Everyday Futures : Speculative Thinking in the Domestic Sphere

In this paper we introduce the idea of everyday futures, which include people’s dreams, goals, wants and needs both in the near and distant future. These everyday futures can be embodied as digital, physical and hybrid artifacts and have a rich variety of qualities and associated behaviors. To investigate, we conducted a large online study and in-depth interviews exploring how people embody and interact with their everyday future ideals. Initial findings reveal five experiential stages of everyday futures and point towards opportunities to enrich the futuring process. Besides personal futuring in the domestic sphere, futuring is also professionally practised by futurists and speculative designers. In this paper, we explore how future studies and design methods can be support everyday future-oriented thinking, by introducing the Manoa method and design fiction method to a small group of participants over eight weeks. The results indicate success and challenges that can offer value to speculative and interaction designers.