Nicolas and I gave a talk serendipitously organized at SK Telecom’s Technology Innovation and Planning group. The purpose was introductory. I had met the group’s leader, Jong Chae Oh at a workshop organized by the Institute for the Future’s Mike Liebhold. It was an opportunity for sharing process, methodology and some aspects of the Near Future Laboratory’s areas of interest and activity.
To quote what Nicolas says about the meeting:
We spent 2 hours talking, exchanging about foresight methods, trend analysis and how it’s difficult to have a rigorous scientific methodology. Our point was that we aimed at mixing wide-analysis of social, cognitive and cultural trends to inspire sketching and prototyping + testing. Prototypes are not the end per se but a way to try and gain some understanding about tech uses and innovation. A sort of bricolage way to inspect the near future. We insisted on this aspect that we did focus not on tomorrow’s design nor long term-range foresight but 3-4 years ahead.
The presentation also included past project description such as the blogject workshop serie (See the report here and there), insisting on some concrete outcomes and how we appreciated that the meme spread and lead some attendants to design their own projects (see Blinks and Buttons for example).
Present projects we described revolved around the “new interaction rituals” (going beyond current I/O in pervasive computing) and the “new interaction partners” (letting pets participating in video games and the social web).
Here is a PDF of the presentation:
http://www.nearfuturelaboratory.com/files/presentations/NearFutureLaboratory_SKTelecom_091207.pdf