Dribbble
Speculative for Future
Sustainable Showering
Interactive probe for speculative design 2019
The course ‘Researching Future Everyday’ inspired me to apply speculative design to explore and research our future world. The designer should also look into the future and ask,
How can we address
future challenges with design?
Future
The future is not fixed, rather it’s co-shaped in the present.
Everyday
It’s a repetitive routine of normal living, which is beyond human interactions.
Designing to Know
Positioning design research in the landscape of researching the future everyday.
Meanwhile, the company, Summ( )n, provides us Future Probe and consultancy. We deployed prototypes to vision our future that guides us to explore technology, culture, and politics without limitation in mind.
Feature
Dribbble is a design artefact for exploring future individual showering rhythm under limited amount of showering water. Through this, we can tackle the societal issues.
Tools
Adobe Suits, Excel, Keynotes
Our Team
Marlou Monincx, Milan de MeijClient | Archipel
Story
We researched through the current social sciences literature for understanding our everyday showering life; Furthermore, we explored our future everyday through deploying research artefacts-Dribbble.
My Roles
Design & UX Researcher, Visual Designer
Lectures
Lenneke Kuijer, Ron Wakkary, Holly Robbins
/ Challenge
What if the future showering water is limited?
Core reading
Each group gets one core reading related to social science that routinely studies everyday life, and concerns themselves with the role of technology. Ours is a Sequence of practices in personal and societal rhythms – Showering as a case (Gram-Hanssen, Christensen, Madsen, do Carmo, 2020).
/ Approach
Literature Review
The research helped us to understand the water usage toward personal showering rhythms in the past decades. Also, by collecting and organizing the related work, we found the meaning of showering as our daily main consumption.
1. Shower rhythms and need for personal hygiene
Everyone has their norms of cleanliness, e.g., some might like to shower after physical exercise/work; what adults need would be different from children.
2. Renewable energy & showering in the future
As showering is a resource-intensive activity in our daily life, we design hot showering water, that is dependent on renewable energy sources and seasonal cycles.
Future Probe
From the core reading, we gained familiarity with related social science concepts and approaches (designing to know). We applied the future probe as a main explorative tool for ideating, converging, and further generating the Future Probe.
* The original tool is proposed by the consultant company, Summ( )n, the process below has been modified by myslef.
1
Getting Familiar with Problems
The process is similar to ‘Competitor Analysis’, but we focus more on seeking the possible future development from the mainstream and solutions.
2
Exploring Future Features for Targeted Topics
After getting familiar with the current trends of the products, we start to explore the potential ‘future solutions’.
3
Exploring Future Features for Targeted Topics
We synthesized from the previous findings that we think it’s most impactful. Also, we applied the method smiliar to moodboard, but with less elaborate illustrations to sketch our imagination.
4
Getting Familiar with Problems
Creating a Future Probe is to answer the problems in the beginning. The probes can be created in various sorts of media. Afterward, we don’t evaluate the usability, but make the audiences feel consistent of the probes.
/ Starting from What if Questions
1 Reading Core Paper
The core paper mentioned above lead us to be familiar with the rich knowledge of social sciences. We found out the arguments from the paper, and asked a ‘what if’ question to discuss with the lecturers.
2 Proposing A What If Question
We proposed three what if questions for discussion. One of the initial what if questions is:
- ‘What if different social groups have the same collective rhythm of performing an everyday practice?’
/ Concept Development
3 Prototype Concepts
Afterwards, everyone proposed 3 prototype and started to discuss every possibilities in details. Later, we discussed with the lecturers, who suggested us to reformulate a ‘proactive’ question.
Possible solutions
+ Check ID
+ Public showering stall
+ Limited by natural resource. e.g. sunlight
+ Energy consumption tracked by APP
What would happen if showering behaviour is controlled by the government?
4 Reformulating Question & Prototype
The process of formulating ‘proper’ what-if questions was challenging for us. We modified many times Therefore, we reformulated the research question and prototype. Also, we further proposed the provocative question, which is generated from cause - change - effect - prototype.
5 Prototyping Through Different Media
We sketched the concepts, and further discussed the details of future scenarios. For example, from a product sketch, we thought of what could the interaction, scenario, functionaliry of the products be.
Concept Structure
/ High-Fi Prototype Poster Presentation
6 High-Fi Prototype
For make audiences better understand, and be involved into the hypothetical future scenarios, higher fiedelity prototype is required. It is a fictional product for triggering people’s imagination of future scenarios and to assist them in exploring their showering rhythm in the future.
Dribbble on charger
The bottle-shaped concepts is chosen and be extended to further more complete concept.
Dribbble is designed as a research artefact for researching the future everyday scenario when people have limited amounts of water per day provided by renewable energy for individual showering rhythm in the future everyday life.
Functionalities
For constructing complete scenarios, we drew out details of functionalities. Through this, the audiences can also imagine together with future designers.
One interesting interaction is donating water for other people. It works when the heads of two Dribbbles connect.
One side is for donating water (-), and the other side is for receiving water (+). The plus side is also the side for plugging into the charging placement.
Dribbble Principles
As a new ‘product or system’ (research artefact), we lised 6 principles, which attempt to trigger how people perceive, and change their future showering rhythm to a certain extent with the limited amount of water provided per day. Each topic is designed for guiding to a certain discussion.
Trend of individualization
Every person has their own device.
Equality or ?
Everyone gets the same amount of shower water.
Showering system
45 liters (showered approx. 6 mins) of water per person will be given out at 12 AM every day.
Corporate or government?
The water is managed by drinking water supply companies.
No trading
Extra liters of water cannot be bought.
Sustainability
Extra water can be provided when more renewable energy is available.
Online Exhibition
Due to COVID pandemic, we hold an online-exhibition to process peer reviews. The vivid and authentic illustrattions and the high-fiedelity prototype triggered a lot of feedback. Meanwhile, video presentation or animation are also very helpful for bringing audiences to the future scenes.
/ Presenting and Immersing User
7 Online Focus Group
In order to gain insights on the effects that Dribbble could influence the shower behavior in the future, two focus groups with 3 international participants were organized.
Procedure
Consent form
Informing the procedure of the user test, data storage
Questionnaire
Demographics information
& general information about current shower behavior
Pre-knowledge
The participants got to know each other, and we presented the essential info about Dribbble to let further introduce the scenarios
Write & Discussion
Afterwards, they wrote down their imagination of the future scenarios for using Dribbble, and discussed with each other,
8 Result & Reflection
After the focus groups, we transcribed the recording through qualitative analysis. We figure out several topics for further discussion as below.
I think it's crazy to ask 'hey can I use your shower for today' even with closed one.
Dribbble alarm number, as 112. When you call, you have to explain the situation to get permission for extra water.
Showering Rhythm
They speculated that these limitations would probably guide more people to create a set rhythm. Also, the water usage for pets are mentioned.
Sharing Water
Asking for water from others provided a big boundary, because it may feel like you are taking essential resources from someone else. They mentioned some points to improve, like moving this process online, or creating a fair trading system.
Saving Water For Usage
They think saving water is important, but rarely do it in their current situation. A device like this would guide people in the future to plan their showers and make them more aware of their water usage.
Emergency Scenarios
The health-threatening and serious inconvenient emergencies were mentioned. They proposed the concept of a piggy bank for extra showering water and a real emergency Dribbble in a case of health-threatening problems.
/ Reflection
Presentation style
One of the main take-away is that the more vivid of the ‘material’; the more reaction the researcher can receive from the participants.
Complete tangible functioning system
Besides designing the product itself, a supporting system will provide more guidance on how users would actually react when they use a product like this. Therefore, it further provides comprehensive narratives for the participant.
Researching future is fun !
The project has broadened my view of researching the future through design. This method provides a strong process to connect research and our daily reality closely.