1. INTRODUCTION

FUTURES DESIGN includes concepts, methods, practices, design productions and related research in which the designing of futures and futures oriented design intersect. In order to do this work, as mentioned in many different Units and Activities in this LEXICON, we need to include words, specialist terms and concepts from other domains and disciplines. We also need to reorient and re-purpose them as design materials in their own right.

Yet, this leaves us partly lodged in a vocabulary of inheritance and possibly entanglement. It’s necessary to make the words we draw on clearer. But it’s also possible to venture further and work to form and fashion a FUTURES DESIGN vocabulary of words and to relate them to the wider discourses of DESIGN FUTURES LITERACIES.

Such words can be seen as a contribution to designing futures language. By this we mean the shaping of design located words, specialist terms, concepts and vocabularies as designs. We also mean that we use design as a making and analysing discipline to work with the identification, specification and application of design centred words to help us work with futures.

2. FUTURES DESIGN AND LITERACIES

The FUEL4DESIGN project offers design learning resources and studies ways we work together to build pedagogies for the future and via design. FUTURES DESIGN needs to develop concepts and related terms or words that make it possible to frame and enact design-centred approaches to learning and working with futures. The ways we design these activities and content, how we enact and perform them, and analyse and communicate them are all part of ON DESIGN FUTURES LITERACIES.

In UNIT 7.2 we looked at how new words may be generated. Such new words are known as neologisms. In that UNIT we provided a number of key ways in which new words are produced. We linked these in what we named the NEOLOGISER.

3. MEETING RADICAL WORDS FOR THE FUTURE

It is challenging to imagine something, especially when the existing words don’t quite convey what you want to say. It’s important to have the right words to ‘name’ concepts/ideas/etc. However, it’s important for us to not just view words as something used for ‘naming’ but realise that when working with radical futures, the act of imagining and naming goes hand in hand.

ACTIVITY #1: CONSIDERING NEW FUTURES DESIGN WORDS (words only)

We have developed a set of these FUTURES DESIGN TERMS that can be taken up in DESIGN FUTURES LITERACIES pedagogy. We call these SURPRISING WORDS FOR THE FUTURE.

1. What do you think you might meet in a list of radical, new futures design words?

2. What do you think you would add to that list (ahead of seeing it)?

3. What might we need such terms for in working with FUTURES DESIGN?

ACTIVITY #2: ENCOUNTERING SURPRISING WORDS FOR THE FUTURE

1. Read SURPRISING FUTURES DESIGN WORDS (Words only)

2. How many of these terms have you heard of?

3. How many of the terms do you think you can define?

4. What items on the list do you not know or understand?

5. Where might you use some of these words?

ACTIVITY #3: DEFINING SURPRISING WORDS FOR THE FUTURE

1. Read SURPRISING FUTURES DESIGN WORDS (Words with definitions).

2. Go through the one line definitions.

3. What do they mean to you?

4. How might they be useful to you?

5. In which ways can you apply them in your ongoing project?

4. MAKING RADICAL WORDS FOR FUTURES DESIGN

We close this unit by turning to ways of making radical words for the future.

ACTIVITY #4: GENERATING SURPRISING WORDS FOR THE FUTURE

1. Add to the SURPRISING FUTURES DESIGN WORDS (Words only)

2. Use the NEOLOGIER if needed.

3. Do also try to add some combinations of words from 50 FUTURES DESIGN WORDS (Words only).

4. You might find it helpful as a prompt to refer to content in the TABLE OF SEMANTIC CATEGORIES (List with words).

5. List your terms.

6. Write one line definitions for each of them.

7. Upload the words and definitions here.

8. Look at other words added by other contributors.

ACTIVITY #5: APPLYING SURPRISING WORDS FOR THE FUTURE

1. What are the different ways you have worked with the surprising words you have generated for FUTURES DESIGN?

2. Have you used them, for example, in sketches, scenarios, or narratives?

3. Please upload such examples and projects, in visual and verbal form, suggesting ways they can be used in design education and research.

Candy, Stuart and Cher Potter, eds. 2019. Design and Futures. Taipei: Tamkang University Press.

Hillgren, P.-A., Lindström, K., Strange, M., Topgaard, R. & Witmer, H. (2020). (Eds). Glossary: Collaborative Future-Making. Malmö: Malmö University.

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