Together we followed a Design Fiction approach to produce a Quick Start Guide for a technology that could substantially change mobility in the future. First, over the course of four hours we identified the key systems and the FAQs that implicate the human aspects of a self-driving car. For each key system, we illustrated the interaction, described the system and the steps for its use. The FAQs represented what we determined might be questions raised by the new self-driving car owner. Using the Quick Start Guide format as a Design Fiction archetype provided a way to focus the workshop discussion in order to identify topics that may not come up when discussing the larger system. It also forced us to create rather than just debate, and represent topics concisely to focus the work and challenge us to describe features succinctly.
This Quick Start Guide Design Fiction archetype is a natural way to focus on the human experiences around complicated systems. The Quick Start Guide implies a larger ecosystem that indeed may be quite complex. It also allows one to raise a topic of concern without resolving it completely — often an approach that's necessary in order to not be bogged down in details before it's necessary. For example, mentioning that it costs more to park your car rather than sending it back on the roadway as a taxi is a way to open a conversation about such a possibility and its implications for reclaiming space used by parking garages.
(via Helios: Pilote Quick Start Guide by Near Future Laboratory)
