1. INTRODUCTION

FUTURES DESIGN needs designers to shift from conventional ways of working and established disciplinary design practices and to shape alternate, emergent and surprising futures by design. How can visualisation tools and techniques be used for FUTURES DESIGN?

Visualisation tools and techniques are basic and fundamental ways of working for designers. The various disciplines within design use these tools and techniques differently. For instance, designers often work with scenarios, yet, the way they’re used within Service Design can be different from their use within Interaction Design. Futures Design scenarios are located in times beyond the here-and-now or are brought back to current times from future settings and events.

2. DESIGN TOOLS AND FUTURES DESIGN COMMUNICATION

As designers, we take up tools and deploy methods when we work with futures. It’s important to be aware of what tools contain as devices for making and shaping futures. We might say they ‘hold in them’ the potential of what we can call ‘affordances for the future’, or the possibility or potentiality of being able to carry visually what we have in our minds and hands, drawings and artifacts, projected processes or proposed narratives.

ACTIVITY #1: YOUR VOCABULARY OF VISUAL TOOLS

1. What are the existing FUTURES DESIGN related tools and methods you’re familiar with? Make a list.

2. Pick 3 tools and write a short description by answering in one line each question:

• Name of the tool and what it allows one to do?
• How does it work with futures; in terms of sketching, exploring, proposing etc?
• Where is it used and why?

3. Now you have three tools with short descriptions. Go to each description and highlight the main words you’ve used to describe each tool. Have you used a specific word you’ve not used for another tool? For example, maybe you used the word ‘strategic’ for one tool but ‘explorative’ for another tool.

4. Make a table with three columns, one for each tool. Write the highlighted words from 3 above in corresponding columns.

5. Looking at your table, compare the words across the tools. What is the significance of these words? Answer the following:

• Do they tell you about where the tools have actually come from? For example, is there a connection with existing disciplinary areas such as trend analysis, marketing, business or strategic planning?
• Do they make clear the context in which you should use them? For example, some tools are only for the design phase while others are for the execution phase.
• How near or far off is this future?
• Is there any indication of what kind of future they support you to create?

3. CONNECTING TOOLS, WORD AND IMAGES FOR FUTURES

Making connections between what is being visualised and how we articulate it verbally is central to communicating our design to others and with others.

ACTIVITY #2: DESCRIBING AND EXPLAINING YOUR IMAGE

1. Consult the SEMANTIC CATEGORIES (List with words) and look up its Category called Methods.
Which of the terms listed here relates to the list of tools and their characteristics and uses? Add these terms to your earlier list.

2. Choose your current favourite design too. Use it to generate a visualisation of an issue in the current world that you see as needing a future vision. Annotate your visualisation with futures related words as far as possible. Give it a title.

3. Write 200 words on what the toll you have chosen makes it possible for you to communicate. Pay close attention to the list of terms on Methods in the SEMANTIC CATEGORIES (List with words) and especially how you use verbs.

What can you show and what do you say through the visualisation. Explain this in words. Do you need to change anything about your image? Do so as needed to make the text and image work well together.

4. DRAWING FORTH VERBAL-VISUAL FUTURES

Finding out how to realise, or materialise or make tangible in some way or another, your futures design work depends on how you are able to present it through a mix of verbal and visual communication, and their connection to other senses and media. 

ACTIVITY #3: DRAWING OUT

1. Go back to the table of tools and methods with words. Out of the three tools, pick one tool for this activity, preferably the one you’re more familiar with.

2. What can you do with this tool? What does it allow you to do?

3. Now think about this tool’s limitations. What are the things you’d like to do that these tools don’t allow? For example, maybe the tool allows you to visualise ‘future’ as a singular linear thing, one that extends from the present into one directional future, instead of extending into multiple or alternative futures. Make a list of such wishes.

4. Consult the 50 FUTURES DESIGN WORDS (Words only). If you’re unfamiliar with any words, refer to 50 FUTURES DESIGN WORDS (With definitions).

5. Are there any words that you’d like to include in your wishes? Update your list.

6. Looking at your list of wishes, how can you modify the existing tools? What is one change you’d like to make? What does it look like?

7. Draw the existing tool and highlight your change/notes with a coloured pen.

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

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