This render presents two design fiction scenarios about the futures of the Design Futures Lexicon :
– The Design More-Than-Human Futures Lexicon
– The Adversarial Design Futures Lexicon

Both of the scenarios speculate on how the Design Futures Lexicon may have shaped or been shaped by our world in a near-future. This render focuses on the Lexicon as an “object” rather than on its terms and actual content. Each scenario includes a short synopsis with a design fiction (fictional artefact) helping to envision how the Lexicon could evolve and what it could become.

As futures are necessarily plural, “Designing the futures of the Design Futures Lexicon” doubles up as a tool to (re)open the imaginaries. This participatory part of the render offers to replay or counterplay the two speculative scenarios with a playful Futures Branch-casting activity. For each scenario, one is first invited to imagine how the future depicted in the “More-than-human Lexicon” or “Adversarial Lexicon” scenario has happened. Then, in a creative twist, it will be time to design a counterfactual version of the original scenario and imagine an alternative future for the Design Futures Lexicon.

Discover the two scenarios and the Futures Branch-casting activity below!

In a few years from now…
The Design Futures Lexicon has evolved to help in designing more-than-human futures. The Design Futures Lexicon has become a hybrid collection of elements of “language” from humans, animals and plants. The Design Futures Lexicon articulates these “terms” as a way to mitigate the design of anthropo-centred futures, to integrate the “voices” of other species in the experience of building visions, as an act of mediation of non-human perspectives.

This new Lexicon merge pieces of human and non-human for communications or interactions between members of a same species members, members of other species, and the environment. It goes beyond words and definitions to help in sharing non-human perceptions of the world and its making, with sounds, simulation, smells, videos.

While constantly struggling with its own anthropomorphism, the Design More-Than-Human Futures Lexicon emphasises on terms for interconnections and interdepencies between humans and non-humans in the global ecosystem, as well as in space and time.

A page from the Lexicon for the non-human term “murmuration”

In a few years from now…
The Design Futures Lexicon has been repurposed by a group of activist design researchers and designers.
This future has seen the automation of the act of designing futures by intelligent learning systems, then massifying the use of futures design.
In response, the Design Futures Lexicon is used as an adversarial tool against the automated generation of futures. To escape the risks of monolithic and controlled futures, the designers from The Unflatteners collective have imagined new uses of the futures design terms to glitch and rewild futures.

As for the original version, themes, activities and tools can be found in the Adversarial Lexicon, to learn how to render frictional futures and design radical alternative tomorrows.

The home page of the Adversarial Design Futures Lexicon, with theories and tools of futures unflattening

Try to reboot Lexicon futures with the Futures Branch-Casting activity!

What is Futures Branch-Casting?
Future Branch-casting is a playful retro-speculaction exercise.
It is based on the concepts of back-casting from strategic foresight and branching narrative from speculative fiction. It builds on the notions of future visions and uchronia, a form of alternate history fiction. This tool invites you to dive into the scenarios of the Lexicon futures and rewrite them. With this horizon in mind, you are invited to imagine what lead each scenario to happen and how this future could have evolved differently.

What can I expect from this activity?
Although it offers a fun and creative experience, Futures Branch-casting is also a great exercise to:
– Train you anticipation muscle, by speculating on facts, connecting signals and conveying your vision by designing scenarios and fictions.
– Reflect on what is the Design Futures Lexicon today, its promises and limitations, and what it could possibly become in a near-future.
– Discover unexpected new applications for the Design Futures Lexicon and its terms to support actual and concrete projects or practices.

Get started by downloading the Futures Branch-Casting kit.