Be the Story Evolution
When I worked on this exercise, one thing that felt like it was calling towards was what if the person in the story was actually daydreaming a bit about what the future would look like from a place in the future. This felt a bit different and I was not quite sure if I wanted to take the story this way but decided to give it a shot. Afterwards, the end result felt okay but maybe was not the best output. Having some bike projects be completed and be a primary way of moving around a few years into the future felt plausible while having them daydream and do projects on what further improvements could be made to the world that they were living in. It was fun to put myself in the place of the character doing this daydreaming as well because this is primarily what I had been doing for each of the prior iterations of the story! Leaving in the augmented reality aspect for projects as felt realistic to be happening about a decade into the future as well. Overall, I think this iteration was not as good as the last one, as in, it felt less fluid, but perhaps but performing some of the other techniques with it again, we can fill in the missing parts and make it feel more like a whole story.
Whispers of the Future: Sarah's Seattle Sojourn
In the hot, dry morning of a Seattle summer, a young women named Sarah awakes, remembering that she was a project that she needs to work on for her design course. There are several components of it that she needs to work on, first she has some stories for it that she needs to go over with her friend John over brunch. In the afternoon, she is then gathering with her group to go over some of the designs that they have using augmented reality to clue each other in. The project is on what maybe the future could look like in the Pacific Northwest, maybe a future that has a positive fate, one where we make choices that enhance the lives of everyone Sarah hopes.
She needs to meetup with John for brunch at eleven in a cafe in Ballard in Seattle. Always running a bit late, Sarah has to rush about her morning in order to get everything in place that she needs for the day! First, she decides to have her coffee though, as she can barely function throughout the day without it, especially one where she is working on a project critical to graduating. She quickly makes some coffee on her Breville machine, and then gets to work packing what she needs for the day. An e-ink tablet, a laptop, and a pair of augmented reality glasses slip into her bag, which she quickly slings over her shoulder. Then rushing outside, she hops on her bike and begins to make her way over to Ballard.
Leaving from Pioneer Square she quickly headed down the newly finished Elliot Bay trail. It was great because the city had finished the route going past the cruise terminal and had widened the Ballard bridge to allow for bike lanes providing a dedicate route she could confidently use to get from her place to Ballard without have to worry about getting hit by a car. In roughly thirty minutes she was able to get to the cafe where she was meeting John who had made it there a few minutes ahead of time.
For class, they were both working on case studies focusing on what the Pacific Northwest could do to improve connection within their area without needing to rely on roadways. They were working together to come up with ideas to get people out of their cars so that highways could maybe one day be eliminated. One of the ideas to illustrate this that they had come up with is would it not be great if they could travel to Leavenworth for lunch and have this same discussion but then be able to get home with time to spare, all without spending all that time stuck in a car? They decided that maybe they should take inspiration from another country, China in this case, since it had a large high speed rail network that served the entire country.
Sarah could imagine herself waking up in the morning, biking to a rail station, catching the train and meeting up with John in Leavenworth. It was have been so much more fun to take in the views of the Cascades at a cafe there, while going over potential stories that they were creating as a part of their design project. It would have been amazing to be able to even head up to Vancouver for a day trip and come back down to Seattle all without having to worry about needing to make reservations to spend the night up there. Through this daydreaming, Sarah began to write some of her stories, imagining what could be and the advantages that it would provide to someone in her shoes. She shared those with John, and they both agreed that this was the direction that they both wanted to take their project.
It was now time for Sarah to bike to the downtown library to meetup with her friends to go over some designs that they were working on for the city of Portland. She hopped on her bike again, and then took the same bike trail back to downtown where her friends were already waiting for her at a table. Quickly, she dawned her augmented reality glasses to see what her friends had been up to. Before her was a holographic representation of the current Portland waterfront park as it stood in its current state at that time. They then showed what it would look like with the new fountain that they were planning to install.
Sarah then began remembering the story that she was working on, if only they had the high speed rail envisioned in it now. She and the group would have been able to head down to Portland for the day and go to the actual park itself. They could have then taken their augmented reality glasses and placed the fountain in the actual park and seen what it would look like with its real surroundings. Unfortunately though, they could not do that today. Soon Sarah packed up and decided she was a bit too tired to bike the rest of the way home so she decided to hope on a trolleybus to take her the rest of the way.
On the bus she noticed an advertisement for an upcoming vote, one on whether or not the city should expand its regional rail network and partner with the freight companies on expanding service to all cities within the western Washington area. That's an amazing though she pondered, what if they were able to partner with the Portland metro area with delivering that. Soon the bus arrived at her place, she got off and then headed to bed. She had done a lot of creative work that day and decided it was best to head early due to mental fatigue.