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CASE STUDY
Eterna Haven
Consumption Futures · Team foresight and experiential project
My role
I collaborated on the team project and performed the bodyguard role at the boundary between its two worlds. My written reflection discusses the experience’s central question: who has the ability to exit digital consumption?
Making unequal access to a quiet future tangible
A set of consumption scenarios became an experience with a difficult threshold. Participants first encountered an overloaded environment of advertising, production pressure, and repeated failure. A quieter world, Eterna Haven, appeared within reach, but access was restricted. By giving two contrasting futures a shared physical setting, the team turned a broad question about consumption into an immediate encounter with exclusion. The project explored how access, sensory design, and interaction rules could make the inequalities within a future scenario felt.
What this case covers
Making unequal access to a quiet future tangible
Build contrasting possibilities
A two-by-two scenario framework explored online versus offline conditions and the degree of consumer-forward orientation. Four scenarios established possibilities for discussion.
The team’s experience-building framework: process, value, people, and proposed observation prompts. Source: Eterna Haven foresight report, physical p. 43.
First view
Second view
The scenarios offered different ways to consider the future of consumption. Moving into an experience required another decision: which relationships would be clearest when people encountered them physically? The team brought two extreme futures into the same space. Participants could experience the overloaded world while knowing that a calmer alternative existed nearby. This spatial relationship made access to the alternative a central part of the scenario, rather than leaving the two futures as separate stories to read.
Source: Eterna Haven foresight report, physical pp. 13, 15–34, and 40–43.
Use the threshold as an interaction
Participants moved through Overload before encountering the entry conditions for Eterna Haven. My bodyguard role blocked most people from crossing the boundary.
Team experience roles. Yang Yi performed the bodyguard at the threshold. Source: Eterna Haven foresight report, physical p. 44.
First view
Second view
The team distributed responsibilities across the experience: a qualification interview, a sales interaction, production pressure in the overloaded zone, and controlled entry between the worlds. These roles made exclusion part of the participant’s route through the space. The boundary was essential to the inquiry. If everyone could move immediately into the quiet zone, the contrast would communicate different atmospheres but lose the question of who could afford or qualify to leave digital consumption behind.
Source: Eterna Haven foresight report, physical pp. 40–44; original reflection “Where It All Comes Together,” signed By Yang YI.
Make pressure persist through the system
Overlapping advertisements, a looping false window, and a performance tracker sustained the overloaded environment. The AI Work Station replied “Sorry, too slow.” regardless of the input.
The team’s performance tracker and AI Work Station, designed to sustain pressure within Overload. Source: Eterna Haven foresight report, physical p. 48.
First view
Second view
A rushed submission reset the workstation. The failure was deliberately built into the experience, making individual effort insufficient to satisfy the system. Meanwhile, the tracker scored emotion, gratitude, and output. Two speakers layered advertising, and glimpses of Eterna Haven appeared alongside protest materials. The different media reinforced the same dilemma: the invitation to escape remained visible while the surrounding system continued to demand performance.
Source: Eterna Haven foresight report, physical pp. 45–48. Posters identified in report p. 46 were generated with Canva AI.
Read the response with care
The report reflects on participants’ discomfort after experiencing the inequality in the installation. These observations informed the team’s interpretation of the work.
First view
Second view
The experience toolkit brought activities, sensory elements, materials, flow, rehearsal, and observation intentions into a common structure. The completed report then connected audience responses to the embodied experience of unfairness. The project’s contribution lies in the designed encounter itself: a future becomes something a participant must navigate, including the rules that determine whether an appealing alternative is available to them.
Source: Eterna Haven foresight report, physical pp. 43 and 50–51.