How to design the future

By Ash Donaldson

As designers, we have the ability to create the future.?

“If you can dream, you can do it.” - Walt Disney?

Many of the products and services we use today came straight out of science fiction. From Edward Bellamy’s 1888 concept of credit cards in Looking Backward:2000-1887 to William Gibson’s 1984 idea of the Internet in Neuromancer. These things don’t exist because it was inevitable but because designers, engineers and scientists were inspired by someone’s vision.

But how do you create that vision? How do you design for a distant, uncertain future?

In our experience at Tobias, it takes 5 steps:

1. Engage the right people
2. Demonstrate empathy and understanding
3. Explore possible future trends
4. Create stories from the future
5. Co-create the vision

Our world is moving at an ever increasing pace. Short-term thinking plagues people, businesses and governments. While some things are important to address today, strategically it’s important to plan for the longer term and design a future, instead of sleepwalking into it.

Unfortunately, our world is now designed for the near term, with incentives working against long-term thinking across all sectors:

• Government : Political terms of 3–4 years incentivise politicians to deliver near term results, so they’ll be elected in the next cycle.
• Industry : Companies are compelled to show growth each quarter.
• Consumers: People are bombarded by advertising persuading them that they need the latest gadget or fad, right now!

This creates a challenging environment to slow down enough to design the future that we want to inhabit.

1. Engage the right people

Who are the right people? Those who will be impacted by the future you’ll be designing.

When we design for the future, it’s not only more effective, but morally and ethically critical that we include those that will be affected by it when it’s possible.

Not too long ago, when Tobias had to determine how to design transport spaces of the future, we not only engaged planners, technologists and engineers as the experts, but also school children who would be using these spaces.

2. Demonstrate empathy and understanding

As humans, we’re plagued by ‘present bias:’ the tendency to give greater weight to immediate or short-term outcomes over long-term outcomes. People want to address the issues they’re experiencing right now.

Good discovery research with people in the current context is an essential step. Digging into the pain points people are experiencing, then playing it back to them let’s them know that you understand the context and issues of today. Only once this is done can people let go of their gripes and shift their thinking to the future.

When Tobias was tasked with, among other things, getting younger people to engage with their superannuation (the earlier you do — the larger the impact), we had to first demonstrate that we understood the nuance of their financial pressures today — from the impact of marriage and kids to car maintenance, death and career changes.

3. Explore possible future trends

As we’ve discussed, people find it hard to think about the future. Beyond a couple of years, things get more uncertain and hazy. This is where foresight comes in.

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” - Bill Gates

Foresight is the process of anticipating and envisioning potential future scenarios, trends, and needs. It involves gathering and analysing information from various sources, such as historical cultural trends, market research, customer feedback, and expert insights, to identify emerging patterns and opportunities. It’s necessary to apply foresight to help people situate themselves in possible futures.

Patterns or trends identified from foresight aren’t a panacea in themselves though. They can’t simply be presented to co-design participants. First, they need to be able to digest them, usually through presentation and walking through examples of possible futures.

When designing for a new tattoo removal service, Tobias looked back at the cultural significance and trends of tattoos in the past, then explored a wide range of nascent technologies and possible futures, from tattoo inks used to determine health to aligned medical regulations. We mapped not only a 12 month roadmap for the company to mature, but a 6 year roadmap to dominate the industry.

4. Create stories from the future

Next, future trends need to be localised and personalised to specific circumstances. This can be done through future casting — a technique in which people tell stories from the future, backwards.

When we use future casting, we get people to write a short story about themselves, their company, or their product or service, as it will be in the future. We’ve used provocations like “It’s 10 years from now. Considering at least three of the trends or patterns we’ve discussed, write a headline and opening paragraph of an article in Forbes about the recent history of your company”; or “Here’s what you look like 15 years from now (showing an aged image of them). Based on the trends and patterns we’ve discussed, write a letter to your younger self to help steer them in the right direction.”

For a natural disaster resilience project we worked on, we had businesses, communities, emergency responders and volunteer groups write a news article from 30 years in the future, where natural disasters are more frequent and intense, and talk about the positive changes they’d made, triggered by the Black Summer fires.

Note: You should always take your stories of success to the extreme, so you can test the ethical and moral value of them before you commit. Some simple provocations can really help. For example:

• If everyone used this product, what would happen??
• Would I let my children use this service??
• As the design visionary for this, what would people say about me when I die?

5. Co-create the vision

Finally, a design charrette approach helps everyone reach consensus on their possible futures. Participants should first work in silence as individuals. Generate ideas, then go around the room and share stories. As people hear stories, they can steal ideas. Next, give space and time for them to refine their stories. After a couple of rounds of this, as a team, they should all be pointing in a similar direction. Have them work together toward a common story.?

The resulting story will be a considered, possible future that everyone is invested in and can work towards.

Final words

At Tobias, we’ve used foresight and future casting to co-design the future across many realms — from transport and medical, to disaster resilience and trade. Whilst we can’t predict the future, we can break people out of current day thinking and have them strategically design the future.?

The proof is in the pudding with ventures we’ve worked on. From their humble beginnings, Lumiant is a successful fintech, not only in Australia and New Zealand but now spreading across North America and just a few short years from inception, Removery is the world’s largest tattoo removal service.

If you need help designing the future, reach out and have a discussion with the talented team at Tobias.