fractured signals
Design Futures
Abstract
fractured signals was a game which mixed speculative design with personal reflection and could be used remotely, by an individual and over a number of days.
Method
fractured signals used artefacts consisting of a pack of cards with various symbols or imagery on them known as Dreamthreads, a Divining Board, and an automated phone-service.
Takeaways
The methods allowed for people to reflect both on a personal and organisational scale, which Kieran found created a richer level of reflection.
fractured signals was the follow-on from work from the It's Our Future project, when Open Lab was asked by children’s charity Barnardo's to design a platform for young people to envision what they want from the future, and what they could do to get there.
They designed and ran a card game during the workshop to invite bold new ideas for the future. Afterwards, the responses were used to create a youth manifesto that was issued during the 2019 UK General Election.
PhD student Kieran Cutting wanted to see what would happen if the project was run over a longer period of time with fewer people.
The original It’s Our Future card game was replaced with fractured signals - a method which mixed speculative design with personal reflection and could be used remotely, by an individual and over a number of days.
The deployment was done with a group of people who work with care-experienced young people including mental health workers, youth workers and the policy director of a charity.
fractured signals used artefacts consisting of a pack of cards with various symbols or imagery on them known as Dreamthreads, a Divining Board, and an automated phone-service.
The people involved took on the role of FutureWeavers, people chosen to reflect on our current timeline and imagine a possible new future.
“We must find ways to open our hearts to the possibilities of worlds that are completely unlike our own; of futures we have never imagined.” - from the Fractured Signals guidebook.
People would call the phone service which would read them a script and they would use the cards to reflect on various questions throughout the call. The service recorded all of their answers creating the dataset for the research.
The cards were specifically vague therefore people could come up with their own interpretation of what they might mean for them and their work. Kieran said that the “weirdness” of Fractured Signals helped create a space for people to reflect outside of their normal thinking.
The methods allowed for people to reflect both on a personal and organisational scale, which Kieran found created a richer level of reflection.