Ideation Deliverable for my HCDE 210 class at University of Washington, Winter 2020 Quarter

1. FUTURE CONTEXTS
Topic: Accessible Commuting
I initially had trouble visualizing the possible technologies we could have access to in 1000 years.
I still find it difficult to imagine things that don’t already have representations in reality or science
fiction currently. To help guide my ideation process, I first ideated future contexts with unique
technological, physical, political, and social factors. I then synthesized elements from a few of
them to create a context for Marsville that I could keep coherent in my head.

12. CHOSEN CONTEXT
I chose to design for a future that is a hybrid of some of the above: AKA, using my 10 divergent
context designs to converge into one future. I will still use this future to create 10 divergent
designs, and use that to create 10 more convergent designs.
Name: “Subnautical, Machine>Kid Near-future”
Technology: far-future with stipulation “I cannot imagine what I cannot imagine.” I believe I am
restricted to things that I can think of, which by definition will limit me to things similar to what
already exists or has been thought of. Technology wise, everything has been solved – so for
anything I can think of, we can assume that the tech is there, but I have a realistic limitation that I
anticipate will unintentionally limit my scope. So, it will probably be near-ish future (20-200 yrs).
Geography: underwater, ocean floor, distances < 10 miles.
Political: post-singularity*.
Social: everyone in Marsville is under the age of 18, many are much younger
Description: Location is Earth, post-singularity. The ruling class of machines believes all humans
should be subjugated or killed. A small minority of machines has developed benevolent feelings
towards humanity, and chose to save a small number of human children and hide them in an
ocean floor area spanning a few square miles. The machines and children are working together to
design better technology for transporting and protecting these children. The “newly elected
mayor” is a 15-year-old. Your manager is 12.
*note: there are various competing definitions of what the world will look like after the
singularity. I am choosing to imagine the one where humans are just not the dominant race, and
some form of machines are.

13. DIVERGENT
DESIGNS

22. *Most promising idea in divergence (works closely with #7, #8, #10 as well)

24. CONVERGENT
DESIGNS
Converged to the idea of designing artifacts and processes to support control, organizational
systems, and collaboration within the transportation process, both in terminals and on transport
vessels themselves. Still designed within the context specified above, so all users are children
between 5-15 approximately. This idea is similar to previous ideas #7-10, and I also incorporated
design elements from #4 and #6 in some of the convergent designs.

26. *Most promising convergent idea (explanation on last page)

35. MOST PROMISING IDEA
I selected Convergent Sketch #2 as my overall most promising idea. I chose it because I spent a
lot of time considering how to intentionally exclude some users from decision making, while this
idea aimed to solve the underlying issue behind this exclusion. In my context, all functioning
members of society were teens and preteens, and someone has to be in charge, but it doesn’t seem
advisable to allow young kids to make many critical decisions. For this reason, many of my
designs aimed to control the younger kids in one way or another, either by assisting them in doing
simple tasks or by outright preventing them from participating in more critical actions in the
transportation process. However, this idea aimed to consider feedback from all users, which is
why it was my favorite and I designated it my most promising. In modern transportation, it’s not
feasible or realistic to expect all users to have an ongoing and meaningful say in the transportation
process. Imagine if fifty people on a bus were all shouting at the driver to slow down, brake
faster, change lanes, pass a car, etc. – it would not go over very well. However, in this future
context, vehicles would be controlled by artificial intelligence, which lacks certain human
limitations like division of attention and emotional decision making. This makes it a better target
to implement a system like idea #2, in which users can give a constant stream of feedback to the
“driver” if they wish, and the intelligent driver can choose to listen or ignore it.