Playing with Provocations

While designing for experience is now mainstream, the technology design community is still grappling with understanding meaningful ways of involving users and participants in the design of experiences and technologies that don't yet exist. In this chapter, I discuss three distinct techniques collaborators and I have used across different projects to involve participants in exploring future experiences and to anticipate the consequences of new technologies. While the formats of the techniques and contexts explored are diverse, the examples I discuss---questionable concepts, invisible design and experience design theatre---have in common the use of provocation to seed discussion, ideation and anticipation. In this chapter I explain the motivations behind these techniques, how we have used them in specific projects, and the ways they have enabled non-designers to engage in meaningful forms of design criticism and to shape the direction of technology design projects. I close the chapter with some reflections on the techniques, drawing out practical learning for how techniques like these might enable designers and participants to play with provocation in future projects.