Designing the Future — Transition design and future making
As Professor Cameron Tonkinwise at UNSWAD in Sydney points out, future-making is an important dimension of design, yet few designers have a solid vision of the longer-term future towards which they are working.
In the past, modernist designers developed clear visions for the future, but this often resulted in homogenous, unsustainable, concretised ‘designed’ systems. To avoid this one-size-fits-all process of design, Cameron advises that visions of the future need to be dynamic and grassroots based (emerge from local, existing conditions). He suggests this type of visioning is a circular, iterative process used to envision radically new ideas for the future.
Visions of the future need to capture the complex, multi layered, multi-dimensional nature of local conditions and people’s lives within these conditions. For example the implications of precarious employment/employment futures based in the gig economy (based on temporary positions where organisations contract with independent workers for short-term engagements) and ‘bullshit jobs’ (temporary, low quality employment) need to be considered. See David Graeber article on the nature of work in a modern economy, which seems to involve lots of people doing meaningless tasks they dislike.
Apart from being detrimental for the individual in these positions, this also major ramifications for society. For example, when people don’t get a secure income they are locked out of the ‘future purchasing’ cycle (like buying a home, investing in their children’s future education, investing in their own future as they are living in the precarious present). This has the effect of creating a diminishing middle class, because the asset base and security that it is built on erodes.
These are serious issues for many people. But it is not always necessary to react in the same way. Have a look at San Precario, which highlights the fate of ‘precarious workers’ such as those on the check-outs or in any form of casual work, using the Italian Catholic tradition of saints and processions.
If you are interested, I have also worked on the content of another FutureLearn MOOC starting again on 3 April 2017 which explores the challenges our cities face in relation to development, sustainability and governance. It deals with the complex, multifaceted decisions we need to make and how they relate to our values, perceptions and practices. It is really insightful and relates well to the challenges/issues raised by Professor Cameron Tonkinwise.