Future Erasure

Futurescaping workshop

  • Client: CIID Research, University of Newcastle, Research Center for Material Culture
  • Year: 20202
  • Role: Interface & Machine Design
  • Tags: EdTech, UX Design, React, Wellbeing, Information Architecture

Project Overview

Future Erasureis a speculative design workshop exploring a near-future scenario in which museums must delete 20% of their collections annually. Developed as part of the EU-fundedCoHERE project, the workshop used design fiction to immerse heritage professionals in large-scale cultural deletion's ethical, logistical, and emotional stakes.

Participants didn’t just talk about deletion. Theydesigned it, interacting with fictional bureaucracies, algorithmic simulations, and tangible deletion devices.

Challenge

Heritage institutions face an unsustainable accumulation of physical objects, yet few have frameworks for structured deaccessioning. Future Erasure reframed this quiet crisis as an urgent design question:

How might deletion itself be designed intelligently, ethically, and provocatively?

My Role

AsInterface & Machine Designlead, I was responsible for:

Designing thebrowser-based deletion simulation, including dynamic sliders and feedback states

Building thephysical punchcard interaction system a speculative machine for “processing” heritage erasure

Crafting themachine outputs, including printed punchcard receipts with generative deletion outcomes

Collaborating on thevisual logicof algorithm interfaces, ensuring emotional resonance and usability under speculative constraints

Key Features

Deletion Algorithm Interface

A d3.js–driven tool that lets participants “tune” cultural deletion by adjusting sliders for ideas, history, and rarity

Punchcard Device & Field Kit

A custom-built artefact that combined tactile interaction with procedural ambiguity, prompting users to physically engage with algorithmic decisions

Visual Simulations of Erasure

Image-based provocations, like tagged face deletion in “Las Meninas” highlighted how machine logic could reshape cultural memory

Scenario Material

Participants received briefing dossiers and speculative newspapers to ground them in the world of the “Deletion Bureau”

Outcome

The workshop brought together over 40 museum leaders from across Europe. It helped them confront hard questions:

How do we define cultural value under constraint?

Can deletion be ethical, not just logistical?

What role might algorithms, interfaces, and devices play in shaping institutional memory?

The response was overwhelmingly positive, sparking requests for follow-up workshops and earning international recognition for its originality and depth.

Reflection

Proud of:

Designing machine interactions that were both provocative and intuitively legible

Turning speculative prompts into physical and digital tools for honest debate

Challenges:

Balancing clarity and ambiguity to leave room for interpretation without losing meaning

Building interactions that felt plausible within a fictional future

Workshop participants seated around a table strewn with printed materials, behind a semi-transparent overlay of “The Deletion Bureau” seal, illustrating the speculative fiction framing used to immerse heritage experts in the Future Erasure scenario.

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Workshop participants seated around a table strewn with printed materials, behind a semi-transparent overlay of “The Deletion Bureau” seal, illustrating the speculative fiction framing used to immerse heritage experts in the Future Erasure scenario.

Close-up of a bright orange field case containing a custom “Punchcard” device prototype, with a participant’s hand reaching to insert a punchcard—demonstrating the tangible prototyping exercise for interacting with erased heritage objects.

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Close-up of a bright orange field case containing a custom “Punchcard” device prototype, with a participant’s hand reaching to insert a punchcard—demonstrating the tangible prototyping exercise for interacting with erased heritage objects.

Participant holding a custom punchcard receipt printed with algorithmic output (“E pluribus pauca”), highlighting how deletion algorithms generate tangible artifacts for expert review and reflection.

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Participant holding a custom punchcard receipt printed with algorithmic output (“E pluribus pauca”), highlighting how deletion algorithms generate tangible artifacts for expert review and reflection.

Exercise slide showing three speculative design tasks plotted on axes labeled “keeping the essence” to “reimagine the future,” mapping steps for interacting with erased objects through three escalating exercises.

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Exercise slide showing three speculative design tasks plotted on axes labeled “keeping the essence” to “reimagine the future,” mapping steps for interacting with erased objects through three escalating exercises.

Detail of Diego Velázquez’s “Las Meninas” overlaid with green face-tag bounding boxes and “add tag” prompts, representing the deletion algorithm simulation where subjects are selectively marked for erasure.

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Detail of Diego Velázquez’s “Las Meninas” overlaid with green face-tag bounding boxes and “add tag” prompts, representing the deletion algorithm simulation where subjects are selectively marked for erasure.

Browser-based AI training interface v2.0 with three sliders for “ideas,” “history,” and “rare,” each set to a weight, illustrating the d3.js–driven interactive simulation for configuring deletion criteria.

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Browser-based AI training interface v2.0 with three sliders for “ideas,” “history,” and “rare,” each set to a weight, illustrating the d3.js–driven interactive simulation for configuring deletion criteria.

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