Social Sciences, Economics and Business, Samhällsvetenskap, Ekonomi och näringsliv, Social and Economic Geography, Social och ekonomisk geografi, Oceans, Fisheries, Global change, Complex adaptive systems, Scenarios, and Science fiction prototyping

Scenarios can help individuals, communities, corporations and nations to develop a capacity for dealing with the unknown and unpredictable, or the unlikely but possible. A range of scientific methods for developing scenarios is available, but we argue that they have limited capacity to investigate complex social-ecological futures because: 1) non-linear change is rarely incorporated and: 2) they rarely involve co-evolutionary dynamics of integrated social-ecological systems. This manuscript intends to address these two concerns by applying the method of science fiction prototyping to developing scenarios for the future of global fisheries in a changing global ocean. We used an empirically informed background on existing and emerging trends in marine natural resource use and dynamics to develop four 'radical ocean futures,' incorporating and extrapolating from existing environmental, technological, social and economic trends. We argue that the distinctive method as applied here can complement existing scenario methodologies and assist scientists in developing a holistic understanding of complex systems dynamics. The approach holds promise for making scenarios more accessible and interesting to non-academics and can be useful for developing proactive governance mechanisms.

Humanities and the Arts, Arts, Design, Humaniora och konst, Konst, Natural Sciences, Computer and Information Sciences, Human Computer Interaction, Naturvetenskap, Data- och informationsvetenskap, Människa-datorinteraktion (interaktionsdesign), Design Education, Information Design, Prototyping, Novice designer, Bodily involvement, and Learning by Experiencing

In information design education, we strive to find methods that provide students with opportunities to explore different ways of learning and designing. We seek to support development of contextual competences that will be helpful in navigating an unknown future of design in society. A challenge in today's design education is to formulate and use methods that support design students in developing competencies in the space between basic form training and context-rich training. The aim of this study was to evaluate prototyping exercises in design education where the focus was in that in-between space. The study is based on 33 prototyping workshops done between 2008 and 2015 and involving 160 students and two design teachers. Four different approaches to prototyping exercises are described, examined and evaluated: "spatial prototyping," "multi-material prototyping," "physical prototyping," and a mix between the latter two, "physical multi-material prototyping." The results show that the prototyping exercises did support the learning of diverse competencies in the in-between space of basic form training and context training. However, the exercises were also counterproductive and met with different kinds of resistance. The results of the study invite to a dialogue on how different prototyping techniques can stimulate learning in relation to future design competences.