This slice of the future was called Peoples’ Vertex, a secret community gathering space for people and organisations to exchange help and share a sense of camaraderie.

We held an experiential futures installation, totalling 40 guests comprises of NSR clients, board members, and the wider CMU community.

Our first step was to conduct user interviews and secondary research on several non-profits around Pittsburgh.

We conducted user interviews with nonprofit leaders and synthesized our findings with an affinity diagram, through specific quotes/phrases noted down.

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From our diagram, we highlighted the issues and goals addressing three states of time: the past, present, and future.

We also used the interviews to identify signals (evidence/ideas of where the future is headed) and drivers (long term trends) of the future.
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Leaders envisioned a vibrant community as one that is tight knit, where everyone is able to help each other out.

Some of the long terms and trends (drivers) include technological advancements and lack of funding. We discovered that smaller organisations anticipate these challenges, and also have a fear sustaining a business and organisation model.

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We expanded on these top scenarios using a framework called the futures wheel, allowing us to build upon the narrative we have, and consider how this future impacts society from a social, technological, ecological, economic, and political way, which can be used to think about how we want to prompt participants.

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Several artefacts were created to support the narrative of a speakeasy based in the future called People’s Vertex, where Nonprofits and other grassroots organizations face heavy resistance from the system,to the point where their work can be described as back alley and stigmatized.
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I curated a moodboard to lead the direction of branding and also posters that would be inside the speakeasy. I mapped out ways we could visuall yrepresent a sense of repression and resistance to something more ‘hopeful’ and light.
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Visually, we looked at more grunge, dark and somber, and anti-design visual styles to more colorful, playful, and modern visual styles with chrome, nature like elements.
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Several tablets were used to display the Figma prototype during the experiential futures event, and people were allowed tointeract with them using their ID keychains given at the beginning of the experience. Small half-letter sized menus were also scattered across the bar space, giving visitors ample opportunities to read and digest the different services.

The UI serves as an interactive and ‘futuristic’ medium between the curated services and users, while also roleplaying the possibilities of future narratives/work offered by patrons of the bar.
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A future scenario didn’t have to be perfect, it just had to exist as a starting point for conversation. What if this were the future, why would it exist and what would that mean to you? That's what we asked participants.

From the project, I also learnt a lot about speculative design as a research but also storytelling method - another way design can frame and shape the way we engage with people and things around us.
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