Experiments for the Future is a series of speculative design experiments developed for the Volkswagen Group Future Center Europe to find innovative ways and methods for imagining the future between humans and machines.
A first practical application of these is the Empathic Futures app experiment, in which 500 participants talked to their personal, mobility-related Empathic Intelligence for 5 days.
Project Phases:
Strategy | Concept | Design | Execution
Role:
Research | Digital Strategy Consulting | Content Development | Art Direction | Interaction and UX Design | App Development | Event Coordination | Operation
To find out answers to these questions beyond theoretical speculation and traditional user surveys, FELD developed an exciting new method for applied user research: an app experiment that confronts people with a hypothetical future scenario in which they are able to chat with a system that is both cognitively and emotionally intelligent – an Empathic Intelligence (E.I.).
The aim was to inspire the participants’ imagination about future forms and functions of human-machine interaction.
Through text conversations, the E.I.s accompanied 500 participants from all over Europe through their every-day life. To test new principles of human-machine interaction, the 5 days of the experiment followed specific topics of conversation and included different forms of communication like images and emojis.
Game elements, e.g. challenges and point systems, as well as humor and humanlike behavior served as incentives and triggered unusual and surprising responses impossible to acquire by a questionnaire or traditional survey.
Minter Dial, participant and digital strategy consultant
Accompanied by the publication of a comprehensive research report, the results of the experiment were presented in the Empathic Futures exhibition, where the general public had the opportunity to give their opinion on the principles of human-machine communication developed through the experiment.
