Speculative Future Lifestyles (Part 4) — Future Artefacts
Now that we have envisioned future personas and lifestyles in our previous articles, let’s explore how we can design future artifacts to tell their story. Further articulating the NOK futures library of future worlds, our team chose the world of our 97-year-old elderly persona prototype, Nova (they/them), to expand on and visualise future artifacts in their daily life.
What are the future motivators? What are their whims? What do they desire?
Recap of Persona Provotype, Nova
Story World
Nova is born into wealth and lives in the most advanced city in the world. Due to advancements in medical technology and significant purchasing power, people in their country have achieved an average lifespan of — immortality. The affluent have an array of longevity options to choose from, which means that death is now merely an option for them.
Personality
At the age of 97, Nova views age as just a number. They are determined to maintain a youthful appearance, challenging the typical expectations of ageing with strength and elegance. Their home is equipped with top-notch facilities, and they often undergo the latest cosmetic procedures to preserve their youthful look. Nova believes they are experiencing the best years of their life.
With the option to live indefinitely, how would our priorities be shaped? How would our perception of beauty change if the prime ages of youth shifted to 45–70? What will lifestyle objects of this future look like?
Molding The Future
Desirable products of the future must adhere to certain principles of today; some things simply remain unchanged. Our team established connections between current signals and the consequences in this future world to envision the form and experiences that future artifact ideas would embody. Given the exceedingly low death rate, leading to overpopulation, how would childbirth be impacted? Find a snapshot of our explorations in the map above; click the image to enlarge.
Artefacts Of The Future
Here, we will address the questions posed above with speculative artifacts of the future — objects that Nova uses in her daily life.
Faux Baby
What
- AI Baby Pregnancy Kit: With longer lifespans, AI babies become a necessary means of controlling population growth. Faux baby pregnancy kits are designed to simulate real pregnancies, even though the AI baby is born virtually. Simulating a genuine pregnancy allows parents to develop a strong emotional attachment to their new digital offspring.
Gender and age are no longer constraints for having biological offspring.
- Human Expressions and Needs: Human behaviours will continue to reflect their natural instincts to nurture. Realistic simulations are crucial to ensure that these needs are met.
- Pregnancy Education: These kits allow potential mothers or fathers to experience pregnancy, preparing them for what lies ahead. They also encourage individuals to reconsider their decision to have an organic baby.
How
- Realistic Pregnancy: Pregnancy sensations are simulated through electrical nerve stimulation. This includes sensations like pain, fetal movements, heartbeat, and even pressure on organs.
- Maternal Connection: The entire pod is equipped with a sensitive network that responds to environmental stimuli, such as touch and sounds. When parents talk, sing, or massage their belly, nerve stimulation is triggered to simulate fetal movements.
- Biological Virtual Baby: Extended pod usage allows for the collection of more parental data. This data is then transformed into traits of the AI baby, including personality, heightened responses to familiar words and songs, and even the parents’ characteristics.
Neue Face
What
- Facial Modification Makeup Printer: Beauty standards evolve constantly. In a world where the ageing process ceases, beauty transforms from enhancing current facial features to adding facial modifications. This at-home beauty device screens your skin, repairs imperfections, and applies customised printed features and makeup to your face.
- Beauty Expressivity and Standards: This device enables users to express their creativity and identity in ways that redefine what it means to be beautiful.
- Skin Screening and Repair: Capable of printing additive materials directly onto the skin, this device is used at night to screen, repair, and strengthen facial skin.
How
- You can select the type of facial modification you desire right in the comfort of your bathroom. Whether you opt for a preset style or create one yourself, achieving your desired look is just a button away.
- Once you’ve chosen a style, place your face in the machine, and it will spray medical-grade silicone onto specific areas of your face to create the desired look. The skin-safe curing light in the center of the machine will then harden the silicone.
Nano Longevity
What
- Home Nanobot Treatment: In today’s world, where a cup of coffee can keep sleep at bay, imagine a Nespresso machine delivering an elixir of youth every night. This machine diagnoses your health conditions, programmes nanobots to perform targeted functions for repairing and fighting detected diseases in your body. These nanobots are prepared as a shot for you to ingest every night.
- Living Longer and Healthier: This extra assistance enables consumers to maintain a healthy body, free from diseases and infections. With advancements in technology targeting a wider range of viruses and even cancer cells, immortality may not be far from our reach.
How
- Detection and Diagnosis: The system detects and diagnoses abnormalities and imperfections in your body.
- Nanobot Programming: Nanobots are programmed within the dispenser to perform specific tasks in your body such as fighting viruses or repairing broken tissues.
- Precise Dispensation: Multiple nanobots, each serving different purposes, are precisely dispensed into a cup for you to drink before bedtime.
- Overnight Repair: The nanobots work to repair your body while you sleep, so you wake up feeling refreshed and perfect once again.
- Daily Consumption: Every shot is designed to target a specific diagnosis, so it should be taken every night for optimal health and results.
Conclusion
This marks the final part of our speculative future lifestyle series. We hope that our exploration of articulating a future world has ignited ideas and possibilities for you.
At NOK, we are dedicated to continuously building a library of future world stories, signals, and persona prototypes. This ensures that the future is not merely a distant concept but a consequence of our present actions and choices. By adopting these methods, we can actively prepare for and shape the future.
Now, you might be wondering, “That sounds fascinating, but I’m not sure if I can do it.” That’s where we come in. We possess the expertise, experience, and tools to guide you on this exciting journey into the future. If you’re curious about how your business might evolve or how your customers could change, reach out to us. Let’s take a trip to the future together!
As always, insane today, obvious tomorrow!
Contributing Designers:
Rodney Loh, Design Director
Melvin Ong, Creative Director
Edmund Zhang, Senior UX Designer
Mok Zijie, Industrial Designer
Alvin Ling, Content Design Lead
Rayson Tan, Content Designer
Written by:
Sim Hao Jie, Design Manager
Lim Cai Jin, Content Designer
NextOfKin Creatives is a strategic design studio comprising a talented family of cross-disciplinary creative thinkers. Our passion lies in conceptualizing innovative designs and crafting unique narratives through our design research and strategy. We are driven to push boundaries and uncover fresh perspectives.
We’d love to partner with you on future casting and design research to reimagine how we can shape experiences together! Get in touch with us at studio@nok.design 👋 Thank you again for reading, and we hope to see you soon in our next article.
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