Civic Fictions: Exploring the Socio-technical Implications of Augmented Reality in Future Cities through Science Fiction Prototyping

While researchers have explored augmented reality (AR) applications for the engineering, urban planning and architecture of future cities, work around the implications of AR for civic participation has received much less attention. In this paper, we report on a study with 16 expert participants of a workshop that employed the “Sci-Fi Prototyping” methodology. Participants were asked to co-author speculative scenarios around potential AR futures. These scenarios then acted as “design fiction probes” to elicit discussions on the challenges and opportunities presented by AR for future societies. Our findings contribute a deeper understanding of the socio-technical implications of AR use in civic participation, including: (i) perceptions on how the current technological status quo is projected and reproduced in the future; (ii) how a ubiquitous AR infrastructure might affect the dichotomy between public and private space; and (iii) effects of AR in shifting perceptions of materiality.