Labs

Bring people together to create new feelings about the future.

KES2018

Experiential Gatherings

Dinner parties with a purpose. Conversations with a point. Glorious walks ruined by prototyping. You get the idea. Our experiential events mix pleasure and purpose. A little design feeling and a bit of future foresight all mixed up with brilliant conversation, fast-paced improv, and sometimes good food.

Here are a few examples of experiential gatherings, all around our inner lives with tech.

Future Feeling Labs

The Future Feelings Lab is part of a series held around the world. From Schadenfreude in Hamburg to Saudade in Sao Paolo to Anxiety in NYC, each explores a different emotion associated with digital life. The Austin edition will focus on fear, from FOMO to cyberbullying, from fear of leaving your phone to fear of being addicted to it. Come prepared to immerse yourself in uplifting moments, ugly truths, and guilty pleasures and map internet emotion.

The Internet of You

To quote the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, "Who are YOU?" Alice can't go back to yesterday because she was a different person then. You, on the other hand, might be condemned to live in yesterday forever if AI has its way. Uncover the real you through a combination of psychological profiling, therapy-based exercises, social media profile speed dating, browser history day in the life, and other activities. For everyone, from students to sages. This session is especially thought-provoking for teams and can be extended into a design studio.

Love, Death and the Internet

Half-day, full-on, future-forward, this workshop serves as a introduction to futuring with a twist. Can we envision the high-tech future of romantic relationships? Perhaps you are more concerned with the future of death, or the lack thereof. Inspired by novels, philosophy, and a dash of scifi, this is where we contemplate the big issues. Design meets storytelling, play meets critique, breaking bread meets making prototypes.

A Day in 2035

What will the world look like in 10 years? Or 25 years? Leaning on a combination of future foresight and speculative design practices, we create a shared vision of what a typical day will look like in 2035. From imagined new stories to prototypes to everyday experiences, the session zooms in on three locations around the world. Teams can choose a vertical, a location, a type of technology, or a lifestyle as a focus. Or better still, fine tune your own product for the future.