Storytelling

Creative writing, scenarios, future visions … regardless of terminology, it appears that storytelling as a design technique is here to stay. Clearly designers have many ways to tell a story visually, yet I feel it helps to have an evocative written story as the foundation. As the challenges that designers are asked to help solve are increasingly systemic and complex, I consider storytelling to be a highly powerful tool to cut through this complexity. I particularly enjoy the short story format to describe user and context and to set the mood. By trading one’s developer’s hat for a writer’s hat, it becomes easier to focus on the lived experience and communicate both challenges and solutions in a more palatable format.

Here you find two samples of my writing, one in Dutch, one in English. The first story, Zeeland 2050 | Zijn Laatste Wens, is one of three stories which I wrote for a project by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management which explored scenarios for the Netherlands in 2050. I chose a calm, melancholic tone of voice to try and capture the personal and cultural loss that could result from climate change. As this story was a personal favourite, I felt a little sad when did not make the final selection. Perhaps it was a little too bleak, a little too unsettling?

The second one, Reclocked, is more cyberpunkish and was written as part of a patent ideation exercise on autonomous imaging techniques for Philips. It toys with concepts such as public health booths, autonomous check-ups, virtual twins and trusted data.

As she settles down, the chaise longue wraps gently around her. She feels the chair probe her body—accurately, carefully, almost tenderly—as the sensors move into place. Her anxiety should not get the better of her. Getting this annual health snapshot rejected on emotional grounds, that would be truly ironic. She inhales deeply, forcing her breathing pattern by counting in her head. She must focus. In, two, three, four, hold, two, out, two, three, four, five, six, pause, two… In, two, three… It is now almost an hour ago since she swallowed it. It was a little bit big but she managed. Vaguely she remembers the childhood feeling of hastily gobbling down food, wanting to go out to play and not taking the time to chew properly. This feels somewhat similar, a lump in her chest. She is chuffed with herself: who would have thought it possible to home-engineer an ingestible resonator? By now it should be lingering close to her heart, before entering her small intestine. A four-hour time window in which the resonator—fingers crossed—pushes her virtual twin out of sync. Momentarily having a twin that is a year younger, could that really be done? Her hemodynamics, timestamped AD2112, roll up across the console as the booth acquires her data. A fly walks across the screen, moving erratically as light and dark rapidly alternate. She sees the light next to the camera switch off and as her history bar refreshes, dozens of beautiful ‘selfies’ stare back at her. She doesn’t need to count, she knows there are ninety-eight. Eighty of them look identical. Only on the eighteen face scans from her youth does she look different. In 2013, a face like any other newborn. As a toddler. The innocent face of a preteen. Adolescence. Then pre-selection for the Planner program. She just got lucky, a 0.5% chance. Rarer still to be picked by random selection the moment one turns eighteen. Like winning a jackpot with eighty-two years of social advantage, without even buying lottery ticket. She never was quite sure she really belonged though. To the intellectual elite. To the machine-educated. But she didn’t need to be coerced. There was no need. It was such a privilege; her parents so proud. Her entry to the Planner program now seems like a lifetime ago. It ís a lifetime ago. Here she is, nearly antique. Literally. She has almost fulfilled her purpose, her Planner training a thing from a distant past. Obsolete.

Only one selfie-slot in her timeline remains empty. The final slot. Her health snapshot starts building up as the sensor data pours in. But she is not paying attention to the outcome of her checkup. Her gaze is transfixed on her empty ETD^* field. Does it take longer than last year, or is she imagining? She sighs with relief as the digits appear and start counting, too fast for her eyes to keep up. Upwards, upwards… let it stop at 100/2114. Then it jams. The screen oozes red as most of her selfies swap out for empty squares with question marks. Of her adult life, only five selfies remain. She watches in horror as the ETD field remains stuck on 23/2036. Her body tenses up at the very same time the chair pins her down sharply. A piercing sound fills the tiny booth. The mood lighting is gone instantly and the whole booth flashes epileptically with a cold, harsh light. The unmistakable signs of tampering being detected. She pees. She knows it should work with this type of booth. It must work. The booths in the suburbs are still first gen. She double-checked. Beneath their frozen beauty, Planners age too. And incontinence is one of those stubborn geriatric DNA blemishes that refuse to be stemcelled away. A human imperfection any autonomous booth must be able to deal with. It should force the booth into an emergency shutdown, with this firmware even during the tampering protocol. She feels the warmth trickle down along her thighs. For a lifetime nothing happens. She freaks out, about to yank off the sensors; then the chair finally lets go. Her chest is throbbing with pain as she hobbles away from the booth as quickly as she can. The dark mist absorbs her stooped silhouette. She will get it right, she still has a year.

*Estimated Time of Death