Prototyped the Future of Autonomous Commerce
Alpha Telefónica
Researched and prototyped autonomous commerce systems for Alpha Telefónica, using speculative design and multi-agent economic modeling to explore how transactions could become embedded in environments.
Category / Type
Speculative design; autonomous commerce; multi-agent systems; economic modeling; prototyping; future of automation; urban systems.
Client / Venture / Internal
Client work for Alpha Telefónica, Spain’s first moonshot factory.
Context
Alpha Telefónica explored moonshot opportunities at the edge of technology, business, and society. This work focused on autonomous commerce: a future in which transactions are increasingly handled by agents, devices, infrastructure, and environments rather than solely by people clicking a checkout button.
The project sat at the intersection of research and prototyping. It asked how automated purchasing, ambient transactions, multi-agent behavior, and urban-scale systems could reshape everyday commerce.
Wicked Problem
Commerce is becoming increasingly autonomous.
As transactions move into devices, homes, logistics systems, cities, and software agents, the old model of “a human chooses, clicks, buys” starts to dissolve. The question is no longer just how to speed up checkout. It is how to design commerce when decisions, incentives, and actions are distributed across systems.
That shift creates strategic and design questions: How do people trust systems that transact on their behalf? How do autonomous agents coordinate or compete? How do incentives behave when many economic actors interact? How does automation change domestic life, urban infrastructure, and the rituals around buying, cooking, receiving, and consuming?
The challenge was to make those questions tangible enough for a moonshot team to reason about, critique, and prototype.
Solution
Lucas worked on autonomous commerce research and prototyping for Alpha Telefónica.
The work drew heavily on Daisyworld and multi-agent economic modeling, using agent-based behavior to explore how local decisions can produce larger systemic effects. That frame helped turn commerce into a living system rather than a single transaction flow.
Through speculative design and prototyping, the project explored how future transaction systems might behave when purchasing, logistics, domestic environments, and urban systems become more automated and interconnected.
Related Prototype: Transaction Membrane
A related public prototype, Transaction Membrane, explored the same terrain through an augmented-reality speculative kitchen experience created with W3}RD.
Transaction Membrane imagined a world where transactions move out of screens and into living spaces. The kitchen became the stage for automated food delivery, ambient interfaces, and new relationships between domestic routines and urban infrastructure.
The prototype was featured at Milan Design Week and Dutch Design Week, making the future of automation experiential rather than purely theoretical.
Outcome / Impact
The work gave Alpha Telefónica a speculative and prototyped framework for thinking about autonomous commerce as a system of agents, incentives, environments, and transactions.
Researched autonomous commerce for Spain’s first moonshot factory.
Used Daisyworld-inspired multi-agent economic modeling as a conceptual foundation.
Translated abstract economic and automation questions into prototypes and design artifacts.
Connected autonomous commerce research to related public work on AR kitchens, ambient transactions, food delivery, and urban systems.
Related Transaction Membrane prototype featured at Milan Design Week and Dutch Design Week.
Role / Contribution
Speculative designer, futures researcher, and prototype lead.
Lucas contributed to the research framing, autonomous-commerce concept development, multi-agent systems thinking, and prototyping of future transaction experiences.
Supporting Proof / Artifacts
Alpha Telefónica autonomous commerce research and prototyping.
Daisyworld-inspired multi-agent economic modeling.
Transaction Membrane case study in the Traverse in Space capabilities deck.
Augmented-reality kitchen prototype with W3}RD.
Milan Design Week and Dutch Design Week presentation history.