Designing for tomorrows

Transcript

1. Designing for tomorrows
2. (or why we can’t empathise our way out of this)
3. The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
4. What I’m not here to talk about • Futurism or Futurology • Predictions • ‘the future’ • Big Data • Data Mining • AI, AR or VR • Machine Learning • Autonomous vehicles • Smart Industry 4.0 (nor4.1 nor 5.0) • Blockchain • ‘Like Uber but for…’ • Voice Recognition • Chatbots • Personalisation • Robotics • IoT • Quantum Computing • Deep Learning • Technological Unemployment • Actionable Analytics • Tiny housing • Digital health
5. What we need to talk about Designers are active, influential change agents who work in a design space that includes interpersonal dimensions. Nigel Cross, Design Thinking: Understanding How Designers Think and Work 5
6. Taking the long view Design’s influence extends beyond technology and products, communication and experiences. Design influences what is yet to be created. 6
7. We have our talent, our skills and our tools • Design research • Design strategy • Design thinking • Design management • Design artefacts • Design futures • Design fiction 7
8. Long on buzzwords Short on expertise
9. And we have challenges Getting a shared language and understanding around design and business and organisations and people is one thing. Introducing people to futures-focused theories, strategy and methods is quite another. 9
10. These are not just challenges for design 10
11. We all face the challenge of designing for something that can only be imagined and anticipated 11
12. used futures the power of the past the future as we’ve been told it will be futures we disown
13. flat-pack futures the power of today like it is now, but more…
14. SEPs BAU
15. Post-growth, post-human reality check
18. Chinese laborers extract sand from dirt along the river bank March 19, 2006 on the outskirts of Beijing, China. The sand that they mine will be used to build new houses. Because the sand found in deserts often isn't suitable for making concrete, miners strip sand from riverbeds and beaches. Usable sand is a finite resource. (Guang Niu/Getty Images)
19. Sand is the thing that our cities are made out of... Every concrete building that you see is basically just a huge pile of sand glued together with cement. All the roads that connect all those buildings — also made of sand. All the windows in those buildings are made from sand. The silicon that powers your computers, your cell phones, the chips in your electronics, that's also from sand. So basically, without sand, we have no modern civilization. Vince Beiser (https://vincebeiser.com/articles/sand-crisis/)
21. global overshoot what does this mean for design? and designing for human and non- human life forms?
23. No, we really can’t emapthise our way out of this
24. We all face the challenge of designing for something that can only be imagined and anticipated 24
25. alternative futures
27. Designing with a future focus needs a particular disposition • Short-term vs long-term focus of client and outcome or solution • Quality and role of inputs, especially in scenario development • Ability to imagine alternative futures and the means to visualise them 27
28. “ . . . the idea of the future being different from the present is so repugnant to our conventional modes of thought and behavior that we, most of us, offer a great resistance to acting on it in practice.” John Maynard Keynes, 1937
29. What can be imagined can be created 29
30. What can be imagined can be created 30
31. What can be imagined can be created 31
34. Avoiding business as usual • Foresight tools and processes before strategic positioning or planning or design • Use different – longer – time horizons • Ask better questions: not what are we designing but why, and what impact it will have • Encourage multiple perspectives • Foster divergent thinking
35. Be pragmatic Have a view and hold it lightly • There is no ‘one’ defined future – but there are preferred, plausible and possible futures • Things change, frequently • Complexity is the ‘new normal’ • No one person is going to see the whole picture by themselves
36. Don’t assume Look back at trend reports from 2009 • What was a priority then may not be a priority now • What is a priority today may not be a priority – or even necessary – in 5 years • Not everything happened that was predicted • Other things happened that weren’t predicted • top-down and bottom-up must work together
37. THE FUTURE IS THERE... LOOKING BACK AT US. TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF THE FICTION WE WILL HAVE BECOME. William Gibson Pattern Recognition
38. THANK YOU @incognitosum