Global Collaboration on Future Visions in a Post-COVID Society
We are the Vision Design team within Hitachi Design with offices in London, Santa Clara and Tokyo. Vision Design is a method to understand and envision various futures that could occur. We use these visions across different regions to propose products and services to transition us to these futures.
To find out more of what we are working on please to see our latest post-COVID related foresight work created for Europe.
As our teams are spread across the globe, we often found ourselves working in regional silos. The pandemic has blurred these boundaries as working from home has become the norm and collaborating globally feels similar to collaborating locally. This initiative is a perfect example of Hitachi’s design worldwide collaboration with no boundaries. This article series is going to be facilitated by Hitachi Design Europe and will be jointly written with our friends, designers, researchers and external partners that we collaborate with. With every article written here, you will be able to gain insight from different regions across the world.
So please follow us, comment and express your opinions on our articles. We would love to hear from you and walk together through this exploratory journey.
‘Blurring lines’ within six-pace layers
Stewart Brand introduced “Pace Layer Thinking” where he described six-pace layers: Fashion, Commerce, Infrastructure, Governance, Culture and Nature. Before the pandemic, these layers were operating at their own pace: from fast to slow. However, the pandemic has disrupted and accelerated these changes that were already occurring within these layers and this happened all at once.
The sudden changes in all layers give people doubts about the common sense of life and the social systems that have long seemed appropriate and caused a trend of ‘Blurring lines’. A clear boundary which existed before pandemic between work and home, city and suburb has now been continuously blurring due to different behaviours within society. People were advised to work from home, leading to some deciding to move out of the city to suburbs to enjoy more freedom, space and nature in their restricted city lives. How will these blurring lines evolve? Will these lines gain focus after pandemic? How will they be perceived by our society? What impact will they have? — These are some of the uncertainties that we would like to get an answer to.
The long-awaited vaccine which is seen as salvation will not return the lines to the state they were before. The vaccine itself is another disruption which will affect these layers and add to the blurring lines. Who will get the vaccine first? Will we be able to trust each other? Will the world become safer to live without fear?
Working from home and fear of contributing to virus spreading has accelerated changes in Mobility and Energy sectors
Working from home is one of the major contributors to blurring lines within our society and has significantly affected the Mobility domain. According to the Guardian currently, 60% of British people are working from home and 26% are planning to continue working from home post-pandemic. This results in decreased commuting days, requiring transport operators and station owners to reframe their businesses as commuting patterns will change permanently. Due to the fear of spreading the virus, society started shifting from public transport usage to private modes of transport (cars, bicycle, micro-mobility, etc). However, as Albert Einstein said, “in the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity.” So, transport operators are encouraged to innovate and act more dynamically within their services and spaces.
Additionally, the high rise in numbers during the pandemic has caused partial lockdowns in some countries. This has resulted in reduced air travel by 88%, and decreased traffic on the road. People started noticing the difference immediately — the sky seemed clearer and air fresher. However, due to people working from home energy consumption rose by 30% meaning increased bills. These changes caused by the pandemic triggered the need for more sustainable infrastructure and behaviour. People started questioning, where does this energy come from? How can I be greener in my actions? How can I save money?
Our intention of the “Blurring lines” articles series
Our intention of the ‘Blurring lines’ article series can be divided into two parts: internal and external purposes. As an internal purpose, we are keen to collaborate globally with our peers, so this article series is a great opportunity for this collaboration, it allows us to share our work across teams, collect their feedback and to improve & update our Vision design work.
Externally, we want to communicate and share the great work we do publicly which we hope would lead to external collaboration projects. Additionally, these article series will help us to have facilitated discussions, get feedback on our work, challenge our thinking for us to improve and update our future visions.
And finally, most importantly, we would like to blur the line between internal and external. This is because it is not necessary to have a line between company and the outside of the company, designer and non-designer, in order to thoroughly discuss the future of the society and make a transition to a better society. So please contact us and share your opinions freely, we are very interested to hear what you think.
What we will write about
This is our first article to give you an introduction of what you can expect from the “Blurring lines’ article series, there will be many more coming in the next few months. Here we will be sharing our research regards anxieties coming from society caused by the pandemic and how these tie with the future vision work that we are doing. We will also talk about envisioned futures in particular domains e.g., Energy, Mobility and Data & Security. These domain focused articles will bring a flavour of different regions facilitated by internal and external expert opinions. Please stay with us through this exploratory journey to create a better future for our society.
