Alt(ernate) CHI: Using Alternate History Artifacts in Research

The CHI community continually looks to new horizons as we strive to innovate, and central amongst our goals should be a socio-technical future that is demonstrably better than the past. Accordingly, whilst we may look to the past to reflect on our own trajectories as a field, there remains unfulfilled potential in using the lens of history to its fullest capacity. We consider there are opportunities to facilitate research through design not only using our own histories but histories which run counter to our reality. In this paper, we call for the use of alternate histories as provocative design resources in HCI and CSCW research with participants, showing how we leveraged alternate history to explore contemporary matters around public service media and presenting guidance for other researchers to use this approach.