Experiencing the Future Mundane

The potential economic and societal benefits of emerging and future technologies is ultimately linked to their adoption and acceptability by a majority of potential users. However, the processes that drive adoption and acceptability are rarely considerations for research into emerging and future technologies and are generally regarded as someone else's future work. Therefore, the challenges and barriers to adoption and acceptability can occur only *after* potentially problematic design patterns have become established, resulting in diminished impact or unintended consequences. Framing this issue as a research challenge, this proposal addresses the problem by bringing together a multidisciplinary team of researchers to shape a novel methodology that merges Design Fiction and Breaching Experiments to create Mundane Experiential Futures that enable citizens to 'get their hands on the future' and thereby elaborate acceptability and adoption challenges.

The research will extend the Living Room of The Future (LRoTF) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrNPwYZMS2w] and embed it in a mobile platform to enable the public to experience for themselves what an 'intelligent' Internet of Things might look in their everyday lives. Development and deployment of the experiential futures involves the co-creation of familiar but provocative mundane experiences to enable public exploration of the transactional nature of personal data use, end-user agency and control over data flows, and automated decision-making in mundane interaction. A roadshow will expose these Mundane Experiential Futures to a diverse cohort at a broad range of public events, from high-profile technology showcases to country shows, to enable 'informed citizens' to shape IoT-AI research agendas around *their* expectations of the role and function of future technologies in everyday life.