Science Fiction Prototyping
Science Fiction Prototypes (SFP) uses people’s imagination to write science-fiction stories to instantiate ideas for new concepts, schemes, services, products, businesses or political systems. It differs from foresight activities as it doesn’t aim to be predictive, rather it focuses on innovation.
Such fictions are most frequently classic science-fiction tales, which set story-lines forward in time but, for example, they can also be alternative realities, parallel worlds or fantasy. They are aimed to have such detail and emotional engagement, that they can serve as a prototype of a proposed innovation, providing evaluation based around believable (if fictional) people.
The methodology proposes a five-step process for writing an SFP:
- Pick Your Science and Build Your World
- Identify the Scientific Inflection Point
- Consider ramifications of the Science on People
- Identify the Human Inflection Point
- Reflect on “What did we learn?”
Full Science Fiction Prototypes (SFP) tell a story of innovation to such real-life fidelity that it can provide meaningful market research data, such that managers and investors can make decisions whether to authorise the finance to required build it.
SFPs are about 6–12 pages long, with a popular structure being: an introduction, background work, the fictional story (the bulk of the SFP), a short summary and a summary (reflection). Most often science fiction prototypes extrapolate current science forward and, therefore, include a set of references at the end.
Science Fiction Prototyping (SFP) is part of a larger family of fiction-based innovation and ‘future planning’ methodologies which includes Design Fiction and Threatcasting. The differences between these methodologies are explained in our FAQs.