Designing to elicit future affective potential: Café 2057

This paper offers an approach for extending the use of creative arts-based methods to co-create ‘outputs’ about futuring that can then be used for conducting additional research. This paper further contributes to the field of futuring by providing an example of how experiential futures methodologies can be mobilized as an initial step in part of an iterative, multi-step research process to investigate mundane interactions while elucidating insights about behaviors. The goal was to explore, in a unique outside-the-box format, the affective ways that consumers related to food and beverage choices, product design, attributes and flavors. Through this interactive exhibit, we aimed to generate insights for participants and researchers alike into consumer’s current and anticipated hopes and concerns about the food system and food choice writ large. We additionally sought insights into how an everyday third place like a coffee shop facilitates affective futuring. We understand affective futuring as the exploration of the role emotional and affective dimensions play in shaping group and individual visions of the future in relationship to place. The design of “Café 2057” thus sought to create an experiential futures scenario where participants could not only “envision and create alternative food futures to the status quo,” but also project/ elicit the affective potential of such alternative futures.