From the original Star Trek series to the film Minority Report, the technologies and interfaces of the “future” have offered audiences a sense of wonderment and provided a lens to examine current devices. Without sci-fi, would we have had the Motorola flip phone, which is suspiciously similar to Star Trek’s communicators? Would the iPad and Kinect’s successful use of gestural design been possible without the breathtaking control interface in Minority Report?

SciFi and other speculative interfaces can unlock possibilities for new interactions in any product or service. In his workshop on “How to Use Scifi to Create Better Interfaces”, interface design expert Nathan Shedroff will share lessons culled from imaginative interfaces unconstrained from traditional constraints, with examples, and prompts attendees to brainstorm around these lessons to unlock new aspects of their existing projects. Then, attendees will develop their own projects using these inspirations.

The workshop is a rare opportunity to explore interface design at a new level with one of the leading visionaries of user experience design and will be followed up by Nathan’s keynote presentation “Make it So: UX Lessons from Science Fiction”, which traces the lines of influence between sci-fi and reality, and investigates how the depiction of technologies evolve over time, how fictional interfaces influence the real world, and what lessons we can learn through this process.

When he’s not writing books and speaking to audiences around the world, Nathan is the chair of the ground-breaking MBA in Design Strategy at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco.