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From Mild to Wild: Reimagining Friendships and Romance in the Time of Pandemic Using Design Fiction

Published: 28 June 2021 Publication History

Abstract

With the forced reboot of our lives due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our interpersonal relationships are nowhere yet everywhere. However, opportunities for initiating or maintaining friendships and romance in the physical world have dwindled. Within the context of India where multiple realities exist, the question arises – what is the future of these relationships? In this paper, we present the outcomes of a workshop looking at the future of relationships using design fiction. Participants worked in small teams to create scenarios that critically consider the future of love, friendships, and romance within the Indian context. Through the lenses of criticality, empowerment, and value creation, we examine the design scenarios and the design process including criticality of the designs, empowering experiences of the participants, and the perceived value gained from participating in such a workshop. Our findings indicate the potential of design fiction to allow participants to step out of their comfort zone into a critical stance in discussing love and intimacy. Based upon our findings, we discuss implications for design research, practice, and education.

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cover image ACM Conferences
DIS '21: Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference
June 2021
2082 pages
ISBN:9781450384766
DOI:10.1145/3461778
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial International 4.0 License.

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Published: 28 June 2021

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Author Tags

  1. COVID-19 Pandemic
  2. Design Fiction
  3. Empowerment and Provocation
  4. Friendships and Romance
  5. Global South
  6. India

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  • (2024)Metaverse Perspectives from Japan: A Participatory Speculative Design Case StudyProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36869398:CSCW2(1-51)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
  • (2024)Promoting Criticality with Design Futuring with Young ChildrenProceedings of the 13th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3679318.3685335(1-15)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
  • (2023)Methodological Middle Spaces: Addressing the Need for Methodological Innovation to Achieve Simultaneous Realism, Control, and Scalability in Experimental Studies of AI-Mediated CommunicationProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35795067:CSCW1(1-28)Online publication date: 16-Apr-2023
  • (2023)Exploring the Reciprocal Emotional Interaction Between Humans and Affective Technology Through Design Fictions and “Speculative Entanglement”Collaboration Technologies and Social Computing10.1007/978-3-031-42141-9_3(36-51)Online publication date: 29-Aug-2023
  • (2022)Future of Intimate Artefacts: A Speculative Design InvestigationProceedings of the 13th Indian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/3570211.3570216(57-66)Online publication date: 9-Nov-2022
  • (2022)Design Futuring for Love, Friendship, and Kinships: Five Perspectives on IntimacyExtended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491101.3516388(1-14)Online publication date: 27-Apr-2022

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