Foresight and Forecasts: Participation in a Welfare Technology Innovation Project

In predicting areas of growth, public innovation projects may rely on optimistic visions of technology still in development as a way of ensuring novelty for funding. This paper explores what happens when forecasts of robotic technology meets the practice of sterile supply in a preliminary stage of an ongoing project. We examine the nature of participation in design on three levels: in the sterilization ward, this particular project and society in general. From our case, we suggest that while innovation projects proceeding from a certain technological
perspective can succeed at building excitement, the most sustainable innovation stems from the dialogical interaction between practitioner foresight and societal
forecasting, requiring continued development of participatory design as it moves into new contexts.