Experiencing Utopia. A Positive Approach to Design Fiction

Abstract: Design Fiction is known for its provocative and often dystopian speculations about the future. In this paper, we present an alternative approach that focuses primarily on the positive. We propose to imagine, enact, and evaluate utopia with participants. By doing so, we react to four main critiques concerning Design Fiction: (1) its negativity, (2) its contextlessness, (3) its elitist authorship, and (4) its missing evaluation methods.