Evolving products: From human design to self-organisation via Science Fiction Prototyping

The paper sets out to use Science Fiction Prototyping (SFP) as a tool to explore how networked electronic products might evolve in the future digital economy. It highlights a number of trends already evident in the commercial environment (the increasing speed of new product launches and associated decision making, the growth of data available to decision makers, the ability to imbue devices with limited sensing and decision making faculties) and sets this against enduring issues around the limits and efficacy of human decision making. This is used as the basis for a vignette in which products increasingly carry the burden of decision making in terms of their form, function and interaction with consumers, a responsibility which has unexpected outcomes. It highlights the difficulties associated with forecasting discontinuities for practitioners, the value of SFP as a tool to address these challenges and the prospects for the widespread adoption of SFP as a forecasting methodology.