1. WHY IT MATTERS TO MAP WORDS

Words are not neutral, abstract items alone. They live in the world and they garner meaning because we ascribe it to them through our human ingenuity, curiosity and pragmatism. Words work. They have to perform, they exist communicatively through their activation in context, purpose and exchange. They also occur in relation to other terms, parts of speech and the wider exchanges, genres and discourses that they inform and are informed by. 

In Design education and research our focus is often not on words themselves. They serve to support our design making and shaping, our process of using a multiple of media and means, working with participants and delivering services and systems in which products and interactions are materialised. Yet, words are all over design, as it were. 

We use them to describe our design ideas, processes and artifacts. We label our work with them, we try to come up with new brand names and names for concepts that arise though the vet processes of reaching for something ahead of now, not just new as replacement, but to be placed in a context, time and need and use. And yet words are also connected to slippery and ephemeral things and activities. We need to use more words to arrive at less words. 

Words also need ‘mapping’. We all do this in our everyday personal, professional and especially creative  use of language. It’s central to our being language animals. We use words to refer to correspondences between word and item or object or process, but we also use language for abstract ideas and concepts. We need to see relations between the meanings words carry and between the words themselves as synonyms  (alike, having affinities) or antonyms (opposites) or distinctly different.

In this unit you will work with what DESIGN WORDS FOR THE FUTURE (words only). This is a collection of key ‘design-facing’ terms that are central to the F4D project. They are also central to the emerging domain of FUTURES DESIGN (alongside for example others like Service  Design or Interaction Design).

2. IDENTIFYING YOUR OWN PURPOSE

In this unit you will engage in a number of mapping activities. The aim is that in the activities below you relate to work you are currently doing as a Master’s student in a design studio/project or as part of a PhD. 

ACTIVITY #1: DESCRIBING YOUR OWN PROJECT/TASK

1. Briefly describe to yourself what you are working on.

2. What is it about?

3. What does it aim to achieve?

It’s fine if it is in an early phase of going through a re-vision of reconsideration, or is at the point of drawing together a stretch of work – as design, through designing, in analysis – or consolidating a large and long process with a presentation/analysis.

3. ESTABLISHING PARAMETERS

We now move on to some of the key terms we have identified to help us draw some of the main boundaries or parameters into which we can place the many words included in this LEXICON.

ACTIVITY #2: MAKING AN OUTLINE

1. Print out FRAMES 4 FUTURES (Frames filled) and read through the text.

2. These are terms that we have identified to help us draw some of the main boundaries or parameters into which we can place the many words included in this LEXICON.

3. Pay special attention to the definitions: CONTEXT, CONDITIONS, COMPLEXITY, CULTURES.

4. ASSEMBLING WORDS

Next, it’s time to assemble words that relate to design futures. 

ACTIVITY #3: CUT AND PLACE

1. Print out 50 FUTURES DESIGN WORDS (Words only).

2. Read through the list quickly.

3. Cut out each of the words.

4. Place the words face up on the table.

5. MAPPING WORDS

We now start a phase of the Unit where you place these words onto the WORD-O-MAP. You now have several actions to perform in order to position words in relation to the four terms provided.

ACTIVITY #4:  MOVE

1. Print the WORD-O-MAP.

2. Remind yourself what the 4 main terms mean. Consult FRAMES 4 FUTURES (Frames filled) if needed for their definitions.

3. Select a number of cut out words. Place them on the WORD-O-MAP.

4. Move them around in relation to the 4 terms.

5. How near or far do you place them to the corners and to one another?

6. Identify which of these words relates to your project. (Just choose a few words even if you’re not sure or ready to be so specific).

7. Repeat with other words, trying as many as you need.

ACTIVITY #5: DEFINE

1. Print a second copy of WORD-O-MAP.

2. Now write the terms you have chosen for your project onto the WORD-O-MAP in the position you have given them.

3. You may find you have chosen rather different words or even moved words further apart from one another.

4. Under each term write a one-line definition.

5. Under that definition explain out loud what the term means and might come to mean in the development of your project (at whatever stage you are).

6. Remember there is no right answer to this. This is a matter of trying to position, define and connect terms and those terms as your project relates to the wider design futures (ecological, societal, technical cultural and global etc).

6. ANNOTATING YOUR MAPPING

ACTIVITY #6: DRAW NAME

1. Now DRAW the shape of what we will call your own WORDMAP.

2. Give your WORD-O-MAP a NAME.

3. On the spaced and edges of your map, DRAW any small images you wish to illustrate the character, materials and processes of your project and the words you have chosen.

ACTIVITY #7: CONNECT

1. In the middle of your WORD MAP, write a short description of your project.

2. Use FRAMES 4 FUTURES (Frames filled) to explain its wider issues and connections.

3. Include the terms you have selected in your outline.

4. Try to explain how you see your project as a  point of view and the world view it presents. Here we are activating the word CULTURE.

5. By this we don’t mean culture as you might first think but what so the elements of your project come together as a ‘culture’, a mix, a composition or argument.

ACTIVITY #8: COMPARE

1. With a fellow student, discuss and compare your two completed WORD-O-MAPS.

2. What have you emphasised?

3. How does the shape tell us something about your interests and directions in your project?

4. What are the main orientations of your project within the wider scope of designing futures: as design, near or far off?

5. Would you change your use of the words and/or the meanings you have tried to give them?

7. REFLECTING ON YOUR MAPPING AND OWN WORK

ACTIVITY #9: MAPPINGS

1. Go back to FRAMES 4 FUTURES (Frames filled) and re-read the short descriptors.

2. How would you more fully phrase them to connect more clearly to your project.

3. Write these on your WORD-O-MAP as appropriate.

ACTIVITY #10: PHOTOGRAPH

1. Write your name on your own WORD MAP and date it.

2. Please take a clear photo of your own WORD MAP, and upload it to the following folder.

Adam, Barbara, and Chris Groves. 2007. Future Matters: Action, Knowledge, Ethics. Lieden: Brill.

Ellsworth, Elizabeth. 2005. Places of Learning. New York: Routledge.

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

Martinussen, Einar Sneve. 2019. “Design for a nordic digital shift.” Keynote at the 3rd International Conference on Anticipation, AHO, Oslo, 9-11 October, 2019.

Morrison, Andrew, Ola Erstad, Gunnar Liestøl, Nicholas Pinfold, Bruce Snaddon, Peter Hemmersam, and Andrea Grant Broom. 2019. “Investigating agentive urban learning: An assembly of situated experiences for sustainable futures.” Oxford Journal of Education 45(2): 204-223.

Sanford, Richard. 2019. “Care and hope in lived futures: locating futures through heritage.” Paper presented at the 3rd International Conference on Anticipation, AHO, Oslo, 9-11 October, 2019.

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