Futures worth wanting
How can designers be better equipped at designing responsibly considered futures?
I’m currently in a stage of what can be described as the research equivalent to window shopping. It’s an important divergent stage of exploration, and as enjoyable as it is to spiral down the rabbit hole of new theory, amazing thinkers and the cool projects — I sense that I am starting to lose sight of what I original set out to do. So I’m writing this as a way to:
- remind and reconfigure myself to my research proposal* and,
- share what it is that I’m doing in hopefully an accessible, non-scholarly way.**
*My direction and areas of focus will inevitably evolve as this progresses, but for the time being, this is where I’m at
**References will be left out for the sake of such (and to save me time writing), but feel free to reach out if you do want to find out more
The gist of it
I am proposing a new approach to Transition-directed visioning that incorporates moral responsiveness to human and non-human values. This will better equip designers and those they engage with to better imagine alternative ways of existing and pave the way for sustainable change.
For design to engage effectively and responsibly with the unknown and deal with the complexity of our world, it needs new methodology and tools.
“Designing for sustainability not only requires the redesign of our habits, lifestyles and practices, but also the way we think about design”
— Daniel Christian Wahl & Seaton Baxter
I see an opportunity for such at the intersection of three fields:
- Transition Design,
- Ethnographic Experiential Futures, and
- Value Sensitive Design
Somewhere in middle of these, I believe is a place for a contribution to how we can think about and design more sustainable and inclusive futures.
Visions for Transition
Transition Design promotes design-led transition towards more sustainable futures. This is an emerging result of design’s evolving responsibilities — beyond an industry that services the market, to a field of theory and practice that directly challenges the status quo of our existence. Transition Design calls for re-imagining the ways in which we as a society live.
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Central to this approach is the use of visions. Transition Design, and design futures argues that design in its current form is very short-sighted, and in order to create more sustainable futures, we must first think further ahead — bypassing the restrictions of the present, and envision scenarios that we consider desirable to transition towards. The creation of compelling future visions acts as both a motivator and ‘north star’ for change, as well as a way to evaluate how well the process of transition occurs.
Transition Design serves as the wider context in where my research sits. Visions is the key area of focus for me, but is just one of the four key pillars of the approach. The other three of which I will save for a future post.
So how do we envision futures?
Ethnographic Experiential Futures (or EXF for a hip, designer acronym), is an approach to participatory futuring. EXF uses design as a material practice to immerse people within speculations of the future and facilitate a deeper level engagement. This encourages a greater level of understanding of the ideas expressed to generate deeper thought and discussion.
This serves in the context of my research as the way designers and those engaged with the act of designing (which is all of us), can more easily imagine, prototype and evaluate futures scenarios. If a picture speaks a thousand words, what could an object, or an entire space do?
My Honours work is an example of an experiential future, taking form in product design. In this project, I was not proposing visions of desirable futures (as Transition Design would), but rather exploring and prompting discussion of possible futures, based on the emerging technology of lab-grown meat.
The nature of participatory futuring is democratic — to invite the variety of perspectives and knowledge within stakeholders, both direct and indirect, human and non-human. After all, we live in a complex world where everything is interconnected — hence the wickedness of the wicked problem that is creating a sustainable and inclusive world. In essence, I want to use design as a tool to facilitate deeper engagement with the future and to address the inevitable conflicts which would arise when we consider the complexity of determining what futures are worth transitioning towards.
Moral responsiveness and values
Design is an inherently political act. Political not in the sense of governance, but in that it embodies values. A designer brings with them to everything they design, a set of personal values. Everyone involved in designing something has a set of values. A design project has values, represented as goals and objectives. The design itself, when released into the world, then embodies these values and in turn affects the values of those who come across it, both directly and indirectly. Because of this, ignoring values within the design process would be irresponsible. But let’s not get too deep into a discussion of ethics just yet.
Designing visions of the future, brings with it preferences, norms, beliefs and ideals which affect the decisions we make about what we define as desirable. This becomes even more important when we think at the scale of societal transition.
In conventional design, the discussion of ethics has generally been avoided. I can’t recall a single lesson during my undergrad days, or any projects in my industry experience where ethics was taught or discussed at the level of seriousness that it deserves. Ethics in design, for the most part is not made very explicit within the process. I suspect that this is because this kind of philosophical thinking is never resolved and designers like things to be resolved. Ironically we also like to say that a design is never complete or perfect.
There is thus an urgency for design when we start to consider its influence at the level of policy, social structures and the examination of the very ways in which we exist, to be more sensitive to values. Design needs to be more comfortable with prompting and facilitating moral conversations and negotiations to determine what futures we want.
Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is an approach to design which attempts to embed an attention to values within the process. VSD uses a methodology which place values at the forefront of the process — attempting to make the values of those involved explicit and resolve any conflicts which arise. It currently has a niche discourse in human-computer interaction, but shows potential to be applied across other fields of design.
This is the starting point for where new methodology and tools can arise to promote value sensitive thinking in the design of experiential futures, within the context of Transition Design.
With the three areas of theory and practice I am looking at, there’s a bit of an Inception-esque level of thinking. I hope when I awake from this dream, designers will be better equipped to imagine and facilitate imagination of more sustainable futures. In a way that is more inclusive and accessible to understanding at a deeper level. As well as being more considerate of the values which designs embody and promote.
“If design is going to begin closing the gap between its present and a greater future, the typical designer will be required to stretch a little more intellectually”
— Bruce and Stephanie Tharp
