Open Access

Jordi Tost, Eva Hornecker, Frank Heidmann

• Provocation has long been used in HCI to challenge audiences’ assumptions about technology. However, designers and researchers themselves operate within implicit assumptions that shape the technologies they imagine - invisible constraints that limit what futures we design for. In this paper, we introduce self-provocation as a complementary concept that turns the disruptive impulse inward to make designers’ familiar thinking patterns strange through self-imposed constraints. Our approach builds on avant-garde artistic movements (Surrealism, Oulipo, Fluxus) and critical practices in HCI embracing speculation, anti-solutionism, and non-determinism as epistemic forces, focusing on process over outcomes. We provide a framework dividing self-provocation methods into two levels building on defamiliarization and estrangement. Self-provocation functions analytically - understanding boundaries of current design imaginaries - and generatively - fostering creative friction to explore alternative possibility spaces. We present two self-provocationProvocation has long been used in HCI to challenge audiences’ assumptions about technology. However, designers and researchers themselves operate within implicit assumptions that shape the technologies they imagine - invisible constraints that limit what futures we design for. In this paper, we introduce self-provocation as a complementary concept that turns the disruptive impulse inward to make designers’ familiar thinking patterns strange through self-imposed constraints. Our approach builds on avant-garde artistic movements (Surrealism, Oulipo, Fluxus) and critical practices in HCI embracing speculation, anti-solutionism, and non-determinism as epistemic forces, focusing on process over outcomes. We provide a framework dividing self-provocation methods into two levels building on defamiliarization and estrangement. Self-provocation functions analytically - understanding boundaries of current design imaginaries - and generatively - fostering creative friction to explore alternative possibility spaces. We present two self-provocation strategies and the methods we developed for them, and demonstrate through two case studies how these can be implemented in practice.…