Senescence: Speculative Design, Public Engagement, and Policymaking

Using techniques drawn from speculative and critical design (SCD), Strange Telemetry worked with members of the public to generate evidence for a Government Office for Science (GO-Science) Foresight project exploring the challenges and opportunities of an ageing society. This project marks the first active use of speculative design in UK government policy processes.

Strange Telemetry designed a series of custom visual artefacts to guide discussion and debate with members of the public around possible developments in employment, services, and transport over a 25-year time horizon. In a series of 3-hour workshops in February and March 2015, these artefacts were deployed as a means of eliciting specific and sufficiently granular responses to the uneven ways in which an ageing population could impact on employment, mobility, and the provision of key services.

We used a custom card deck to structure responses to the scenarios depicted – moving beyond questions of plausibility, and steering responses about what participants deemed to be the benefits, drawbacks, and wider implications of specific elements. The cards came in five colours, and participants to asked to consider:

Green: What do you like about the image? Are there things that resonate or are familiar?
Red: What do you dislike about the image? Are there things that you disagree with or find unlikely?
Blue: Put yourself into this scenario: what are your gut feelings about it? Do you feel uncomfortable, sad, happy, relaxed, anxious?
Yellow: What changes would you make to your own life now if this scenario might be in your future, or part of it?
Purple: What changes would you want others (policymakers, local government, companies) to make if this scenario might be in your future, or part of it?

The artefacts were developed by extrapolating the possible interplay of a range of current trends, and included digital mock-ups of possible future workplaces and urban transit systems. Each workshop had a different theme and in each case we experimented with different types of images and ways of drawing out discussion. We were assisted in these workshops by our colleague, Wesley Goatley.

• http://www.strangetelemetry.com/speculat...
• https://www.gov.uk/government/publicatio...