Towards prospective design

Abstract

Design and designers must be aware of their agency in designing for next. Whether creating the next contexts or the artefacts in them, design helps people make sense of and shape multiple alternative futures. Design therefore has a responsibility to unknown futures, and to design futures-focused products and services in a continuously changing world, designers need some understanding of strategic foresight and/or a capacity for anticipatory thinking. Strategic foresight offers a tangible knowledge base that can build this understanding or capacity in designers and design practice. The focus of this paper is on introducing anticipatory thinking and foresight tools and methods into design (through professional practice and education) to explore what designers might experience and create for design projects that are specifically futures-oriented; and to analyse how futures tools and methods might benefit practitioners and students. Building futures-oriented and anticipatory capacity into design practice as well as in learning experiences may better align both the design process and its outcomes with the values, needs and aspirations of prospective thinking and action, and bring about greater global wellbeing. This conceptual paper draws on anticipation theory and futures studies, transition design and design fiction, to propose that anticipation could inform design and innovation processes, increase designer agency, and support goals such as sustainability and longevity to enable the design of products and services in a system that can deliver sustained value over time.