Track: Undergraduate Student Paper Competition

Abstract

Science fiction is an instrument for innovation. It has inspired generations to endorse the value of science and it has helped shape the future through the unceasing speculation of what it could look like. In recent years, science fiction has been employed as a tool for design. As a device to explore alternative future scenarios, it encourages developing solutions that require groundbreaking thinking. Additionally, it serves as a resource to discuss the ramifications of the technological innovations that it prompted in the first place.  

Innovation is repeatedly labeled as the process that uses the current knowledge and technologies to create something new or improve something existing. However, the innovation process is fraught with uncertainty, mainly when dealing with sci-fi methods. The knowledge of the future will always be incomplete, and there will always be technologies that will remain undiscovered by the time the prototyping occurs. What if instead of trying to abate that technological and knowledge uncertainty, we could adopt them as agents of the model to create better futures?

To date there is no standard approach that considers these two criteria of uncertainty as the vehicle to achieve different results. Moreover, previous research considers them as objectionable aspects. This paper proposes a new methodology based on the assumption that developing new products challenging the future and its unpredictability is possible. Furthermore, taking advantage of the uncertainty that this process inevitably involves, it is attainable to discover and build the path to the technological development of the sci-fi ideated product. 

To construct and evaluate the usability of this tool it was necessary to: i) track the leverage of popular sci-fi technologies and its mutual influence in innovation, ii) review and synthesize previous studies and methodologies, iii) create a new methodology, iv) design a specialized workshop to test it, and v) map the path through which determined sci-fi ideas have the potential to become a reality.