Museums Need a Little More Sci-Fi
The start of a new year is a perfect time to imagine how we might get to an ideal future state.
I love science fiction. I love how the genre of sci-fi gives us permission to explore the question What If? and challenges our assumptions about how the future might unfold.
Sci-fi gives us a glimpse into what it might look like if we were to tug on a particular thread (e.g., genetic engineering) and helps us to see these ideas in a fresh context (e.g., Gattaca). If you’ve seen dinosaurs come back to life in Jurassic Park, traveled through space on the starship Enterprise, or found yourself unsettled by episode of Black Mirror, you’ve experienced how sci-fi can give shape to a possible future in a way that audiences can believe in.
I think it’s the act of world-building that I love most about sci-fi—the way that a really good sci-fi story can transport you to a sometimes farfetched, yet eerily plausible reality. The practice of world-building, or design fiction, allows us to tap into a different perspective.
Design fiction gives us a tool for describing the world as we want it to be.
We can use design fiction as a technique to build a bridge between two alternate worlds—one that exists and one that doesn’t yet exist. In this way, design fiction forces us to work backwards to explore what would be required to make an envisioned future a reality.
The process of design fiction follows four basic steps:
(1) Select an industry, a future date, and the job to be done. For example, a botanical garden (industry), the year 2072, and personal wellness (the job to be done).
(2) Write a story about the future. A story is a dramatized narrative that imagines a future state by suspending disbelief. The key is to step outside of the boundaries of how things exist today and begin to envision how things might be different in the future (for better, or worse). By crafting a fictional narrative, you can explore how the job to be done might change in the future. And you can start to imagine how your museum might adapt and respond to many different possible futures.
Using our scenario from Step 1, there is a story to be told about how climate change, technology, and healthcare might converge to change how audiences engage with botanical gardens in the future.
Consider the following story: It’s a scorching hot day in Denver, Colorado where the average temperature is over 100°F. The air is hazy, and people wear masks to filter smog particles. Prompted by a device that measures her body’s metabolic stress and risk of stroke, an elderly woman arrives at the botanical garden via an autonomous vehicle for a prescribed dose of climate-controlled nature therapy.
(3) Back out assumptions. Working backwards from the future scenario, we can identify the assumptions that have been made by asking, “What has to be true to make this future a reality?” In our example scenario of the botanical garden in the year 2072, extreme heat and pollution have created a need for protected natural spaces where individuals need to go to receive medically necessary wellness treatments. The scenario also assumes that our society has widely adopted wearable bio-monitoring devices, self-driving cars are ubiquitous, and botanical gardens are established healthcare providers that deliver prescription-based services to patients.
(4) Design a prototype. While the above scenario is a bit grim, there are positive elements of the story that we can grab onto to begin imagining a more ideal and near-in-time world—one that we can think about building a bridge to within the next 5-10 years. This is where prototyping comes in. A prototype can help us to test our assumptions and explore how we might build that bridge between the world that exists today and our desired world of tomorrow.
Consider how we might design a prototype of “nature therapy” at a botanical garden to get the job of personal wellness done.
Consider how we might design a prototype of “nature therapy” at a botanical garden to get the job of personal wellness done. For example, what if we designed a wellness-focused membership program that encouraged members to get a weekly dose of forest bathing to boost their immunity and reduce stress? Perhaps we could work with local healthcare providers to promote (or even prescribe) participation in the program. What if companies were to begin including membership to the botanical garden as a benefit for employees? Perhaps we could design a new “employee wellness” program that is marketed to HR departments as a corporate membership. Is there something we can take away from our original scenario about autonomous vehicles? Perhaps we can test using a shuttle bus to transport members to the garden at a designated time each week. And what about that bio-monitoring device? Perhaps we can explore a partnership with a fitness app to reward users for (or with) visits to the botanical garden.
Rather than dwelling on the risks that might prevent our desired future state from becoming a reality, design fiction inspires us to investigate those things that would need to be true for a new idea to gain traction. It’s a way to tug on those threads and unravel a new perspective.
So, what future do you want to create? As we look ahead with optimism, energized by the possibility of a new year, I invite you to join me in exercising our collective imaginations—let’s do a bit of worldbuilding.
Happy New Year!
Rosie
P.S. If you want to be a part of creating the future of membership, I encourage you to participate in a first-of-its-kind Member Motivations Study that will deliver critical insights about the hidden drivers behind the decision to become a member. This research will provide objective data to help museum leaders like you make informed decisions about your membership program. Enrollment closes on January 31. To learn more and sign up, check out our FAQs or contact me at rosie@fiveseed.com.
