Branching Foresight - A Novel Interaction Concept for AI-generated Scenario Exploration

Climate anxiety often makes the future feel distant and overwhelming. We present Branching Foresight, a self-guided scenario tool that helps individuals explore climate futures through AI-generated scenarios framed as positive, neutral, and challenging trajectories. We position the system as a coping and reflective support tool, where each scenario is enriched with imagery, a conversational coach, and reflection cards. In a single-session study (N = 30), we measured climate transilience, climate-related emotions, creativity support, and user experience, complemented by telemetry and interviews. Results suggest within-subject pre-post improvements in transilience and reductions in negative emotions, with participants reporting strong creativity support and positive experience. As this evidence is single-session and non-comparative, it should be interpreted as initial indications of short-term change rather than superiority over alternative approaches. Qualitative feedback highlighted how the scenarios, imagery, and dialogue made climate futures more concrete and actionable. Our contributions are: (1) an interaction prototype for AI-mediated scenario exploration, (2) initial within-condition pre-post evidence of short-term improvements in perceived coping capacity and transilience during a self-guided session, and (3) design implications for creativity-supportive human-AI interaction in scenario planning.