Speculative Design | Soukarni Barai

How would an energy deficit society in 2035 survive?

As energy resources become more and more deficit, we speculated about a society where energy would become a currency for survival. In this world, what if low energy generators rioted against high energy generators due to energy sharing disparity. What new designs and technology would become relevant and present?

Key Challenges:

KEYWORDS

ANTICIPATION DESIGN - FUTURES - WORLD BUILDING - DIAGETIC OBJECTS

February 2023

Concept Generation

We used the 2x2 Matrix Technique of the Global Business Network as shared by Peter Schwartz.

Through research we determined the two influencing factors of our axes and also the four polarities that could possibly exist.
After a few challenging iterations and combinations we arrived at our final Matrix. We used the Matrix to ideate and build concept ideas. Through this we arrived at 4 new concepts.

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1. BUILDING THE MATRIX

Iterating Influences and Matrices

2. CONCEPT WRITING

Writing scenarios within each matrix

3. IDEA DETAILING

Expanding each Concept through smaller ideas

1. BUILDING THE MATRIX

Iterating Influences and Matrices

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The Final Concept
A Wellness Inspired Co-Working Neighborhood

The City as a Playground

As work starts to take more and more of our time in the day, we anticipate that making time for physical fitness will also get difficult. Traditional offices offer gym services and some indoor sports today.

We imagine our co-working space designed to use the city as an active playground. The service aims to offer unique physical fitness opportunities to coworkers to blend physical fitness into their work routines.

We currently imagine our service to offer fitness challenges, monthly events, going beyond traditional fitness routines, gamifying the health experience, providing coaches and nutritionists and medical support among a few things

Generating Service Needs
Online Co-Design Session

In this session we created Boundary Objects and performed a Co-Design Workshop to verify our idea with real participants.
The session used tools like Card-Sorting, Collage Making to understand their service needs and help use narrow down our service parts.
At the end of the session we collected feedback. The participants had chosen nearly all the services we had hypothesized. They also shared that they wanted to learn more about the service experience.

We went on to design the Service Journey of the User to start building our Service Experience.

We also made a re-designed version of the coworking experience that our participants built through a collage.

1. Session Introduction

The Session began with a quick introduction to the team and the segments of the process to make our participants fully aware and comfortable with us and our digital space.

2. What does your personal workspace look like?

The first task was an Ice-breaker. We had previously requested our participants to share their personal workspace and express their needs. It helped the participants to understand each other and get comfortable with the subject of the day - working spaces.

3. Context on Cowork

Before moving onto the task at hand our team spent time explaining the definitions of cowork and wellness. We also shared some current examples of Wellness Focused Coworking spaces for the participants to become more familiar.

4. Service Sorting and Generation

We let our participants co-design their space by choosing from a list of activities, spaces and services that they might need.

Both participants mutually discussed and arrived at decisions on this map. They also added some new service ideas specific to their context. Since both paticipants were italian, they envisioned a Panini truck to be a service they have access to

5. Space Building

In the next activity the participants used chosen cards of the previous activity, photographs, emotion cards and text cards to build every part of the coworking physical space.

They went from a macro perspective of the neighborhood, how the common space, rooms and working desks would look and feel like.

6. Session Analysis

After the session the team reflected and created a map of all the ideas that worked and those that didn't to continue and solidify our service idea.

7. Gratitude

The team made time to thank the participants by sharing this photograph from the co-design session with the participants.

Service Journey Mapping

Using the insights gathered from this session we were able to build our first service journey of a hypothetical User. This was done to establish the service front-end, back-end its touchpoints. It also helped us arrive at which area we want to understand more deeply via prototyping.

Service Prototyping

ITERATION 1:LO-FI

HOW MUCH TIME WILL A USER SPEND?

We learnt that users wont spend more than 1-2 hours in a day on wellness activities at our co-work.

Participants expressed and interest in having new learning activities assisted by coaches along with a regular activity they are more comfortable with.

Our participants found our scheduling mechanism simple and easy to follow.

Participants valued human discussion and customization with a fitness expert.

Our schedule did not have an indication of whether an activity will be assisted by coaches, which we added.

Participants were curious to know the total amount that they will have to spend for their selections.

Participants also wanted to know what would happen if they cancelled an appointment on short notice, how would it reschedule.

AFFINITY MAPPING
& FURTHER IDEATION

ITERATION 2:HI-FI

HOW WILL A USER RESCHEDULE?

We designed a high-fidelity prototype on Figma with two task flows and tested with 3 users. 3/3 were able to finish both tasks successfully.

We were able to identify that our rescheduling mechanism was easy to follow.

It helped them learn about this function and they valued it.

This prototype was designed in15 minutes

The key personal takeaway for me was that simple hi-fidelity prototypes can be very helpful in communicating small service stories.

It is also extremely effective for quick testing.

View Figma Here

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Soukarni Barai

UX Researcher | Service Strategist | Designer

How would an energy deficit society in 2035 survive?

Concept Generation

We used the 2x2 Matrix Technique of the Global Business Network as shared by Peter Schwartz.

Through research we determined the two influencing factors of our axes and also the four polarities that could possibly exist.

After a few challenging iterations and combinations we arrived at our final Matrix. We used the Matrix to ideate and build concept ideas. Through this we arrived at 4 new concepts.

>>

The Final Concept
A Wellness Inspired Co-Working Neighborhood

Generating Service Needs
Online Co-Design Session

In this session we created Boundary Objects and performed a Co-Design Workshop to verify our idea with real participants.

The session used tools like Card-Sorting, Collage Making to understand their service needs and help use narrow down our service parts.

At the end of the session we collected feedback. The participants had chosen nearly all the services we had hypothesized. They also shared that they wanted to learn more about the service experience.

We went on to design the Service Journey of the User to start building our Service Experience.

We also made a re-designed version of the coworking experience that our participants built through a collage.

Service Prototyping

ITERATION 1:LO-FI

HOW MUCH TIME WILL A USER SPEND?

We learnt that users wont spend more than 1-2 hours in a day on wellness activities at our co-work.

Participants expressed and interest in having new learning activities assisted by coaches along with a regular activity they are more comfortable with.

Our participants found our scheduling mechanism simple and easy to follow.

Participants valued human discussion and customization with a fitness expert.

Our schedule did not have an indication of whether an activity will be assisted by coaches, which we added.

Participants were curious to know the total amount that they will have to spend for their selections.

Participants also wanted to know what would happen if they cancelled an appointment on short notice, how would it reschedule.

AFFINITY MAPPING
& FURTHER IDEATION

ITERATION 2:HI-FI

HOW WILL A USER RESCHEDULE?

We designed a high-fidelity prototype on Figma with two task flows and tested with 3 users. 3/3 were able to finish both tasks successfully.

We were able to identify that our rescheduling mechanism was easy to follow.

It helped them learn about this function and they valued it.

This prototype was designed in15 minutes

The key personal takeaway for me was that simple hi-fidelity prototypes can be very helpful in communicating small service stories.

It is also extremely effective for quick testing.

FELLOW TEAM MEMBERS:
Naomi S, Enrico L., Giovanni P.

All project findings are property of the team members and the
Poli.Design, Politecnico Di Milano, Italy.

© Soukarni Barai 2021

How would an energy deficit society in 2035 survive?

Concept Generation

We used the 2x2 Matrix Technique of the Global Business Network as shared by Peter Schwartz.

Through research we determined the two influencing factors of our axes and also the four polarities that could possibly exist.

After a few challenging iterations and combinations we arrived at our final Matrix. We used the Matrix to ideate and build concept ideas. Through this we arrived at 4 new concepts.

>>

The Final Concept A Wellness Inspired Co-Working Neighborhood

Generating Service Needs Online Co-Design Session

In this session we created Boundary Objects and performed a Co-Design Workshop to verify our idea with real participants.

The session used tools like Card-Sorting, Collage Making to understand their service needs and help use narrow down our service parts.

At the end of the session we collected feedback. The participants had chosen nearly all the services we had hypothesized. They also shared that they wanted to learn more about the service experience.

​

We went on to design the Service Journey of the User to start building our Service Experience.

​

We also made a re-designed version of the coworking experience that our participants built through a collage.

Service Prototyping

ITERATION 1:LO-FI

HOW MUCH TIME WILL A USER SPEND?

We learnt that users wont spend more than 1-2 hours in a day on wellness activities at our co-work.

​

Participants expressed and interest in having new learning activities assisted by coaches along with a regular activity they are more comfortable with.

​

Our participants found our scheduling mechanism simple and easy to follow.

​

Participants valued human discussion and customization with a fitness expert.

​

Our schedule did not have an indication of whether an activity will be assisted by coaches, which we added.

​

Participants were curious to know the total amount that they will have to spend for their selections.

​

Participants also wanted to know what would happen if they cancelled an appointment on short notice, how would it reschedule.

​

AFFINITY MAPPING & FURTHER IDEATION

ITERATION 2:HI-FI

HOW WILL A USER RESCHEDULE?

We designed a high-fidelity prototype on Figma with two task flows and tested with 3 users. 3/3 were able to finish both tasks successfully.

​

We were able to identify that our rescheduling mechanism was easy to follow.​

​

It helped them learn about this function and they valued it.

​

This prototype was designed in15 minutes

​

The key personal takeaway for me was that simple hi-fidelity prototypes can be very helpful in communicating small service stories.

​

It is also extremely effective for quick testing.

FELLOW TEAM MEMBERS: Naomi S, Enrico L., Giovanni P.

All project findings are property of the team members and the Poli.Design, Politecnico Di Milano, Italy.

The Final Concept
A Wellness Inspired Co-Working Neighborhood

Generating Service Needs
Online Co-Design Session

AFFINITY MAPPING
& FURTHER IDEATION

We were able to identify that our rescheduling mechanism was easy to follow.

FELLOW TEAM MEMBERS:
Naomi S, Enrico L., Giovanni P.

All project findings are property of the team members and the
Poli.Design, Politecnico Di Milano, Italy.