To Think in The Future Tense: Design Thinking Empowered by Futures Thinking
Design Thinking x Futures Thinking = Innovation boost!
Over the past few years, several leaders and companies have tamed Design Thinking; they have realized that it provides them a tangible way to rethink, redefine and reframe some problems and solutions — to think in divergent directions and to create new pathways toward innovative action.
Traditionally, Design Thinking processes follow a cyclical five-step framework based on iterative processes that, at their core, are supported by empathy and experimentation: Empathize (learn about the audience for whom you are designing), Define(construct a point of view that is based on user needs and insights), Ideate(brainstorm and come up with creative solutions), Prototype (build a representation of one or more ideas to show others), Test (return to your original user group and test your ideas for feedback and improvement).
To move beyond designing for today’s needs, several thinkers and consulting firms are considering to enable the Design Thinking approach to focus on the distant future. What would indeed happen if we “fuel” design-enabled strategy and organizational development with the speculative and descriptive aspects of Futures Thinking (or Futurology), traceable to the traditions of utopian literature and science-fiction, and bringing a methodology that originated in the “technological forecasting” developed during the mid-1940s?
When Design Thinking usually draws from understandings within a smaller timeframe (weeks, months, a few years) to create a specific end product or service, Futures Thinking, through study of social and technological existing conditions, advancement and other environmental emerging trends, focuses on generating plausible hypothetical scenarios about future developments, such as exploring how people will live and work in the future.
Would Design Thinking benefit from the new gained perspective brought by Futures Thinking, as one can foresee more clearly a range of possible futures more or less desirable for particular groups and societies?
We are particularly appealed by the branch of Futures Thinking that is Future Design.
While Futures Thinking methodologies usually rely on information gathered through research and insights from expertise to envisage the dynamics that are creating the future, to prepare us for future inconvenient challenges and hopefully to smooth the transition toward the future, Future Design focuses on imagining and creating the future, that, as citizens, we aspire to live in. Future Design relies on community’s residents to imagine and create the conditions for an inspiring future.
To cross Design Thinking with Futures Thinking, and more specifically by implementing Design Thinking principles through the lens of Future Design, or by infusing Design Thinking with a preliminary Future Design approach, may turn out to be useful to pull the future into the present and to uncover unforeseen possibilities. Elevating and reframing the design process beyond the confines of today’s most impactful ideas, designing from the larger landscape of the future, we could tap into unexplored ideas in a way that possibly outweighs the grounded current brainstorming and visioning processes.
We feel that embracing the distant future and looking at the world through a holistic, systemic, and transdisciplinary fashion could certainly energize our way toward meaningful and sustainable novel solutions.
Creating space for informed and creative decision-making, where long-term policy goals are considered beyond immediate constraints, would also give rise to many great secondary benefits: strategic dialogue would be stimulated and adaptive leadership strengthened.
The future looks appealing.
More about Future Design?
Future Design: Are We Ready to Become Time Rebels?
Future Design: a Practical Method to Develop Metacognitive Skills?
References
Lokitz, J. (March, 3rd, 2021). What is the future of design thinking? Retrieved from: https://www.businessmodelsinc.com/future-of-design-thinking/
OECD (Org. website). (March 13th, 2021). Futures Thinking In Brief. Retrieved from: https://www.oecd.org/site/schoolingfortomorrowknowledgebase/futuresthinking/futuresthinkinginbrief.htm
O’Toole, J. J. (2017, April 21). Futurology. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from: https://www.britannica.com/topic/futurology
Santer, S. (September 13th, 2019). Futures Thinking & Design Thinking. Retrieved from: http://futurehumanbydesign.com/2019/09/futures-thinking-and-design-thinking/
Spencer, F. (March 8th, 2016). Design Thinking Must Be Futures Empowered. Retrieved from: https://thefuturesschool.com/blog/design-thinking-must-be-future-empowered/
