Poetics of Future Work: Blending Speculative Design with Artistic Methodology

ABSTRACTThis case study presents how the mixing of speculative design with artistic methodology can contribute to the inquiry of technological potentialities in the future of work. The goal and belief are that technologies such as artificial intelligence can augment employee creativity and support their well-being at work. The co-design process followed an artistic approach and consisted of three cycles of labs, workshops and events during the span of one year to support professionals with non-technical background in the ideation and conceptualization of possible futures. The artistic approach consisted of different exploration perspectives of technology through the use of embodiment, artifacts and creation of speculative fictions. The research team that facilitated the labs was interdisciplinary and the participants were assembled from different partner organizations from industry and public sector. We share the learnings from this study attending to three different perspectives: our learnings from the facilitation of the artistic approach, our learnings from the future of work ideas and concepts developed by participants, and discussion of what these learnings can mean to design practitioners and the research community. Results indicate that embodiment and speculative fiction can create engagement among professionals that lack technical expertise and support them in collaborative exploration of alternative futures of work with novel and abstract technologies such as AI.