Future Ripples: A Recap of This Year’s DC Summer Week
The DC Summer Week 2024 provided a platform for high-level discussions and speculation on plausible futures. The event was enhanced by the participation of members from our advisory board: Madeline Balaam, Mikael Wiberg, Julie Williamson, and Bieke Zaman. In addition to the regular team of mentors, these experts offered their insights, not only through presentations, individual discussions and feedback sessions with the students but also in collaborative exercises.
One of the key activities was the exploration of future trends in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) through the “Future Ripples” method. This approach helped participants detect emerging “weak signals”—subtle indications of potential shifts that could lead to significant transformations in various fields. These signals were identified across four major themes: Virtual and Augmented Reality, Health, Education, and Materialism. By identifying and analyzing these weak signals in the present, participants speculated on how they might signal deep changes in the future. Together, they mapped out possible trajectories, drawing on expertise and collaborative dialogue to anticipate developments that could reshape the landscape of HCI. Bellow is a summary of the findings of the findings in Materialism and Virtual and Augmented Reality.
Future Signals in (New) Materialism
In the first part of the Future Ripples, we individually sketched topics related to our PhDs (we are all interested in materialism/new materialism), seeking overlapping interests. After a productive discussion, we focused on the question:
“What if repair, reduce, and reuse became the primary goal of design efforts?”
Next, we expanded this question to explore “weak signals”, considering topics like managing existing waste, the sharing economy, repair as public policy, cultural shifts in object ownership, public participation in policymaking, and the impact on the labor market and the role of the designer. This led to the following outcomes:
Positive outcomes:
- Repairing becomes a subject at school. Repair and reuse become part of a culture that is integrated in all levels of education.
- Designers take the role of repair and reuse, instead of making new products. Designers guide the new economy by creating tools and sharing material and production knowledge.
- More community participation in policymaking. Governments and the public share responsibility.
- Standards are the norm for production. Policies are set to promote standardization in the industry, with the goal of fostering the repair culture.
- Less waste. The ultimate outcome, to reduce waste by promoting repair and reuse.
What can we do to boost positive examples:
- In order to achieve the ultimate goal of producing less waste, we need to create awareness in the general public, we need to lead community and educational initiatives. We need to connect with policymakers and convince them to advocate for laws that would make it attractive for companies to choose more sustainable means of production.
- We need a change of mind-set in designers, from producers to care-takers of repair. Therefore, we need a new wave of design education integrated in universities.
Negative Outcomes:
- People with new skills are not incorporated in the job market. People gaining new skills may struggle to find work if the transition is slow or values change.
- Designers that the role of repair and reuse, instead of making new products. Like the previous outcome, designers may invest in repair-focused skills that become obsolete.
- Standards are the norm for production. Over standardization could still lead to over production, with the system (or the industry) adapting to bypass new policies.
What can we do to reduce negative examples:
- Companies should be required to hire designers, solely responsible for repair and reuse of their products. These repair designers will work closely with product managers and make sure that products are designed for repair in the first place. They will make sure that required tools and materials to repair the product are just as much part of the design as its packaging. This way we will make sure that on the one hand, designers with new skills are directly attached to companies and incorporated into the job market, and, on the other hand, make sure companies have incentives to produce sustainable products.
Reflection on the exercise:
When trying to negotiate a common “what if” among our PhD topics, we compromised by abstracting our topics and finding something that is at least remotely relatable to our research. It turns out that, in developing this abstracted idea further, we lost any direct connection to our research – and possible to materialism as well. Next time, we would start with a more specific question closely aligned with one of our PhDs.
Future Signals in AR Tech
In the first part of the Future Ripples, we individually sketched topics related to our PhDs, seeking overlapping interests. After a productive discussion, we focused on the question:
“What if context sensitive HMD AR is always Available?”
Next, we expanded this question to explore “weak signals”, considering topics like AR having access to intimate and environmental data, the consequences of it being invisible to non-wearers such as capturing bystander data unwittingly and the power it has to recommend experiences to users. This led to the following outcomes:
Positive outcomes:
- More individual freedom. People could tailor their environment and interactions to match their needs and preferences, enabling a level of autonomy and self-expression that redefines personal freedom.
- Improved wellbeing over lifespan. Personalized guidance, monitoring, and interventions that adapt to an individual’s health and emotional needs in real time.
- New superpowers become part of everyday life. People could have enhanced abilities like instant language translation, real-time memory augmentation and x-ray-like insights into systems.
What can we do to boost positive examples:
- Improve Technology: To boost these outcomes, advancing AR technology must prioritize personalization, adaptability, and ethical integration. High-resolution, lightweight HMDs with seamless connectivity and advanced AI capabilities can help integrate AR naturally into daily life. Innovations should focus on energy-efficient systems, long-lasting batteries, and privacy-preserving algorithms that process sensitive data locally. Researchers and industry leaders need to work together to drive breakthroughs in context-aware systems that increase the usefulness of AR while adapting it to individual needs.
- Democratizing AR: Ensuring that AR benefits everyone requires making it accessible and affordable. Open-source platforms, standardized hardware, and opportunities for community-driven content creation can reduce costs and lower barriers for smaller players to innovate. Governments and organizations need to enforce strong rules on data use and transparency, giving people control over their personal information. Making AR more democratic also means investing in digital literacy and ensuring fair access, so people from all backgrounds can use it to enhance their freedom, wellbeing, and creativity.
Negative Outcomes:
- Loneliness and isolation in society. People could retreat into personalized digital bubbles, weakening real-world connections and increasing social isolation.
- Collapse and control of society. With companies controlling the vast data streams and AR interfaces, they could dictate what individuals see, manipulate perceptions, sell personal data to the highest bidder, and erode democratic foundations, leading to a society dominated by surveillance and corporate control.
What can we do to reduce negative examples:
- Democratizing AR: To counter potential issues of societal control and isolation, AR must be democratized by ensuring access is not concentrated in the hands of a few corporations. Open-source frameworks and decentralized content creation can give users and smaller developers the ability to shape AR experiences independently. This prevents monopolistic control and allows diverse perspectives to flourish. Public education campaigns can also empower users to understand how AR systems work and how to safeguard their autonomy in digital spaces.
- Increase Social XR Experiences: To combat loneliness and isolation, AR development should emphasize creating shared, interactive experiences. By integrating social XR platforms into everyday AR applications, people can interact meaningfully, regardless of physical distance. Designers should focus on building environments that foster collaboration, empathy, and community engagement. Features like mixed-reality group activities, immersive learning, and gamified social experiences can help reinforce social bonds rather than eroding them.
- Legislation & Policies: Strong legislation is critical to addressing the risks of societal control. Governments must enforce transparency in data collection and ensure that users own their personal information. Strict antitrust laws can also prevent large corporations from monopolizing AR infrastructure and content delivery. Policies should also mandate ethical design principles, such as ensuring AR systems do not manipulate user perceptions unfairly. International agreements on AR ethics could help set a global standard for protecting individual freedoms and democratic values.