, and explain better the features of the infrastructure designed. In the discussion, I reflect upon design after design, and the potential defaults of this kind of infrastructures. Then I conclude by answering to both research questions, and developing further on the contribution of this thesis.
2. Theory
In this thesis I explored different theory about the place of technological imaginaries in design, design inspiration and participatory design fiction. I also had an interest in the ways the academic designers share knowledge with design practitioners.
2.1 Technological imaginaries / designing regarding the future
Imaginary is a broad term and needs to be narrowed down for the sake of this project. In this thesis, imaginary will refer to a network of fictional narratives that are fed by forecasts, scenarios, artifacts, cultural references and completed with personal and collective values that shape the way we envision the future. Technological imaginaries are imaginaries that relate to technology. One of their specificities is that they are nowadays mainly produced and shared by the technology industry (Forlano &Anijo, 2014) (Dunne & Raby, 2013). These imaginaries from the technology industry -called techno-utopianism by Dunne and Raby (2013)- are centered on the technical aspect of technologies -called technoscientific imaginaries by Forlano and Anijo (2014)- while they are escaping the social issues of the technologies -sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff & Sperling, 2007). This is why the technological imaginaries that designers mobilize in design projects would refer to sociotechnical imaginaries, which Jasanoff and Sperling (2007) define as “imagined forms of social life and of social order that center on the development and fulfillment of innovative scientific and/or
technological projects” page two.
Reeves (2012) suggests to employ the expression envisioning which can be defined as singular visions of the future that feed the imaginary. Envisioning refers to “a broadly future-oriented aspect of technology design which mixes fictions, forecasts, extrapolations or projections into societal visions for technological progress.”. Envisionings have several characteristics:
• They are imagined future societal situations
• They explore the responsibility of technological development in future societal situations • They make projections from existing “technology trends”
• They commingle with existing “fictional representations”
Envisionings are material that can serve different tasks relating to design process such as framing a research topic, making a choice between different technologies, inspiring or reassuring commercial partners or funders. In this thesis, I chose to focus on the envisionings’ capacity to inspire designers, and more precisely I will explore co-envision as a way to get insight on the end-users’ envisionings for design inspiration.
2.2 Shaping the design field’s imaginary
The references and culture that impacts on the design practice can be considered as imaginaries. Our
references as designers can be science fiction, academic literature, prospective about technological progress, conceptual design approaches such as design fiction, art… Feeding the imaginary is important in the design practice, and looking for references is done as part of design projects, but also aside the projects for feeding the design skills. This active and passive imaginary feeding has an impact on how we design. Indeed, science fiction movies and literature for example had an impact on the technological progress (Dourish & Bell, 2014). because it contributes to shape values, fears and desires regarding the future that we want to replicate, get inspired of or avoid. Indeed, as technologies have an ideological commitment, technological imaginaries do as well (Dourish & Bell, 2014).
It has been observed by Nicolas Nova (2014) that the technological imaginaries didn’t change that much in the last 40 years (eg. skyscrapers, holograms, robots), and for him, it is as if ‘future would have disappeared’. For Ellul (1954), it is the initial nature of the technique that makes the future unthinkable. For him, technique is autonomous in its development, and we cannot really stop it or choose the way to take : ‘What can be done will be done’. I would nuance Ellul’s vision by saying that the design community is putting efforts into developing methods that include ethical consideration that can orient the development of technology.
The design community has already reacted to this paralysis of imaginaries through new methods and ways of designing which enable raising interesting issues on potential technological futures to stimulate discussion on social, political or ecological issues for example. For example the LIMITS movement (Nardi et al, 2018) advocates for a design practice which takes into account the limits of the natural resources of the planet. Friedman and Khan (2008) advocate for a design practice further focused on the values are embedded in design products, and proposes that we should design according to human values. But human values are not consensual, and sometimes need to be discussed. Discussions about the future are important for this sake, because they enable deep discussions about topics that would usually be difficult to apprehend. This project relates to value sensitive design as design fictions can explore values regarding the technology. Moreover, discussing the values from a participatory design perspective opens the debate to non-designers. Sharing non-designers’ point of view on values is another way for designers to create their own spectrum of what human values can be.
A risk related to technological imaginaries is that it would influence designers going towards unsustainable goals regarding the ecology -cornucopian paradigm (Dobbins, 2009), or society. Indeed, if technological imaginaries are partly owned by the technology industry through future video scenarios that valorize the company’s corporate values, it is generally not in their interest to propose visions of the future in which their products would not exist or dysfunction (Dunne & Raby, 2013). There are consequences to the forms that technology takes. Sherry Turkle in her book “Alone together” (2017) addresses the social consequences that techniologies such as digital interfaces or robots have on our behaviours. New issues related to these technologies have emerged such as addiction or communicational and emotional relations.
2.3 Participatory design fiction practices
2.3.1 Design fiction
Designers have the technical means and the technical knowledge to make artefacts which are included in a specific environment, and this enables us to give people a feeling of how alternative presents or futures could be and stimulates their imagination (Bleeker, 2011). This is why various interconnected methods which rely on conceptual artefacts (Dunne and Raby, 2013) seek to question potential futures and current technologies. Speculative design (Dunne & Raby, 2013), critical design and especially design noir (Dunne and Raby, 2001), adversarial design (DiSalvo, 2012), and also design fiction (Brown et al., 2016), are different approaches that enable questioning the ways designers design by putting the design practice in other perspectives. Design fiction might be the most related approach to imaginaries as it aims to create fictional artefacts that immerge the spectator in different pasts, presents or futures.
Design fiction or speculative design is an approach which is defined by Dunne and Raby (2013) as “the deliberate use of diegetic prototypes to suspend disbelief about certain changes. Design fictions question relationships between people, practice and technology and “reveal practices and cultural assumptions
embedded in the future design.” (Wakkary et al., 2013). Design fiction produces artifacts that help feeding the imaginary by questioning the impact of the design practices by trying to overcome imaginaries of the future that we might perceive as obvious (Bleeker, 2009).
Nova, 2016):
• Design scenarios of use for the company’s new future product or service that seek to show dysfunctions and point at potential issues. In this situation, the designers create design fiction scenarios once the project is kind of settled.
• Create debate around technological change. Through workshops, by presenting design fiction artifacts.
Two Weeks Time (http://www.twoweekstime.uk/) is a collaborative website that publishes fiction scenarios about the deployment of contact tracing in the Covid-19 situation. Everyone is invited to send their perspective on the future.
• Reflect on how the world is
changing or might change
http://tbdcatalog.com/ is a catalog of design fiction artifacts, destined to companies (Figure 1).
“It's a printed catalog you ritually pick up every morning to browse on your mostly boring, everyday ordinary driverless commute. You may even look forward to it, the way you look forward today to the free daily commuter news, or the Skymall catalog, or an entertaining bit of junk mail.” Here it seems that the design fiction phase intervenes before the beginning of the project, or permanently, like a technological watch. This catalog is in itself a collection of various envisionnings that scan different futures.
2.3.2 Design fiction’s limitations
If design fiction artefacts can reach the technology’s end-users and prompt public debate such as Auger’s Audio Tooth Implant which was widely discussed in mainstream media and on blogs (Auger, 2013), the initial imaginaries come from the designers’ opinion, concerns or interests about technology. Also, unlike Auger’s Tooth Implant, most future-oriented artifacts can be found mainly in museums or in academic research, which leads to a main critique to these methods which is the public’s accessibility. Indeed, conceptual design approaches are being criticized for failing to reach a large scale of people to enable wide debates about technology and social concerns. Because making decisions regarding viable or desirable futures implies “closing” potential futures for individuals and the community, we should as designers try to hear what matters to the end-users from the perspective of their technological (but also social, political and cultural) imaginaries, or the future will be more likely to look like the desires of designers and engineers, not end-users.
The designer’s imaginaries, just as the ones from science-fiction mainly come from “people form a particular background and skill set” (Tsekleves et al., 2017). A consequence of the imaginaries’ ownership by the technology industry and not by people is that these imaginaries are concretized with products and services which meet at first the expectations of high-end customers, and become mainstream after they have been validated by the high-end customers.
What if we have now the opportunity to make technology users discuss what matters to designers? Maybe we should as designers try to hear what matters to the end-users from the perspective of their technological
Figure 1 Sample of a page of the catalog. It is an articificial
imaginaries. How do they see the future? What do they want? What do they fear? What signs do they see in today’s technologies? Another goal of this project is to find a way to concretely stimulate a critical debate amongst technology end-users that would go beyond the techno-utopianism (Dunne & Raby, 2013)of commercials, or the science fiction references they already know.
2.3.3 Participatory design fiction
Different participatory and co-design practices have already started to explore the creative potential of the end-users of technologies regarding imaginary. Co-design fiction (Noortman, Schulte, Marshall, Bakker, & Cox, 2019) (Schulte, Marshall & Cox, 2016) aims to create scenarios with end-users in a workshop. It is described in (Ambe et al., 2019) as “an approach to creating design fiction by engaging users to create their own fictional works, anchored in their own beliefs and convictions, in order to capture how they personally imagine, envision and speculate not just on future technology but future life.”.
These user-inspired-futures (McKenzie, 2016) can then be materialized by the designers into artefacts. Close to this methodology, future workshops (Mogensen, 1994) take a critical stand on a current situation and turn it into a fantasy. Cooperative prototyping (Mogensen, 1994) is the opposite strategy: participants are designing together a technological device which enables rich discussions on practices. Design fiction probes (Gaver, Dunne & Pacenti, 1999) are design fiction artefacts which are installed or used in people’s lives to get feedback on their reception of these imaginaries.
Participatory design fiction relies on participatory design approaches that enables environments in which the project’s stakeholders can take part in the decisions made (Blythe et al. ,2016). Anti-solutionist strategies: Seriously silly design fiction. The designer is here a facilitator whose role is to guide the creation of user-inspired-futures and fictions (McKenzie, 2016). As “fiction exposes its creator or writer’s existing cultural stand and serves as a platform for presenting embedded values and ideas” (Ambe et al., 2019), participatory design fiction is particularly useful to reveal the stakeholders’ envisionings. Another main quality of the participatory design fiction approach is that it enables large diversity of points of view regarding futures amongst which we can form opinions (McKenzie, 2016). Collecting a large variety of point of view can be interesting if we take into consideration that communities have a creative potential (Sander, 2012).
Participation in participatory design fiction can take different forms (Knutz, Tau, & Markussen, 2016) that relate to different aims in design practices. We can find in Knutz, Tau, & Markussen’s article (2016) six forms of fiction strategies such as value fiction which aims to focus on social values embedded in technology. It aims to trigger discussion about emotions, beliefs and wishes about the future of technology. Participatory design fiction approaches can help accessing new knowledge about the values related to the design products. It is also a way of reaching a level of knowledge regarding these topics that is difficult to access when talking about what people think about the future. Indeed, envisionings relate to different levels of consciousness. In Convivial Toolbox (Sander, 2012) present a pyramidal representation of knowledge (Figure 2) and show that what people know, feel and dream relates to tacit and latent knowledge. Envisionings can be grounded on what people say and think, but we could argue that they are even closer to dreaming. Indeed, our visions of the futures can be very personal, and relate to our own fears and desires deeply buried inside us. This is why, accessing to these imaginaries can be even more important, because they are access doors to tacit and latent knowledge from people we design for.
2.4 Inspiration in design
According to Setchi and Bouchard (2010), design inspiration can be seen as an integral part of the design process. Indeed, getting inspired helps designers to frame their projects as well as it has a role in the look and feel determination of the final design. Designers convoke different tools relating to their inspirational practice such as mood boards, vocabulary or pallets of colors. On a wider scale, designers can take inspiration from everything that surrounds them like for example culture, nature or human behaviors.
Design inspiration also refers to the action of looking for existing design works that are related to their project. It can help defining their design space, and framing their project according to what already exists on the market. Another utility of design inspiration is to communicate with clients or a team. It is a good way to share directions that the design process might lead to.
The source of the inspiration are acknowledged in the design process, and can constitute a justification for design decisions (Eckert & Stacey, 2000). We can argue that inspiration is part of the design culture, and can be considered as the way designers keep themselves updated on what exists that can influence their work. Dunne & Raby (2013) propose inspiration as one of the potential applications of speculative design. Indeed, inspiration might not be only about being aware of what exists, but also to reflect upon it.
2.3 Links between design academia and design industry
In this thesis project, the ways the academic research in design communicates with the design industry is in question. Indeed, if the contents produced by the researchers are available in the academic literature, do designers who work in the industry take the time to read it? Moreover, the academic design research is sometimes criticized for being too avant-garde and disconnected from the actual
problematics in the design practice in the industry (Figure 3). Jon Kolko (2018) explains in a blog article that the main difference between academic and industry design is that in the first one the purpose is to create knowledge while in the second one the purpose is to create products. Also, the value of the outcome is not the same as it can be monetary for the design industry while in academia the purpose would be to reflect on the existing practices and guide the development of design practices. Kolko also talks about the different audiences of these two categories of designers. When a product is designed to be available on the market, it reaches easier a large audience, and contributes to change the way people live. As opposed to this, when the outcome of the design, project is an academic paper, the audience will be smaller, and made up of “people who like to read academic papers” and have the financial means to do so. He also points out that academic research is often seen by the practicionners as not pragmatic enough, and does not take in consideration the constraints stemming from being a
designer in the industry. To him, the solution to the lack of communication between design practicionners and design researchers is to facilitate the practitioners’ access to academic contents.
“Designers should be able to explore and integrate academic design knowledge into their work with as much ease as drawing, building wireframes, creating service maps, or doing all the other things they do on a daily basis.”
Figure 3 Exchange on Twitter bewteen two design
In “A pragmatics framework for design fiction” (2015), Lindley illustrates the distinction
between the different ways to do Research into/through/for design fiction, and how they interact together. My research aims to investigate the ways the academic knowledge from participatory design fiction studies can reach the design practice in the industry. In added my own layer on this sketch in blue to illustrate where I intervene in the current ecosystem (Figure 4).
2.5 Synthesis and next directions
Participatory design fictions have a potential in fostering critical user-oriented inspiration practices in the design industry. As participatory design fiction is an emerging approach that is still mainly academic, there is a challenge in finding ways to share design fictions from non-designers with designers from the industry. From this grounding theory, my first stakeholder who were the designers from the industry are now joined by researchers in participatory design fiction as secondary stakeholders. Figure 5 is a sketch showing the different roles of both stakeholders in this infrastructure.
Figure 5 Stakeholders mapping of the infrastructure.
3. State of the art
This section relates to canonical examples in terms of platforms that enable sharing knowledge for design inspiration.
3.1 Online platforms for design inspiration
If designers can take inspiration from everything that surrounds them, new digital tools have emerged to support the designer’s inspiration research.
The most famous one may be Pinterest (Figure 6). Pinterest is mostly used by graphic designers as it is a useful resource for getting quickly a large collection of graphic references thanks to a collective classification of pictures. Pinterest supports the creation of mood boards, a method that is very related to the esthetical and emotional aspect of a design.
Medium is another popular online platform amongst designer for sharing articles about design. A live feed of article is generated according to the preferences designers have set up when choosing tag words (Figure 7) when subscribing. It is also very easy to contribute on the platform, and anyone can share their own articles. Nonetheless, the amount of articles one can read in a month is limited on the free subscription. Medium can represent an alternative platform for sharing academic contents with designers from the industry as it is consulted by industry designers and also some researchers. The type of inspiration mainly promoting here is theoretical, and even if sometimes design projects are shared on the platform, it is not the majoritarian use the article’s authors make of the functionalities at their disposal.
While conducting virtual ethnography, I identified that Twitter was a platform used by designers form the industry to get inspiration.
Twitter is a social network which allows sharing contents in a condensed way. A network is created by following accounts, and it is possible to interact with other users by answering to tweets or tagging people. The design community is present on Twitter, and designers use the platform for sharing resources, discussing, debating and also to put people in relation (Appendix VIII). A short virtual ethnography on a Facebook group which gathers designers helped me to understand what were the relations that designers have with the Twitter platform. First, Twitter seem to be mostly frequented by designers because the design community is largely present on the platform, I is a way to connect better with other designers (Appendix VIII). They can get aware of what is currently happening in the design spheres and know what are the current ongoing debates. Nonetheless, Twitter is criticized by some designers from the industry because there is “a lot of negativity” on this social media (Appendix VIII), and not enough serious information. Also, designers do not look at everything that goes on their live feed, just skim the information.
To sum up, Twitter has pros and cons, but its main quality is that it gathers a large amount of designers from all around the world and exchange together.
Figure 6 Different moodboards from my personal
Pinterest account
Figure 7 Landing page of Medium whith the tags
3.2 Sharing participatory design fiction workshops in academia
A first way in which the knowledge produced in design research can reach design practitioners from the industry is the design education. Indeed, when studying design, critical reflections on the design practices are encouraged.
If we observe best sellers in design books on the webstie Bookauthority, they can be about design methods or mindsets, but are all quite general and do not focus on very particular studies such as the ones we can find in academic papers.
Some big technology companies have integrated internal research laboratories that make research which is specifically framed for the company developments. A major critique to this functioning could be that the values of the company might heavily influence the research produced compared to an independent research.
I will analyze here the type of data that are presented in academic papers from participatory design fiction workshops. The table below presents three participatory design fiction academic projects, and a sample of the data that was collected.
Source of the studies Participatory design fiction project’s context Participants Participatory design fiction methods / assets
Example of envisionings gathered from non-designers From design fiction to design friction: Speculative and participatory design of values-embedded urban technology (Forlano & Anijo, (2014) Workshops about urban technology - Goal: revealing values underlying urban technology 30 local policymakers, entrepreneurs, activists, academics, graduate students, and citizens
post notes idea mapping - prototyping - value cards - design methods cards
poor (few data in the paper)
“tel-empathy” as a means of illustrating the way in which citizens might engage with the city in a more empathic way
The adventures of older authors: Exploring futures through co-design fictions. (Ambe et al., 2019) Workshop - writing about technological futures nine older creative writers from 60 to 86 years old Introduction to the topic and to design fiction - presenting prompts (videos) - brainstorming - writing session
rich (a lot of data in the paper)
“They both desperately missed the freedom of their own car and the ability to visit the bush or the beach on a whim. Now their fully automated vehicle would return that joy and spontaneity to their lives.” Anti-solutionist strategies: Seriously silly design fiction. (Blythe et al, 2016) Design workshop on the current state of city planning members of the Newcastle Elders Council task: build a “magic machine”
rich (a lot of data in the paper)
They imagined a collection of interconnected technologies for the city; The Hackers Hat, Advanced
The Hacker’s Hat pushes notifications to people’s mobile devices in Newcastle to communicate the latest news on the ‘carnival’. The hats are hackable by those who have basic knowledge of technology. These can be
purchased for a reasonable price for members, Hacker Hat selling has become a social enterprise and the money raised contributes to further expansion of the carnival scheme.
What is interesting to note is that the envisionings collected are always explained further in the articles, which is normal because the data collected has a specific value in the context of the workshops and the projects. For example, “Anti-solutionist strategies: Seriously silly design fiction” (Blythe et al, 2016) is a paper about methodology. The article’s emphasis is not placed on what the participants have produced during the
workshop, but on how the workshop was structured, and what are the learnings for participatory design fiction. This is representative of the public targeted with this type of publication: other researchers. Nonetheless, all papers present envisions which can be related to other design projects in the industry, and can inspire or make designers reflect on their practice.
If all these participatory design fiction examples are precious, the question I am addressing here is about the outcome of the workshops conducted. If the stakeholders produced design fiction artifacts, then shouldn’t we share them in the design community just as we do with design fiction artifacts from designers?
Indeed, these design fictions are valuable for design inspiration not only because they prompt critical
inspiration, but also because they inform on the concerns of the people we design for. In that sense, we could consider that design fictions from non-designers have another status that design fictions from designers: they have the potential to foster empathy.
Nonetheless, because of the division between design researchers and industry designers, the format of academic papers might not be the best for looking for inspiration for industry researchers. Indeed, the information provided by academic papers are very exhaustive and refer to a lot of different concepts and methods but often let little room to what the actual design was, which is the central information that designers seek as they need to rely on design works that already exist. Moreover, design fictions can be taken out of the context of the study, and would still have a subversive or critical potential. The table above is structured in way that the methods employed as well as the number of participants is easily trackable. It represents a condensed version of the paper which is, unlike abstracts, framed upon what the workshop participants’ have produced.
3.3 Conferences
Design conferences gather designers who work for the industry such as UX Copenhagen
(https://uxcopenhagen.com/), or designmatters (https://designmatters.io/) conferences. The topics explored can refer to ethics, design methodologies or more general talks about the purpose of design. There are also conferences that gather both designers from the industry and design researchers. The 2016 collaborate conference(https://2016.collaborateconf.com/index.html) aimed to create a bridge between academia and the industry in UX design. The speakers come both from the academia and the design industry. Moreover, the prices are a lot cheaper than the usual academic conferences (about 100 dollars). The interaction
conferences of IXDA (https://interaction20.ixda.org/) also target both researchers and designers from the industry by proposing talks from both academic researchers and designers from the industry. The conference’s tickets are a lot more expensive, which means this conference is not really accessible to everyone. Nonetheless, some of the talks are available online afterwards for free.
3.4 Academia-industry connections
on Twitter
After exploring how the researchers were
communicating on the workshops they organize or attend, I found that there were recurring patterns that are interesting to take in consideration in my design. First, it seems that it is mostly the participants (when they are designers themselves) who share images from the workshop. It could be explained by the fact that the facilitators may not have the time to take pictures or write tweets during the workshop, and do not have the time or do not see the point in doing it afterwards. A lot of the pictures shared from these workshops do not give information about the methods or the fictions produced, and act as an
acknowledgement that there is an ongoing workshop (Figure 8).
Because the outcomes of design workshops are often unfinished, maybe it is less encouraging for the organizers to share them with the design community. Nonetheless, I have found several tweets from the researchers who ran participatory design fiction workshops like one from E. Tsekleves (Figure 9), one of the authors of a co-design fiction paper. If we can have an idea of how the workshop was conducted and what was produced by the participants, the
information is very partial, and therefore it may be difficult to get inspiration from it.
Also, the community of researchers in design is very active on Twitter, and the designers and researchers initiate discussions, debates or resources sharing under the posts (Appendix I). As one of the
workshop’s participant (M.) told me, discussions on Twitter are also a good way of getting inspired
because you can easily access different visions of one topic.
As we can see in the appendix I, an existing way to document the outcome of design workshops are threads, that allow to restitute a larger amount of information, and possibly while doing the workshop. Twitter offers the possibility to have an easy access to different perspectives on one topic.
Figure 8 Tweet from a design fiction workshop
presenting the context and the theme. The picture here does not give further information about what is produced.
Figure 9 The outcome of a part of the workshop is
revealed, but all the information is not visible on the picture.
3.5 Synthesis of the state of the art
The sketch above synthetizes the asymmetrical relations between designers from the industry and designers-researchers. The thicker lines represent a stronger connection to the different platforms that enable resources sharing while the thinner represent a tenuous connection. All those means for communicating together and sharing knowledge might be complementary, but for the sake of my project I had to choose one canal that could work for sharing participatory design fiction material with the design community.
I do not forget that the designers can be in contact with design researchers during their studies. But I believe it is less relevant here because this canal of communication seems to work well, but does not last.
I chose to focus on Twitter as this platform proved a great potential in stimulating discussions between designers and researchers, but is also used as a platform of inspiration.
4. Method
I chose to follow a research through design approach (John Zimmerman, Erik Stolterman & Jodi Forlizzi, 2010) because it was led by my design practice. The outcomes are related to the infrastructure I am designing, but go further to contribute more generally to the interaction design discipline.
Explain that I had to research about Twitter
4.1 Virtual ethnography
Christine Hine (2008) propose virtual ethnography as a method which enables to observe social behaviors on digital platforms. Observing online social dynamics was particularly relevant to my project as I wanted to understand the ways two parts of the design communities interact together. Indeed, online platforms prompt social behaviors that are important to take in consideration when designing an infrastructure that will take place in this ecosystem.
I used virtual ethnography on Twitter and Facebook for several purposes:
- Understanding how do designers take inspiration as a complement to semi-structured interviews - Understanding the dynamics of the design community on Twitter
o How do the designers interact with each-others? o How do the designers from the academia use it? o How do the designers from the industry use it?
4.2 Prototyping
I made different prototypes iteratively of the infrastructure all along the design process. I use here the term prototypes as Houde & Hill describe in their article “What do prototypes prototype?” (1997) and fulfill different roles and levels of fidelity.
I prototyped at first the role (‘1’ on the sketch Figure 10) by creating temporary user journeys, then I prototyped the implementation by producing a sketch of the overall infrastructure (‘2’ on the sketch Figure 10) and then
prototyping both an integration and a look and feel prototype on Twitter which enabled me to gather feedback from users (‘3’ on the sketch Figure 10).
4.3 Co-design and design workshops
Designing for designers while I am a designer myself was quite challenging. Conducting workshops with other designers was important to ensure that I was not taking my own interests as a general demand from all the design community. In that matter I relied on co-design approaches by conducting a workshop with designers from the industry -my primary stakeholders. I also tried to establish contact with researchers from participatory design fiction -my secondary stakeholders, which was less successful because very few of them answered to me.
4.4 Semi-structured interview
Semi-structured interviews are according to Robyn Longhurst (2003) a specific type of interview in which the interviewer asks predefined questions, but can let the discussion follow its course if needed. This type of interview was interesting as I wanted the designers to describe the outcome of the workshop they had just participated in. In that matter it was difficult to create standardized questions. Moreover, this type of format is more likely to make them digress on related topics that I would not have thought of.
4.5 Wizard of Oz
Steven Dow, Blair Macintyre, Jaemin Lee et al. (2005) highlight the benefits of the wizard of Oz methods as a way to prototype the design of a product while shelving technical considerations to focus on the usability. It is used as an intermediate prototype, before a complete development. In my case, the wizard of Oz method was employed to launch a functional version of the prototype. It was important to fake the way the infrastructure would work in order to artificially build a community and potentially create artificial interactions between users.
4.6 Ethics
The participants to the questionnaire were aware of what use would be done out of the data they provided. Also, I informed them that all the answers were optional so they had the choice regarding giving personal information such as their age or their profession.
Moreover, the platform I used (Framasoft) does not sell any data to commercial partners.
The posts from social media present in this thesis report are anonymized. Moreover, the Tweets cited only come from public accounts.
5. Design process
My design process followed a double diamond model (Figure 11) as I started by opening possibilities in a first research phase, then narrowing it down to a research question to focus on my research question. After this, I opened up again the possibilities for my final design in a development phase by prototyping and making a workshop with designers from the industry. In a last phase, I converged to one solution, prototyped it and
Figure 10 Sketch of the different types of prototypes
from Houde & Hill. The numbers correspond to the 3 prototypes I have created.
order to accompany the implementation of the infrastructure.
5.1 Virtual ethnography: what is design inspiration for design
practitioners?
In order to find out what were the current ways for finding inspiration for design practitioners, I went on a Facebook group which is “a professional community of 20,000+ designers in 100+ countries where members discuss design and exchange advice to support design careers and the advancement of the design field at large.”.
There were already posts and discussions about design inspiration (Figure 12). The main sources of inspiration that designers reported were divided in six different categories:
- Design Books - Science Fiction
- Websites (Pinterest, Medium Awwwards…) - Users / their kids
- Everywhere and at every time - Critical to inspiration
Figure 12 One of the comments answering to a member
of the group who asked for the other member’s sources of inspiration.
The last category refers to comments that particularly drew my attention. As a person comments on Figure 13, inspiration in design can be seen as copying existing designs, while the design process would help creating “tailored” designs depending on the specific constraints of the project.
Inspiration in design refers here to trends or aesthetic considerations, and seems to exclude inspiration regarding design methodology or ethics for example. Moreover, it is excluding the efforts that designers have to make to be critical regarding the way they design, and the potential effect their designs could have.
Then, even if inspiration can mean a lot of things for designers, and indeed, we can be inspired in many different ways, I will focus here on one goal of
inspiration which is to make us reflect and form ideas. I won’t focus on trends or purely esthetical inspiration processes.
5.2 Early prototypes
I made various sketches all along the design process that helped me making choices regarding the design of the infrastructure.
5.2.1 Sketching
I made sketches as prototypes (Picture 14, Appendix V for a bigger version) about the presentation of the data from participatory design fiction studies. I chose to investigate the potential of data-visualization here as it has the capacity of making easily
understandable a large quantity of information. When I realized that the data to encode (envisionnings collected from workshops and from my questionnaire) was very diverse, I chose to step away from the data visualization option. Moreover, the richness of the qualitative content collected in design fictions workshops was altered by the extreme simplification of a data visualization. Data visualization might be a good way for sharing the restitution of fiction workshops, but I will be hard to create a common template that fits all the participatory design fiction workshops.
5.2.2 User journey
My second prototype was a user journey (Picture 15, Appendix V for a bigger version). Indeed, it was hard to picture the infrastructure without having a sense of how concretely
designers could interact together. At that point I still didn’t know if I would create an autonomous platform or integrate an existing one. I chose to take the metaphor of Pinterest, and applied it to my infrastructure. In my metaphor, the researchers post and structure contents on the platform while the designers can collect and discover contents for inspiration. This metaphor framed my infrastructure as it was easier to have an existing incarnation of how it could work. Drafting the infrastructure on the spectrum of user experience generated questions such as whether or not the researcher would have time to go on this platform, and why would they do it. This step was decisive as
Figure 13 A comment criticizing inspiration
Figure 14 Sketches for finding a template
for organizing data from design fiction workshops
no interest in loosing time on a platform that does not bring them a substantial benefit (they spend time and energy formatting and sharing contents while the existing contents on the platform might be already known by them as they are specialists, or they can access these contents in academic literature).
5.2.3
Infrastructure’s diagram
This sketch (Figure 16) is the abstracted version of the user journey from the last sub-section. It represents the functionalities that the infrastructure will provide and to whom. It illustrates the interconnections between the actors involved at various degrees in the infrastructure. This very simple illustration of the infrastructure is not perfect, but it was a good tool that I used when I had the feeling things were too complex or when I was forgetting the actual purpose of the infrastructure.
5.3 Questionnaire
I needed to gather envisionnings from non-designers in order to have material to work with during the next steps of the project.
5.3.1 Set up of the questionnaire
In order to give a starting point to the data collection, it was important to narrow down the wide spectrum of technology, in order to tackle more sensitive societal issues. I chose the topic of romantic relations because it directly suggests scenarios, cultures, emotions and can concern everyone.
I initially wanted to explore the capacity of design tools to gather insights on technological imaginaries, and to confront some related issues. The main methodological bias here, in my opinion, could be that as I want to gather people's own imaginaries, I might influence them by providing them with examples. This can be avoided by proposing imaginaries which are not mine, and which are very diverse. I finally chose not to propose initial scenarios, because I thought that even the fact to choose one or another could influence the participant’s answers. I simply asked them questions about technology, future and romantic relations. I am conscious that this questionnaire is not properly part of a participatory design process, but to me the goal of it was to gather quickly material that I could work with.
5.3.2 Results of the questionnaire about technological futures with non-designers
I though than the answers would be consensual in this first questionnaire, but it appears that the answers were very rich. The 44 participants were reached on my Facebook profile as the Covid 19 situation made it difficult for me to meet them in other ways. Moreover, I didn’t want to target a specific community, and my Facebook contacts are the widest panel of people that I can reach, even if I was concerned by the fact that my social circle is mainly represented by young people from 19 to 25 years old. Much to my surprise, the
participants were from 18 to 65 years old, and the middle age was 28,8. The participants were from very various backgrounds which was also a nice surprise to me as I thought it would be mainly my designers friends who would be participating.
The answers from the participants were very rich and leveraged interesting issues regarding technology such as independency, mass-surveillance or social consequences. All the participants without exception were really involved in the questionnaire, and few of them included references to movies such as demolition man, series such as Black Mirror, political theories or topicality such as contact tracing apps in the context of Covid-19 outbreak. Some of them described futuristic scenario without being asked to, for example one of the participants proposed that in the future when people will want to prove their love to others, they will connect on a “virtual world where everyone has an avatar, and realizes virtual actions with people to create social or romantic links”.
Nonetheless, a lot of the answers included classic science fiction references such as holograms, entirely virtual lives or even teleportation, and most of the references mentioned were from the popular Netlif serie Black Mirror. This might show that facilitation or more guidance might be necessary the convoke new imaginaries. It might also show that they are sensitive to this type of narrative inspired them, and even impacted the way they answered the questionnaire.
5.4 Workshop
The goal of the workshop was tostructure the platform in a way that is relevant to the design practitioners’ inspiration practice. Moreover, it was important for me to determine how to structure the contents on the infrastructure, and if they would see a value in taking inspiration from design fictions from non-designers at all. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I was unable to conduct physical workshop without breaking the lockdown policy of the country I was in. This is why I chose to run the workshop digitally on the platform Miro.
I gave the participants design fictions produced by non-designers from academic papers, and also some answers from the questionnaire I did. I structured the information in different ways:
• The first material was very exhaustive, with a lot of analysis from the designers directly copied and pasted. There were also video links and pictures of the artifacts produced with the participants • The second material was mainly text because the design fictions were written scenarios wrote by
older people. I also succinctly sum up what was the purpose of the study, and who participated in it. • The last material was some answers from the questionnaire to the question “What are the problems
that we won’t have in the future concerning our romantic relations?”
I gave the participants a task and a scenario. They were designers that were looking for inspiration for the design of a new service for older couples. I asked them to create a mood board (Appendix III) with the material I had provided to them. I chose to ask the participants to create a mood board on a blank board on the Miro platform because I wanted them to make visible what information matters to them in the context of a
practice.
The workshop was followed by a semi-structured interview which aimed to make them express their point of view on the use they could do of such participatory design fiction resources in their design practice. The participants were also asked questions about their way of getting inspiration.
5.4.1 Results of the workshops with design practitioners
The workshops were conducted with two junior interaction designers. The first one (M.) has a background in product design, has been studying Interaction design for three years and worked one year for a company as an UX designer. The second participant (B.) has a background in graphic design and interaction design and is now a UX designer. He is used to working with technologies such as VR or AR. The mood boards they have produced are available in appendix IV.
Both participants were interested by the methods employed, and seemed to see a lot of interest in doing their own PDF workshops when doing design projects. M. added a section “method” on her mood board, because it is also material that inspire her for design projects. M. has created two zones on her mood board: one about methodologies, and one about scenarios and artifacts. To her these examples are not only inspirational as means to reflect upon future, but also as methods for her to mobilize in her design process. Inspiration is also about methodology, and designers from the industry can learn from academia in that matter. By diffusing these references, maybe the major effect would be to prompt designers to do participatory design fiction in their research projects. They both see a value in participatory design fiction because “designers are like gods” (M.), and it would be important to “give the decisional power to people who do not have speech in the gesture of the technology development” (B.).
They were not so much disturbed by the fact there was a lot of text, and they actually thought it was
interesting having information about the context of the study. They even integrated this type of information on their mood board. Nonetheless, the participants spent more time on the contents that had pictures or video. It was also contents that had been designed by designers after the participatory design fiction workshop. They also both deleted information when making their mood board, as it requires to be a synthetic view. As M. said, she first analyses the information, and then she only keeps what is relevant to her design project.
Paradoxically, she also said that she doesn’t read everything and keeps what looks interesting for later. Both of them did not took the time to read all the text from “The adventure of older authors” because it was too long. Nonetheless, B. said that it was good the participants’ texts were in bold so it was easy to distinguish from the summary of the researchers. The segmented view of the survey -with only the raw data- was read completely by them, and integrated in their mood boards.
For both of them, the major problem in the way the contents were presented to them was the hierarchy. They need to see quickly what could be interesting to them or not.
Concerning their habits in inspiration, M. only uses twitter for keeping updated on what is happening in the design community whereas B. stopped using twitter because “there is too much drama or praises and not enough information”. He now uses Reddit because he likes that he has the possibility to create different thematic live feeds, he is also on Facebook groups related to designers, and goes on websites hosted by designers. On twitter, M. “likes” the tweets that are not related to design, and she saved on a signet the tweets that interest her regarding a design project or her design practice.
A first insight from this workshop is that the participants found valuable and interesting the fictions created by non-designers. They were also interested in the context of the study, and the participant’s profiles, which might demonstrate that this information is important when getting inspiration from participatory design fictions. The academic research results might be better presented if they had more levels of hierarchy in the texts so it is easier for designers to see if the information is relevant to them. Also, illustrations seem to be important to get the attention from designers. If the results are textual, it is important to make them appear in an obvious way so it does not look like other sections of the article.
5.5 Prototyping
5.5.1 A Twitter bot
As the infrastructure needed to fit both researcher’s existing practices in communicating with the rest of the design community and practitioners when looking for inspiration, and taking in consideration that there was not a lot of material that could be shared on a daily basis in this infrastructure, I chose to include the
This Twitter account gathers all the references in participatory design fiction shared on the platform by the design community. Indeed, as I have observed that there is an existing practice of sharing the outcomes of design workshops on twitter, it will not demand additional efforts from the researchers to share their work. Moreover, some design practitioners already interact with the design community through twitter. There are also already twitter accounts that aim to present design references, or to make it easier for designers to follow the last trends. Also, as design fiction aims to provoke debates and discussions, sharing such contents in a social media makes sense. One side benefit from this infrastructure might be also to reach people who are not part of the design community, and to give them the possibility to be included in these future-oriented
discussions.
The curator will be a bot because it enables the platform’s users to appropriate it the way they want to. The bot is a tool, there is one functionality which is to retweet tweets
that include one hashtag. From this, the users are free to use it the way they want to. The choice of putting a bot in charge of the account is also practical. Indeed, there is a lot of contents going on all the time on Twitter, and it is much easier for a bot to find information than for a human as it would mean that someone would have to make manually a research on the social media to see if someone has shared participatory design fictions.
5.5.2 Technical implementation
The twitter bot was created with the Twitter API and the Twitter Bots app from Google. After enabling my account to export data from my twitter account, I linked it with the Twitter Bots service. From there, I configured it so it would retweet every tweet that contains the hashtag #ParticipatoryFiction. The reason why I chose to retweets tweets that contain a particular hashtag and not tweets that mention Participatory Design Fiction is because I do not want the bot to retweets contents that are not the
outcomes of design fiction workshops with non-designers. By proposing a new hashtag, it ensures that the contents are truly meant to be retweeted by the bot (this hashtag is not used otherwise). It is also a limitation because it means that the bot needs to be known by the design community so they can share contents by using the hashtag.
I made a tweet from my personal account with the hashtag #ParticipatoryFiction to test the bot and it worked, so the account is now set up on this side.
5.6.3 Presentation of the account
The Twitter account is named “Participatory Design Fiction Curator”. The username is @FictionCurator (Figure 17). In order to explain what was the expected formatting of contents for this account, I pinned a thread explaining what was the purpose of the account, and what information was necessary to share with the design fictions (Appendix VI).
It was very important that this information was clear as I was afraid the account would be too enigmatic, and that people would not understand how to interact with the bot.
5.6 Testing
5.6.1 Wizard of Oz
The main difficulty for launching the account is the lack of visibility. Indeed, it is crucial in the development of the twitter library of design fictions that it needs visibility to be acknowledged. The best scenario for launching this account would be to be retweeted by an influent member of the design community, or that one of them would start sharing contents under the hashtag (#ParticipatoryFiction).
As I do not personally know influent designers, I started to follow manually designers who had tweeted about design fiction or participatory design fiction. By doing this, I hoped them to follow back the account. I also retweeted tweets that present design fictions from non-designers because it was important that new comers
Figure 17 Profile of the account
bank of design fictions.
As the first months of the account will require a human to retweet contents until some people start using the hashtag, it will require keeping this strategy a bit longer than the testing phase. This could also be a good thing, because prolonging a testing phase can help understanding better the dynamics that the account produces, and adjust accordingly.
5.6.2 Data from the test phase
Twitter provides a lot of information that can indicate the engagement from the people on its platform. In this section, I describe and analyze the first week of the account’s implementation.
At this day, the account follows 72 Twitter accounts, and is followed by 20 other accounts. Five of them were not initially followed by @FictionCurator. This might come from the fact that Twitter sends a notification to ones’ followers when he or she follows a new account. The followers are all quite active in the field of design fiction or speculative design, I can notably tell that by their account’s description, where almost all of them cite these approaches as a center of interest.
Some examples of profiles that followed the account: • A researcher in futurology • A design and media sociologist • A researcher in interactive media • A researcher in speculative design • An interaction designer
• A consulting futurist in strategic foresight • A visual artist and designer
• Design studios
It seems that most of the accounts that are following me are people who already have a sensitivity with academia. This is actually not a problem, because they already have followers themselves. If the
@FictionCurator account can prompt them to tweet their research outcomes from design fiction workshops, it is already a big step. Indeed, the paradoxical aspect of my project is that even if the main stakeholders are the designers from the industry, they do not necessarily have to know or follow the @Fiction Curator account to get the contents in their timelines. Indeed, the most important part is that researchers start sharing more their work on twitter, and benefit from it as well.
5.6.3 Interview with the account’s followers
I approached the account’s followers with the intention to discuss with them about their point of view on the account. Two of them accepted to answer some questions about the curator (Appendix VII).
This is why I have contacted researchers who have conducted design fiction workshops with non-designers to ask them questions about whether or not they would use the library, but also to make them aware that such an account exists.
I asked them only six questions as I already had difficulties with getting answers from researchers earlier in the project, I did not want to scare them or to give them the impression that they will loose a lot of time. The main things I wanted to know was:
• If they were conducting design fiction workshops • Why they did follow the account
• If they read and understood the pinned tweet
• If they see themselves collaborate with the hashtag #ParticipatoryFiction
• If they think design fictions from non-designers are valuable as material of reflection in the design practice
Their answers were encouraging. One of them is following all twitter accounts related to speculative design, this is why she followed this account. It can confirm that this account is seen to her as a potential resource of inspiration or knowledge in general. The other person was very enthusiastic about sharing design fictions from non-designers, he also likes the fact that a bot is curating the content because it makes all the contents appear at one place.
This very eulogistic feedback might be biased because of the format of the questions. For example, both of them said they understood what was the purpose of the account, but didn’t really prove it. A better way to ask would have been to ask them to explain to me what is the purpose of the account instead of asking them if
