So what do scenarios actually look like? Here are some real-world examples. By Jamais Cascio

Futures Thinking: Writing Scenarios

In Futures Thinking: The Basics, I offered up an overview of how to engage in a foresight exercise. In Futures Thinking: Asking the Question, I explored in more detail the process of setting up a futures exercise, and how to figure out what you're trying to figure out. InFutures Thinking: Scanning the World, I took a look at gathering useful data. In Futures Thinking: Mapping the Possibilities (Part 1), I gave a broad overview of creating alternative scenarios. In Futures Thinking: Mapping the Possibilities (Part 2), I moved to the nuts & bolts of creating scenarios.

But that didn't really tell you what scenarios actually look like. So I'm going to rectify that.

In 2008, the San Francisco-based user experience design firm Adaptive Path was asked to create some prototype designs of what the Firefox Web browser of the year 2020 might look like. Adaptive Path, in turn, asked me to help them think through what the Internet and the world of 2020 might look like, so that they would have a better sense of how a future Firefox might be used. This is exactly the kind of task that scenario work is well-suited for, so I suggested that rather than give them a single Vision of Tomorrow, I'd help them see a small set of alternatives. They agreed.

I brought together some folks from Adaptive Path and from my own network, and had a two-day brainstorming and scenario-design session. Three scenarios resulted from the workshop--that is, three overarching scenario concepts, supported by lots of bullet points and sticky notes, all in roughly chronological order, resulted. I then took these results and turned them into narrative scenarios. Adaptive Path used these narrative scenarios as inspiration and "future reality" checks for their own design scenarios, presented on video. (See the Adaptive Path "Aurora" videos here.)

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

But in creating my three scenarios, I took an unusual turn: I decided that I'd write each of the three scenarios in a different scenario style. That made it harder to compare the three, but it meant that each would speak to audiences in differing ways, so that readers who found one style unpalatable might find another style much more to their liking.

You can download a PDF of all three scenarios here; it's actually done as a Creative Commons licensed-work (Non-Commercial/Attribution/Share-Alike), so feel free to play with these scenarios if you so desire.

The three styles I used for these scenarios can be categorized as "Scenario-as-Story," "Scenario-as-Recollection," and "Scenario-as-History."