AugHumana presented it's Vision7 technology for the first time at an event at Ohio State's Barnett Theater. The project provided the opportunity to unite with a larger campus research enterprise centered around the broader topic of Humane Technologies (HT). The HT initiative culminated with a series of technology-based explorations and provocations, termed as Pop-Ups, held during week nine of the semester. Since a typical semester is 14-15 weeks, a preferred design process was accelerated to meet the nine-week deadline. We referred to this as Pop-Up week.

Presenting a design fiction future to a diverse “non-designer” audience was key to promoting discussion and debate around futures that most of us do not contemplate or that we feel are beyond our control. The audience could have consisted of any group outside the realm of the design sphere. In this case, the event brought together students from Women's Gender and Sexual Studies and the Environmental Humanities. On presentation day, we reminded the audience that the AugHumana team had created a “fictional future” that it was not intended to be either utopian or dystopian. Students could have focused on utopian futures, of what the world will be like should everything work out perfectly, but that is not the essential ingredient of design fiction nor is it the nature of things. It is not about utopia or dystopia, because the future will not likely be either, but rather a combination that includes elements of both. Design fiction paints futures, but it is also an invitation to examine the present because it is indeed, today's decisions that affect the future. The introduction acknowledged the premise that design is a key contributor to futures, and that the confluence of technology together with the human condition is an outcome best not left to accident, but rather, whenever possible, to reasoned collaborative and participatory design.

The event began with a brief presentation that introduced the idea of design fiction. (See Instructor's Notes). Immediately afterward, the design class took the stage wearing prototype glasses. We reserved the final hour-long phase of the event for discussion. Students from the visiting classes were asked to contribute a list of possible discussion topics which included Sacrifice Zones, Sustainability, Visibility, Food Security, Extinction, Capitalism, Assemblage, Posthuman, Efficiency, Dependency, Criminalization, Satire, Humane Technology, and Human Rights. The diverse student audience gravitated toward the topics and formed small groups around the issues they wanted to discuss. Design students facilitated the dialog and recorded comments and discussion points with markers on large rolls of white paper. The result was a robust session that demonstrated the design fiction objective: discussion and debate.