Future Scenarios

Upcoming deadlines
Notification: No later than July 8, 2016, hopefully earlier — conditionally acceptance
First deadline: August 30 2016, 5 PM PST, first submission of revised accepted papers
Camera-ready deadline: September 19, 2016 5PM PST (this is a hard deadline)
At the conference: Short presentations plus a panel discussion 

Call
There are countless examples on how science fiction has inspired researchers and scientists. Within interaction design, there is an increasing use of fictional narratives as inspiration for design; examples include design fictions, value fictions, and future workshops.

This track aims to explore the design of design fictions; how can they be crafted towards a particular design outcome, say sustainability, or sharing? What kinds of designs can come out of them? Which lessons have been learned by those of us who use scenarios as a design method? And, lastly, we wish to collect a set of scenarios aiming for specific outcomes, for those in need.

What to submit
Your paper should contain at least the following parts, in whichever order you see fit:

  • A future scenario, in the form of a short story. In some way it has to cover the socioeconomic situation(s) of this future, the demographics and the status of the environment (whatever that means!). It should be ca 3-5 pages long and free-standing, i.e. not at all relying on information in the rest of the paper.
  • A theoretical section describing its type of fiction (e.g. design fiction) and related work.
  • A description of the process: How was the fiction crafted, what kinds of design outcomes is it targeted towards, and how does it support that? Were you inspired by other sci-f narratives, if so which ones?
  • Use of the scenario, and example(s) of one or more designs coming out of it.
  • Lessons learned in relation to for example: crafting scenarios for a specific outcome; the use of scenarios as inspiration for design; the crafting, use, and outcome of your particular scenario.

Papers will be evaluated on the following grounds:
– How well they serve the main aim of the track: to exemplify or explore how scenarios can be crafted towards a specific outcome.
– The quality of the scenario: Is it well-crafted in relation to its intentions, and is it well-written and inspiring enough to be reused by others?

At the conference
There is no point in presenting our scenarios as regular papers. Instead, all authors are expected to take part in a session that will be an intense mix of pecha kucha-like presentations and a panel discussion.

Formalities

  • Deadline is the 19th of May 2016 — EXTENDED due to multiple requests! Deadline time is 5:00 PM, PDT (Pacific Daylight Time), hard deadline.
  • Submissions should be full papers, i.e. 10 pages in the ACM SIGCHI 2014 format, using the same anonymization policy as CHI.
  • Submissions are to be made electronically through the conference paper submission and reviewing system PCS (Precision Conference System);  https://precisionconference.com/~nordichi/
  • The papers are peer reviewed in a double-blind review process.
  • Accepted manuscripts appear in the Extended Abstracts Volume of Proceedings of NordiCHI 2016, which will be published in the ACM Digital Library.
  • Authors must present their papers at the conference, and must thus register for the conference for at least one day.

Future Scenarios Chairs

  • Sus Lundgren Lyckvi, Chalmers University of Technology
  • Mark Blythe, Northumbria University
  • Elisabeth Buie, Northumbria University
  • Staffan Björk, University of Gothenburg
  • Thommy Eriksson, Chalmers University of Technology

Contact: fs@nordichi2016.org