Experiential futures

Designs fragments of an imagined future, such as objects, spaces or performances, so people can experience it with their senses and talk about it.

What problem it addresses

Futures are usually told through reports and figures: they feel abstract and hard to relate to.

Lived, not read
The future is presented as something you can touch, walk through or hear.
A fragment is enough
A single object or scene evokes a whole world.
To start a conversation
The experience opens a dialogue about what future we want.

Two ways to share the same future scenario.

A report

Text, charts and figures about what life could be like twenty years from now. You read it.

A scene

A space with objects from that future that the audience walks through and touches. You live it.

This is how Candy and Dunagan turned a scenario into an experience with The People Who Vanished, at Emerge (Arizona State University, 2012).

Use it like this
Turn a scenario into an object or a small scene and let the team use it before deciding.
Avoid
Staging something spectacular without a question about the future behind it.
Don’t fall for it
Record what people say and feel during the experience: it is the most valuable result.

2010
Stuart Candy
Defined experiential scenarios in his doctoral thesis.
2017
Stuart Candy and Jake Dunagan
Explained how they designed The People Who Vanished.

Candy, S. (2010). The futures of everyday life: Politics and the design of experiential scenarios [Doctoral dissertation, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa].
Candy, S., & Dunagan, J. (2017). Designing an experiential scenario: The People Who Vanished. Futures, 86, 136–153. View source: Candy, S., & Dunagan, J. (2017)

Last reviewed: October 25, 2026