What Future Are You Designing For?

Admittedly, I’m a big sci-fi nerd & video game enthusiast. I love seeing other perspectives about what the future will hold, including technological advances, the rise (or demise) of civilization, and the new sorts of moral choices individuals face in this new future. In this short read, I intend to share a lens to view different possibilities for our future, explore the common themes driving them, and present a series of design considerations to address these commonalities.

American cartoonist, Robert Crumb saw our future diverging in three main directions:

1. Worst Case Scenario: Ecological Disaster
2. The FUN Future: Techno-Fix on the March!
3. The Ecotopian Solution

While this is obviously a simplified perspective of what could be, I’d add that I don’t see technology as a third, distinct option. A tech-savvy future could exist where legal and moral codes have decayed, such as the corporatocratic and oligarchic dystopia conveyed shows like Continuum, but it could also lead to a Star Trek-inspired utopian future.

Unlike Crumb’s prediction, I believe technology will play a large role in every future despite whether it leads to social and ecological progress or our ultimate failure as a society. Let’s look at futures from another angle. I’ve made a 2x2 diagram to illustrate the value our society places on natural resources against the moral rise or decay of society:

Below, I’ll be referencing this guide with blue dots to specify the quadrant.

I propose four different directions for our future:

• Option A: We live on a blossoming planet with smarter and better-connected people
• Option B: We live on a crappy planet but society is alive and kicking
• Option C: We live on a decrepit planet devoid of humanity
• Option D: We live on a beautiful planet full of evil people

Read on for more details on these options, including pop-culture examples that help visualize each scenario and design considerations for each.

Option A: Technology helps solve humanity’s flaws and makes the world a better place.

Society is smarter, more benevolent, and better connected

There are a ton of examples in pop-culture that share a very optimistic view of the future. This view typically suggests that technology can help us reverse the effects we’ve had on the planet, help us become more sustainable as a race, and we’re ultimately better off because of our improved standard of living.

I’ve already mentioned Star Trek. Similarly, Back to the Future II also falls within this category, thanks to “Mr. Fusion” (although later we find out that Texaco is still around, so it’s not necessarily a society completely reliant on alternative energy). Still, we see that people tend to be pretty well off, have lots of gadgets, and it appears that nature around the city is alive and well.

I would also include Minority Report within this category. Although it flirts with the balance of portraying the flaws in a seemingly perfect society, it does give us a glimmer of what could be…and who wouldn’t love a society free from crime?

Cottages with lush grass and beautiful trees overlooking clean bodies of water still exist

The world seems to be filled with plant life, even within the urban landscape of the city. Trees, grass, clean water, and sunlight seem to be present in this future. We see women doing yoga and the glistening of vertical highways on the sides of buildings as automated cars zoom up and down, left and right.

The film appears to depict a mature society not too different from our world today, complete with real brands. Technology helps “personalize” advertisements (see video above). Interestingly, this sort of technology already exists through our use of social media. I still find the idea of false interaction to be quite insincere and a bit creepy, but nevertheless, they do a good job showing what this experience could be like with brands that exist today.

I’m personally very curious to see if we ever move to actually implement something similar to what we see here, or if this idea is treated as an invasion of privacy. It’s worth pointing out that we already see small examples of this today, like when you leave something in your virtual cart online and the system emails you to remind you of your pending purchase, or the onslaught of device-agnostic retargeting ads that follow you around the web. Minority Report simply takes this concept and expands the practice to the real world. Could we, by chance, be living in what could be the last era of unresponsive advertisement in the real world?

If you’re designing products and services that would likely lead to this type of future, consider:

• What is the lifecycle of the entire product (i.e. Cradle to Cradle lifecycle mapping)? How long do I expect users to want and use the item I’m creating? Will they know what to do with it once they’re finished using it? As waste, how will it impact our planet and future to lead to this ideal outcome?
• Does my product better all society or just the portion that uses or has access to it?
• How will my product or service help retain the value of natural resources? Can a system replace or offset the resources used to create my design?
• Does my design protect the explicit and implicit rights of the user? Are there opportunities to clarify what information I’m asking for from my user?
• Can the product be hacked? Could users operate the design in a way that differs from the ideal use case (good or bad)?

Option B: Technology helps us overcome environmental, emotional, and tactical issues associated with living on planet we probably destroyed.

We live in a crappy world, but society is alive and kicking

This scenario is more aligned with the recognition that we truly did screw up our planet for the worse and technology is helping us cope, whether through cleaning up our world, providing us with emotional comfort, or simply by helping us with everyday tasks.

In The Jetsons, it’s implied that civilization lives in the clouds because earth’s surface became uninhabitable. However, society seems to be booming and living off of technology that has invariably made their life better. Who wouldn’t love the idea of a robot doing all your chores for you?

We’re already on the path towards this type of robot—the Roomba has some of the same cleaning features of the Jetson’s beloved robot, Rosie.

Wall-E has a similar viewpoint about the current state of the planet, and the use of robots to help improve the quality of life for humans. Trash has piled up for many years, forcing people to leave the planet until it becomes habitable again. Thanks Wall-E!

We can see this same sort of post-war, tech-to-make-our-lives-easier in other sci-fi films as well, such as AI: Artificial Intelligence, where coastal cities have been wiped out and the human population has been drastically reduced. Soon-after, humans decide to create a new class of robots capable of emulating thoughts and emotions.

All of these potential futures— where society remains (relatively) intact despite the depreciation of Earth—seem to portray technology as a bridge to get us back to some past ideal state. We also see technology being used to solve small everyday problems to an extreme, forcing us to confront the question: What is really necessary?

Should you see this as the most likely future, in which technology solves the problems we’ve created for ourselves throughout generations past, here are a few things to think about as you design products today:

• Is this product or service necessary? What are the systemic impacts of introducing this (cultural, social, physical, environmental) now/in the future?
• Does my product and service actually solve a systemic problem (like waste, dwindling resources, climate change), or simply find an alternative way to achieve the desired result for one individual? How could it help solve the larger problem?
• Do the benefits of my product or service remove human autonomy?
• Does my product or service ultimately promote behaviors or actions that result in poorer human health?
• Does my design account for the (financial, physical, business) sustainability of the product or service over time? Does the product or service fit in with larger ecosystems to support the larger sustainability goals at play?
• Do I expect physical elements of my design to decay? How will I address this?

Option C: The future is a sad mixture of moral decay and extremely limited natural resources (often shown as a post-apocalyptic world). Technology perpetuates the struggle for those who survived under the guise of convenience.

We live in a decrepit world devoid of humanity: everything sucks

Many of the TV shows, movies, and video games in this section refer to a major war which wipes out a good portion of civilization. Many show the sad state of the future of people, and I feel this potential future serves as the best warning to designers today, considering what the future could look like.

In Idiocracy, the combination of reproductive trends and increasing lack of thought required to use technology leads to a sad future of mountains of garbage, fulfillment of crude momentary desires, and an exaggeration of some of today’s capitalistic practices.

Interface of the Future?

I think about this movie a lot, because in some ways, this is both the pinnacle and failing of design at its very core. In the example above, the interface is so simple, the woman (user) barely needs to do anything to do her job. Ideally, this should be seen as a good thing- allowing for more productivity and easing the user’s mental strain as she works to diagnose multiple patients per day. What we see instead however, is that she’s lost any societal pressure to actually interact with the patient, and potentially misdiagnoses the main character. But at least there are clear, color-coded icons!

All-in-One Chair: Forewarning, this is a little disgusting and vulgar

Idiocracy contains another parallel to Wall-E with this all-in-one chair, reminiscent of the hover chairs the overweight humans use in the former. Here, anyone with this chair has all of the conveniences of eating, entertainment, and as you’ll see if you watch the video, a built-in toilet to keep this guy happy. Why would he ever need to get up?

Deus Ex proposes this is what our cities will look like

Another common trend within this category of future proposals is the role of technology to augment organic life. In video games like Deus Ex and Bioshock, storylines warn us about the potential for augmentations to create new class systems between the haves and have-nots. This dilemma already exists today, as we struggle to determine the moral decisions around Human Genetic Modification. Deus Ex proposes that well-meaning innovations meant to help amputees recover the ability to throw a football with their children could be modified for military use — allowing for stronger, automated, and nearly unstoppable soldiers. Here, it is technology and innovation that leads to the moral decay of society, in part due to the shift in social class systems. More on this in the next section.

Cordyceps Fungus: Its spores can basically make bug zombies (this is real)

Technology doesn’t have to necessarily be the root cause of our fall of civilization though. In the game The Last of Us, it is biology itself and the power of evolution that ends up disrupting our society (leave it to mother nature to find a way). What’s scary about this proposal though, is that the fungus they point to as the cause of our downfall (Cordycep fungus) already exists! Watch the video with the ant above to see what I mean. It’s not too far of a stretch to imagine that a fungus that affects other species may one day affect us as well. In this situation though, technology wasn’t able to help us prepare or stave off the imminent threat.

Questions to consider in your designs to hopefully avoid drifting towards this (awful) potential future:

• How do I define “quality of life,” especially if I avoid using the word ease. How is my product contributing to an individual’s quality of life now/in the future?
• Are there existing moral debates related to the product I’m designing? How does my product address the perspectives associated with the debate? Does my product take a side?
• Is there a healthy level of required energy or brain power that should be incorporated to use my product or service? Why/Why not?
• How much waste is my product or service capable of producing within its lifetime? How is that waste being accounted for? What do you consider waste?
• How might I build an incentive system to promote reuse, reduction, or recycling of materials associated with my design?
• Is it possible for my designed product or service to be used incorrectly? Could its use lead to any unintended outcomes?

Option D: We recognize the value of natural resources, but we still live in a morally putrescent society, partially due to technological advancements.

We live in a beautiful world full of awful people

Remember that train of thought I started above, discussing the eruption of new social classes? This last take on what the future could be incorporates society’s acknowledgement that our natural resources are important to save, but fails to recognize the impact of bio-technological evolution. In short, we still live in a beautiful society, but the lines of right and wrong are blurred, leading to some pretty shifty decision-making.

In Remember Me, augmented reality and memory digitization are introduced to help people capture memories. People with special implants can upload and share their memories on the net, as well as remove unhappy or unpleasant memories, a bit like Google Glass, but direct from the source. There are social problems like an unintended surveillance state (who didn’t see that coming?) and individuals can get addicted to consuming more and more content/memories, not unlike addiction to social media today.

Imagine this display over your field of vision

The Netflix series Black Mirror presents a variety of small snippets that explore the more immediate future based on extreme versions of current technology. I highly recommend it. In season 1, episode 3, the show suggests a similar future to that described in the video game above, where individuals can record using technology embedded within their eyes, which is not too dissimilar to Google Glass. However, it goes on to explore the social impacts of being able to recall memories on-demand with precision, and the unintended consequences related to others being able to see those memories too.

Will reliving the memories of our past take away from the quality of the present?

Would the temptation to sink back into old memories and completely disconnect from the world be strong enough that a noticeable portion of society would do so?

In the movies The 6th Day and The Island, humans fiddle with the idea of re-creating organs to help improve people’s quality of life, create a seemingly limitless number of possible transplants, drastically improving life expectancy.

In both of these scenarios, morality around how we classify and treat others comes into play. I appreciate the perspective of both of these films because they realistically portray the juxtaposition between beautiful future societies and the “ideal” state of living practically forever, and the rough reality of the moral price to have such a world.

Considering your designs today, ask yourself:

• How could the information/data collected within my designs today be used in unintended ways in the future?
• Could my product or service unintentionally disrupt people’s lives in the future?
• Could my design place non-users at an extreme disadvantage in the future?
• Could my product or service unintentionally harm anyone beyond physical harm (i.e. social injury, organizational injury, systemic collapse)?
• Could my product or service introduce new lenses for morality, call into question our current moral structure, or introduce new moral quandaries for the future?
• Can I build in fail-safes to my designs today to avoid unintended consequences in the future?

So, what now?

You’ve considered the questions I outlined above. Great! The constant within every outlined future above is that society and the availability of natural resources largely depend on the values we bake into our products and services today. For example, it’s easy to ignore or explain away the reality of global warming, but there is little question that we will soon face shortages of natural resources like water, which will change life as we know it today. Will you allow the products you design today, reflect the truths of our certain future? Consider the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. Could your product or service contribute towards one of these goals?

Many people react to “sustainability” as if it were a pipe dream: Unconventional practices forced upon people to create something similar to Crumb’s Ecotopian solution. However, sustainability literally refers to the ability to maintain something. Will your designs incorporate values to sustain the existing resources we have left in the world? Will they maintain our way of life or moral codes? Or, as so many sci-fi examples in pop-culture suggest, will the products and services you help create enter our world agnostic to their impact and role in our future?