Proactively exploring design futures: from signal scanning to materialized worlds
During my journey of rethinking and re-evaluating the present, I have come to understand that the future is complex, adaptable, non-linear and cannot be precisely predicted.
My initial encounter with Design Futures topic through Masters in Service Design that I am currently pursuing at the University of the Arts London. My learning from the first interaction was “The future cannot be predicted because the future does not exist” and also “The future cannot be predicted but alternative futures can and should be forecasted.” (Dator, Jim). However, it is crucial to anticipate and forecast alternative futures, as highlighted by Jim Dator. In the balance between the unpredictable nature of the future and the possibility of forecasting, my Design Futures course work group has developed a future scenario centered around a system with limited carbon footprint for businesses and individuals on online data of digital devices in UK that constituted by the government. This system focuses on regulating daily online interactions, future business plans, apps, servers, and services. Implemented by the government, it seeks to foster sustainable development and mitigate the environmental impact of online data. Moreover, it offers a range of services and support to both businesses and individuals, encouraging a shift towards a more eco-friendly and responsible approach.
The briefly described future scenario is the result of a comprehensive process that involved signal and trend scanning, world-building practices, collecting and articulating secondary sources, as well as conducting primary research, tests, prototyping, and iterations. Throughout this project, I have acquired numerous skills and integrated new methods into my practice, enriching my knowledge of future building.
Among all the learnings I gained, the ones that had the most significant impact on me were those that enhanced my analytical and prototyping-testing skills while helping me define my role as a graphic designer, creative thinker, and service designer.
Creative thinking through analysis
Finding future: Horizon Scanning
The final idea we developed during the project has a rich and well-defined background. It is important to note that understanding the future through weak signals is a complex and non-linear process. To initiate our exploration, we conducted an extensive and open-ended horizon scanning, which involved analyzing over 95 articles, news pieces, papers, and global events. To make sense of the vast amount of information gathered, we did affinity mapping. This method allowed us to analyze the interconnections and overlaps among the weak signals and trends and identify multiple clusters of actions. As one of those clusters, the final project initially began by identifying two weak signals:
Dumb phones are on the rise in the U.S. as Gen Z looks to limit screen time. (Mays, 2023)
An increasing trend among the GenZ population to use dumb (old) phones on purpose in an effort to reduce their screen time and dependence on technology. It indicates an increasing consciousness and desire to balance technology use with personal wellbeing.
and
Welcome to your soon to be new additional passport! Yes, soon you will be able to remain at home and under the new Climate Personal Allowance Carbon Passport, collect carbon credits! (Simply D’elite, Climate Carbon Passport)
The signs of the damaging effects of carbon emissions on the environment which is one of the main reasons for increase in sea levels, erratic weather conditions and increase in health issues.
These signals provided us a starting point for envisioning alternative futures. From there, we generated a series of “what if” questions, exploring the possibilities in the following order:
→ What if using digital devices is out of fashion completely?
→ What if we wouldn’t need physical devices anymore?
→ What if you get points/credits for being eco-friendly?
→ What if digital interactions don’t cause carbon footprint anymore?
→ What if there are shared digital devices instead of individual devices?
→ What if there are shared screen interactions instead of individual devices?
→ What if the government imposed a carbon usage limit on tech devices?
Personally, I find critical thinking more challenging than creative thinking, particularly when it comes to navigating the complexities of decision-making between preferable futures, utopias, and dystopias. I have included some methods of thinking and analysis into my practice with the learnings through Design Futures topic.
I got introduced a thinking methods by Tobias Revell during his speech. He mentioned Ziauddin Sardar and John A. Sweeney’s Menagerie of Postnormal Potentialities (Sardar & Sweeney, 2021) which are black elephant, black jellyfish and black swan. The black elephant stands for known known which is the well known but no one wants to address; the black jellyfish stands for the unknown known which is an event or phenomenon that have the potential of going post normal by escalating rapidly; the black swan stands for unknown unknown which means ‘outliers’, things totally outside and way beyond our observations.
I used this method of thinking to categorize the mentioned what if questions and to see where they locate in the diagram of future making.
I also learned that future making is not being utopian and creating seamless tech dependent worlds. The uninvented and perfect technologies doesn’t actually locate anywhere or spark tangible debates because of it’s unimaginable nature. As it’s mentioned on Speculative Everything book, “…usually feature perfect worlds for perfect people interacting perfectly with perfect technologies.” (Dunne & Raby, 2014) with uninvented technology dependent futures look a lot like black swan’y or black mirror’y.
I took an exploratory and iterative approach to understand the future making level and balance for what if questions through materialised world building.
Finding future: Diegetic discovery
The initial stages of the final project demanded the application of creative thinking techniques, specifically in the form of secondary research and horizon scanning. This involved imaginative practices to envision different worlds, reflecting present trends to the future and articulating signals to imagine a future.
Lectures and readings provided valuable insights into reflecting on and reimagining the future through materialised world building and diegetic objects to explore and imagine various worlds. Personally, I consistently encountered challenges in bridging the gap between the identified signals and the process of world building. I challenged myself to improve my skills in world building and articulation. To practice, I engaged in critical analysis of future dynamics and contemplated potential future ecosystems using diegetic objects, as demonstrated in the example below:
This activity helped me thinking in larger scale to understand the world of the signals while seeing the smaller interactions. I diversified my ecosystem building by including intentional and unintentional impacts of services and objects which helped me later on prototyping, showroom creation and impact analysis.
Critical thinking through research
Analysing future: Signal and feedback application
At the beginning of the project, I supported the world building and diegetic discovery activities with my learnings on articulating signals and reflecting them to future making. I got introduced to the PPPP (Probable / Plausible / Possible / Preferable) diagram(Dunne & Raby, 2014) via Speculative Everything book which illustrates possible futures and different levels of likelihood of the initiated future scenario. I adopted this diagram and used as a tool to see where my discoveries stand throughout the project building.
I would like to take a step back to show the early discoveries before the final project idea to showcase our learning through our failures.
At the beginning of the weak signal scanning one of the cluster of signals sparked some interesting ideas that mainly started to shape from Unicef’s Fair Start Model (Unicef) and Carter Dillard’s Women without kids (Warrington, 2023) podcast talk. The idea of Fair Start for Babies and shifted perspective from human rights to unborn rights was interesting enough to excite us. At first we started articulating the weak signals and created our speculative, fictional world by a quick ideation session which placed us outside of the given diagram. We had parenting license, qualification exams, “what would you like from your parents” questionnaire for the unborn and more as it is shown below:
When we started testing with our diegetic prototypes, the fictional future received some critical feedback and raised some ethical questions such as
— What a good parent is?
— Is it preferable for the unborn, parents or the society?
— Is it adding discrimination between class differences?
— Reproduction is one of the human rights, limiting it doesn’t sound right
Due to our limited understanding of how to effectively reflect on signals and incorporate feedback into our process, we encountered a significant setback. Our deficiency in iteration and articulation skills led us to rely on existing knowledge and perspectives rather than generating innovative ideas, fresh insights and exploring new possibilities.
In the end, we found ourselves in a deadend as we discovered that our envisioned service was already being implemented in multiple countries through various approaches. Our final service was described as follows:
Unborns have access to quality access to quality education, clean water, shelter, healthcare, nutritious food and safe environment that enables them to start the life from the same level to grow, learn, and thrive.
This failure served us as a powerful realization that the future is inherently unpredictable, subject to questioning, criticism, and provocation. Rather than being discouraged by received feedback, we should have embraced an iterative and critical approach.
By adopting an iterative mindset, we could have viewed it as an opportunity to gather insights, challenge assumptions, and push the boundaries further, instead of perceiving this as a setback. This realization highlights the importance of continuously refining and reimagining our ideas, being open to feedback, and being critical to the received feedback.
Analysing future: Prototyping, testing and iteration
Once we had gained valuable insights from our testing across various topics, we proceeded to test our final project. Throughout this process, one of the key learnings I acquired was the significance of testing and understanding the different methods of testing.
I firmly believe that being aware of the testing goal and the questions we seek to answer is just as crucial as the testing itself. Each testing phase serves a distinct purpose, and it is important to recognize that not every testing exercise directly represents the final service. By aligning our testing objectives with specific goals, we were able to extract relevant feedback and insights. We approached testing as an opportunity to refine and iterate, allowing us to fine-tune our concepts and ensure they effectively addressed user needs.
Testing #1: Provoking alternative thinking
During the initial stages of our final project, we conducted a testing exercise aimed at provoking alternative thinking. In this particular test, we envisioned an alternative future where individual mobile phones were nonexistent. Instead, the only means of accessing mobile phone interaction was through a “vending machine of phones".
It is important to note that this extreme and fictional scenario was not intended to be practically applicable in real-life situations. Rather, its purpose was to stimulate innovative and imaginative thinking, encouraging us to explore unconventional ideas and challenge established norms. Leaving a hanging prototype of a materialised alternative future and being on the observer role brings a valuable wider spectrum of ideas and perspectives.
By presenting this thought-provoking scenario, we heard destructive and constructive feedback, some privacy worries and positive reactions. While this particular scenario may not be feasible in reality, it opened the door to exploring alternative approaches to mobile phone interactions and prompted us to consider different ways of designing for future services.
Testing #2: Demographics and biases
As the purpose of testing methods changes the application of feedback changes as well. It becomes crucial to consider what feedback to apply, whose comments to prioritize, and under what circumstances. Additionally, the preferability of the testing itself can affect the reactions and the feedback received.
During this stage of testing, we conducted a visit to Samsung KX, where we specifically targeted individuals in the game room who were engaged in gaming activities on curved large screens. Our rationale behind this selection was that this particular demographic is more likely to contribute to higher CO2 emissions. We made the assumption that individuals who are deeply immersed in gamer culture and spend several hours online engaging in high-resolution live gaming may be reluctant to change their habits willingly. Introducing a regulation aimed at reducing CO2 emissions in their daily online interactions might not be initially well-received by this group. We recognized the potential biases inherent in our selection of the gaming demographic. Our previous testing learnings helped us to be mindful on the application of the need to mitigate any skewed perspectives that may arise as a result.
Testing #3: Expert testing
I believe expert testing is the most beneficial and personally, the most intimidating method of testing for me. Engaging with subject matter experts allowed us to get deeper technical, market-based, and product-oriented answers. The collected answers and perspective of these experts helped us improving the service we were developing.
During our visit to Samsung KX, we had the valuable opportunity to conduct expert testing with tech professionals. This allowed us to ask specific questions about Samsung’s future CO2 reduction initiatives while closely observing their reactions. The insights gained from these discussions were invaluable in shaping our understanding of the project’s positioning on the previously mentioned PPPP diagram.
Testing #2: Literal service testing
As we progressed with the collection of reactions and information, our testing approach shifted from provoking alternative thinking to a more focused and probable testing method: literal service testing.
One significant advantage of this method of testing is that it allows us to showcase a complete system to gather more elevated and in-depth feedback. As Marion Lagedamont emphasized in one of her speeches, the level of viewer engagement changes depending on the completeness of the prototype. By presenting a nearly completed project, viewers are almost led to think more coherently and provide more constructive feedback focused on improvement.
In our case we got the chance of targeting two testing methods and showcasing our literal service testing to experts at Government Digital Services. All of the received feedback was more accurate, technical and articulate feedback than immediate reaction feedback and helped us defining elevation points for our project.
In summary, having an awareness of different testing approaches and methods proved invaluable in fostering a critical mindset during our iterations and decision-making processes. The setback we encountered during our previous project served as a valuable lesson, teaching us the importance of being critical of feedback and effectively articulating our iterations.
The point of future making and critical thinking
I find it challenging to fully grasp the function and positioning of design futures and future making. However, my learning journey has taught me that design futures is not about problem-solving or making concrete predictions, but rather about critically examining and speculating on possible futures. I am convinced design futures is leading imaginations and provoking thoughts while materializing alternative futures. It’s a process that involves creating spaces and prototypes to inspire viewers to imagine different possibilities. One particular blog post by Tobias Revell has been a great source of inspiration for me;
Remember that the point of speculative practice is not about making predictions or even defining preferable futures but in mapping out the space of possibility so that we can think critically about the choices we make today. (Revell, 2022)
The intangible nature of design futures arises from the contrast between the present and the future,which often creates vagueness in every future-facing project. In a conversation between Tobias Revell and Julian Bleecker on one of the Near Future Laboratory podcasts (Bleecker, 2022), the intangible nature of design futures is aptly explained as “planting seeds in a garden that you will not see growing.”
As a service designer, I have discovered my role in articulating the tangible aspects of future making. This tangibility is achieved through prototypes, research, feedback, and addressing important questions such as: What does innovative seeing entail? What changes are necessary? How do we get there? What does it look like and how does it work? What do we need? This process is almost like creating a set of tools for an alternative future, allowing us to navigate and shape the path forward.
Reference list
Bleecker, J., 2022. No46 — Futures, Windermere Tapes Box 050, Tape 01 with Tobias Revell. Near Future Laboratory podcasts. [Podcast]. [Accessed 18 May 2023]. Available from: https://open.spotify.com/episode/28H90ZS5GTSUPKkYKMXNgX?si=60DD_PENQhqyS4F0GHQTUA.
Brooker, C. (no date) ‘Black Mirror’. Netflix.
Dator, J. (no date) WHAT FUTURES STUDIES IS, AND IS NOT. rep. Available at: https://www.benlandau.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Dator-What-FS-is.pdf.
Dunne, A. and Raby, F. (2014) ‘Chapter 2 — A Map of Reality’, in Speculative everything: Design, fiction, and Social Dreaming. S.l.: MIT, p. 28.
Every child has a fair start in life (no date) UNICEF Latin America and Caribbean. Available at: https://www.unicef.org/lac/en/every-child-has-fair-start-life (Accessed: 19 May 2023).
Lagedamont, M,(2023) in. London.
Mays, L. (2023) Dumb phones are on the rise in the U.S. as Gen Z looks to limit screen time, 29 March. Available at: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/29/dumb-phones-are-on-the-rise-in-the-us-as-gen-z-limits-screen-time.html.
Nova, N. and Roszkowska, M. (2021) in Bestiary of the anthropocene hybrid plants, animals, minerals, fungi ..Eindhoven: Onomatopee, p. 103.
Revell, T. (no date) ‘Tobias Revell’, in. London.
Revell, T. (2022) ‘BOX086: AN ARGUMENT FOR DREAD’, The Bounding Box, 14 December. Available at: https://blog.tobiasrevell.com/tag/utopia/ (Accessed: 17 May 2023).
Sardar, Z. and Sweeney, J.A. (2021) ‘Futures Menagerie’, 30 June. Available at: https://www.avenear.com/blog/futures-menagerie (Accessed: 17 May 2023).
‘Climate Carbon Passport’ (no date). Available at: https://simplydelite.org/climate-carbon-passport/.
Warrington, R., 2023. Questioning Our Proactive Ethics with Carter Dillard. Women without kids. [Podcast]. [Accessed 11 May 2023]. Available from: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5GZij3vo90vCSrub35ELJs?si=d6c1eb402555490c.
