Future Frictions

Emerging frictions

Contextualise the intervention and the changes it introduces to your scenario. Brainstorm about changes to the context (place/neighbourhood) and characters you visualised earlier. Can you imagine any issues that might arise? Describe the most thought-provoking issue/friction you want to visualise in the next step.

How the intervention changes the situation: Imagine that every time you want to buy clothes online in the EU, a short "pop-up" pause shows up first. This tells you how much water the item took to make, how many times people usually wear it, and how little the person who made it got paid. You can still buy it, but you can't pretend you didn't see it. The effect of this is that haul videos are starting to feel different.
Who and where: Imagine a busy street with a lot of fast fashion stores. Almost every laptop has fast fashion tabs open, and packages pile up in the hallway of houses. Imagine a 20-year-old girl named Mia who normally buys a few fast fashion items per week starts to think twice. Her friend, who is an influencer and does unboxings and hauls for a living, is losing views because people scroll away due to the 'pop-ups'. The thrift store on the street gets busier and busier.
What could go wrong:
- After a week, everyone just taps through the pause without reading it.
- Brands find ways to make the numbers look nicer than they are.
- Influencers lose income and fight back.
- Students with little money feel guilty for buying cheap clothes, even though they have no other option.
The friction we want to show:
Mia has a job interview and has almost no money. The only outfit she can afford is this 9-euro top. At the checkout, the 'pop-up', she feels guilty for something she can not really avoid. That is the uncomfortable part: the 'pop-up' is meant to make the companies look bad, but it ends up making the person with the fewest choices feel ashamed.

Scenarios ➡ lack of awareness about the effects of fast fashion ▶

Emerging frictions