Futures for Ephemeral Design

Lesson 1
POLIMI 09/20/2022

Agenda

background
new methods for new challenges
hopes and fears
what design is needed?
how is design changing?
what kind of designer are you becoming?
linking short-term design to long-term goals
stories of futures
dexign futures
STEEP+V
time
ephemeral design questions

Materials

(1) Hopes and Fears exercise. Write what your hopes and fears are for the future. Please fill out this online survey.

Instructions:
(a) write lowercase only,
(b) separate each idea with a comma,
(c) connect words with hyphens. e.g., bad-idea, good-idea, etc (NOT: bad idea, good idea, etc.)

We are going to make a wordcloud to make sense of everyone’s ideas.

There are two visualizations:

Figure 1. Hopes of POLIMI Ephemeral Design Students 2022.

Figure 2. Fears of POLIMI Ephemeral Design Students 2022.

(2) What kind of designer do you want to become?

Let us imagine one axis that has “form” on one extreme and a “social” impact on the other. Put one post-it note where you would position your design practice on the vertical axis, in the short-term with regards to “form” or “social” focus? Write your name on it. Let us imagine you have a long design career. Where would you position yourself in the long-term, say year 2050, with regards to “form” or “social”?

Link to Muraly for your two post-it notes.

Screenshot of “What kind of designer do you want to become?” exercise.

(3) POLAK game

What is your view about the future?

In the next 10 years, do you see the world as getting better or worse?
How capable do you feel of personally affecting the future?

Open this link so we can do this exercise.

On the vertical axis, If you think the future is getting better, position yourself towards the top; if you think the future is getting worse, go towards the bottom.

On the horizontal axis, consider how much you can personally affect the future. If you feel little impact on the future, go to the left; if you feel a lot of impact on the future go to the right.

Polak Game facilitation explanation link.

Article explaining origins of the Polak Game here.

Screenshot of “Polak Game” exercise.

(4) STEEP+V exercise

Please fill out part 2 of the survey according to Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political + Values) here.

Instructions:
(a) write lowercase only,
(b) separate each idea with a comma,
(c) connect words with hyphens. e.g., bad-idea, good-idea, etc (NOT: bad idea, good idea, etc.)

We are going to make a wordcloud to make sense of everyone’s ideas. We will compare the two visualizations for hopes and fears.

There are two visualizations:

Figure 3. STEEP+V Hopes of POLIMI Ephemeral Design Students 2022.

Figure 4. STEEP+V Fears of POLIMI Ephemeral Design Students 2022.

(5) STEEP+V and Time horizons. Short-term and long-term hopes and fears. Now imagine your hopes and fears according to short-time and long-time horizons. Now fill out the third part of the survey here.

Instructions:
(a) write lowercase only,
(b) separate each idea with a comma,
(c) connect words with hyphens. e.g., bad-idea, good-idea, etc (NOT: bad idea, good idea, etc.)

We are going to make a wordcloud to make sense of everyone’s ideas. We will compare the two visualizations for hopes and fears.

There are four visualizations:

Figure 5. STEEP+V Short-term Hopes of POLIMI Ephemeral Design Students 2022.

Figure 6. STEEP+V Short-term Fears of POLIMI Ephemeral Design Students 2022.

Figure 7. STEEP+V Long-term Hopes of POLIMI Ephemeral Design Students 2022.

Figure 8. STEEP+V Long-term Fears of POLIMI Ephemeral Design Students 2022.

(6) In-class activity. Comparing the 3 Hopes & Fears exercises (i.e., exercises 1, 4, 5 above).

In-class activity: break-out groups.

We will break out into small groups of 5 to go deeper into how the hopes and fears differ according to the questions you answered

(a) Compare Tuesday’s Generic Hopes/Fears vs. STEEP primed Hopes and Fears
Link to raw data STEEP Fears/Hopes.

How do general Hopes and Fears compare to STEEP Primed Hopes and Fears?
- (Groups 1, 5, 9, 13)
  - How similar or dissimilar Hopes (figure 1) and STEEP primed hopes (figure 3)?
- (Groups 2, 6, 10, 14)
  - How similar or dissimilar Fears (figure 2) and STEEP primed Fears (figure 4)?

(b) Compare short-term vs long-term hopes and fears data.
- (Groups 3, 7, 11, 15)
  - Compare Short-term hopes (figure 5) vs. Long-term hopes (figure 7).
- (Groups 4, 8, 12, 16)
  - Compare Short-term fears (figure 6) vs. Long-term Fears (figure 8).

Relating images of futures along a time horizon with Voros’ Futures Cone

Lesson 2
POLIMI 09/27/2022

Agenda

voros cone
dator’s laws
responsibility to future generations
alternative futures ->
normative futures
backcasting
CLA
STEEP+V analysis
brainstorming ideas
jamais cascio critiques
cascio critiques redesign
critiquing futures scenarios

Materials

group 1
group 2
group 3
group 4
group 5
group 6
group 7
group 8
group 9
group 10
group 11
group 12
group 13
group 14
group 15
group 16
group 17