Making dinner in an uncomfortable future: Comparing provocations as user insight elicitation methods

Paper in proceeding, 2022

To aid the transition to a renewable energy future, user-centred designers need to design for a future with limits perceived as uncomfortable to users. This paper explores whether methods borrowed from critical and speculative design can elicit actionable insights to aid such designers. A comparative analysis is performed of the insights gained from two studies, using a provotype and speculative enactment respectively to situate the participants in a speculative, uncomfortable, distant future. The two methods do allow elicitation of rich and deep insights surrounding values, latent needs, and tacit knowledge, but with slightly different emphasis regarding content, temporal scope, and reflective depth. However, the implementation of the methods failed to provoke the participants to question their prioritisations and views on societal development, maybe related to an inability to provoke enough.