Future Scouting #2

Values-driven futures

Speculative design took form in the early 1990s as designers questioned their role in consumerism’s impact on the planet. They began to consider how to align design with core values.

With interest in designing for the future on the increase, this is an exciting time for designers. But with the time-travelling hype of designing future artefacts, there is a danger the practice’s foundation of values could be forgotten.

If we ignore our values, we may design ourselves into a future that opposes them. And if we ignore the impact of what we design on the environment, we may not get too far into the future anyway.

This is as much of an exciting time for designers as it is a precarious one for all life.

Fortunately, the emergence of life-centred design (also known as ‘environment-centred design’ and ‘planet-centred design’) is expanding our mindset from purely human-centred creation to include consideration of sustainable, economic, environmental, and social solutions.

While designing tools for both life-centred design and speculative design, it occurred to me these two practices could be merged based on their common goal — to create values-driven futures—to keep designing futures grounded in values.

There is no more important time than now to include values-driven thinking in design. And there is no better opportunity to prompt profit-driven businesses to consider life-centred thinking than when they are considering their future strategy and therefore most open to bigger-picture change.

The Future Scouting Toolkit

The toolkit mixes my own experimental tools with others’ and combines life-centred tools (such as those I shared previously in the Holistic Design Toolkit) with speculative design tools to form a rudimentary speculative design process.

The tools cover various stages of speculative design, such as preparing yourself for future scouting, warming up your innovative thinking, finding signals of emerging change, future scenario and world-building, invention optimisation, and sharing.

Experiment with ones that take your interest, or use the tools in order to produce a Future Invention Blueprint that you can share with others for discussion.

The tools

Inside the toolkit are PDF versions and/or links to digital versions of each tool.

Future Scouting Dashboard

Future Scouting aims to maintain the foundation of speculative design by embedding core values within the process.

To prepare yourself for designing values-driven futures, know your own values so you know what to champion in the future. Also, know your assumptions of the future to help empower your own ability to see beyond the probable and your own natural bias.

The dashboard also reminds you to keep the invention within the near future, no further than the next 20 years or so — this keeps your prototype relatable to your audience. The further out in time we try to imagine our own lives, the less our brain recognises ourselves, and the less it cares.

Future Design Mission and Futuresflip

Warm up your innovative thinking with these prompt-based tools for quick ideation and sketching sessions.

Future Design Mission allows you to flip cards to determine a values-based design brief, based on a future technology (nanobots, customisable skin, etc.) and an interaction method (sound, touch, emotion, etc.).

Futuresflip is a ‘digital workshop tool based on The Thing From The Future by Situation Lab’ which randomly generates future scenarios to explore.

IFTF Signal Tracing Tips & Future Scan

The first step in speculative design is finding a signal of emerging change that you can explore. You can find these through data and research analysis, or by using pre-determined prompts. The tip list from the Institute For The Future is short but succinct. The beautiful Future Scan document from the Board of Innovation offers a list of signals, trends and scenarios for a quick start.

Holistic Futures Wheel

The original Futures Wheel was invented by futurist Jerome C. Glenn in 1971 to give structure to brain-storming (recalling what you know about a topic) and mind-mapping (working out relationships between those points). Glenn created Version 2 that segmented the wheel into predetermined sections including cultural, psychological, welfare, technological, educational, political, environmental, and economic. He then created Version 3 to consider time.

The Holistic Futures Wheel is an adaption of Glenn’s Version 2 to be less predetermined — to allow specific variations of emphasis on considerations — by separating the original wheel into just two areas: HUMAN Direct/Indirect results and LIFE Direct/Indirect results.

You can use the wheel to generate ideas for what might happen if your signal evolves into a trend.

Future Location Snapshot and Invention Blueprint

The Location Snapshot helps you generate setting details and mood for the future world that your signal could be a part of. The Invention Blueprint draws your insights together to help you design one future invention.

Inclusivity cards and Product Lifecycle Impact Cards

The product lifecycle cards consist of six sections that follow the entire lifecycle of a product, from where and how Materials are sourced, through the Manufacturing, Supply and Life in Use stages, through to what happens at the Completion of its usable life and the actual Breakdown of its parts back into the natural world.

The Inclusivity Cards prompt consideration for design inclusivity of demographic and sociographic variations such as gender, sexuality, culture, age, body type, ability, personal belief.

Use both of these card sets as a means of optimising your invention to be more life-centred.

Future Invention Map

Sharing back your finds from the future is an important step in the speculative process, as the process’s purpose is to generate thought and discussion.

If you produce the Invention Blueprint, either by using all the tools in order or just some ad hoc, you can upload your invention to the Future Invention Map. The map is capturing inventions from all over the world—no matter how low-fi—to help spread awareness of values-driven design. Also, if we receive enough, we can start assessing how location might affect what we think is possible.

Download the toolkit for full instructions to start exploring values-driven futures, and don’t forget to share back your future finds!

Experiment, evolve, re-share, and have fun.

Damien Lutz is a UX Designer/Researcher, speculative designer, and sci-fi author. If values-driven design resonates with you, follow Damien or feel free to explore his website for more tools and projects.