Checkpoints tuning into futures
Introducing six steps of the futures process for design in government
The Finnish government design community “Julkis-muotoilijat” launched a futures process to better understand the changes we are seeing in the field of design in government. Our futures process culminated in a Futures seminar that included six checkpoints — small workshops introducing the work and inviting participants to discuss and evolve our insights. The checkpoints included all the major steps of a futures process. This blog will give a short introduction to these steps and describe the methods used in the checkpoints.
Step 1 — weak signals
The community had collected 47 weak signals. During the checkpoint, we showcased 15 selected signal posters to offer a glimpse into the futures process and to spark discussions among participants. In small groups, participants selected two signals and created ambitious “what if” questions by combining them. This exercise aimed to reflect on and advance the dialogue initiated during the futures process. The discussions highlighted signals particularly related to power, participation, decision-making, AI, and trust, leading to many speculative and thought-provoking futures.
Step 2 — delphi
Our delphi included around 30 interviews and a card deck with a dozen provocative claims about the design field. During this checkpoint, participants had warm-up questions helping to reflect their futures attitudes. After this, pairs chose two claims from the deck to discuss. The most popular topics chosen were: impact of design, innovation labs, design teams, AI and the design education.
Step 3 — change drivers
We had identified 8 trends and 12 drives shaping our future, including changes in technology and data, sustainability and responsibility and societal changes and challenges. During the checkpoint, in small group discussions, we engaged collectively to gain an understanding on drivers and their interrelationships based on multi-faceted perspectives that the participants brought. We utilised the future-wheel method to analyse the consequences of change drivers. It is a tool to create and organise understanding about a future development or a trend. It helps visualising interrelationships of various causes and their resulting changes, direct or indirect.
Step 4 — scenarios
During the futures process and the seminar various scenarios were co-created based on topics identified earlier in the process. The participants were first asked to ideate different alternative outcomes on each topic, such as AI, austerity and population ageing trends. Second, each alternative outcome was themed as probable, preferable or undesirable and representing either business-as-usual, incremental change or radical change. This was a very tricky part of the process, because several of the alternative outcomes were seen as projections of multiple of these definitions. As such, consolidating and converging the outcomes to scenarios was not easy, but they provided a great basis for discussion nevertheless.
Step 5 — vision
This checkpoint launched our community’s next quest for a new vision. The checkpoint included two warm-up questions about the contribution of design now and by 2030. Then each participant tackled the main vision question “What is our preferred future for design in government in the 2030s?”, and wrote one paragraph describing their vision. Then, the participants collaboratively created a manifesto. This is a synthesis of the shared visions. Manifesto could serve as a framework and a compass guiding us towards this envisioned future.
Step 6 — roadmap
Roadmaps include steps required to get to the envisioned future. Without a clear vision, this checkpoint started to build the steps by answering the key question of the Futures seminar: “How might we work across organizational boundaries and build an ecosystemic community to tackle complex systemic challenges in our society?”. Inspiration was provided with a case study of an ecosystem with multiple service providers. Then the steps were ideated and prioritised with voting.
The idea of the checkpoints was to enable our community members and other stakeholders to explore the insights and data collected during the futures process, and make sense of it together. Next step in our futures process is to continue co-creating a vision and building a roadmap of experiments to go with it.
About the writers
This blog post was written collaboratively between the checkpoint facilitators and futures coordinators.
Anni Leppänen
Kaisa Spilling
Emma Berg
Nina Hiukkanen
Hannele Laaksolahti
Johanna Vahtola
Radhika Motani
Jaakko Hannula
Katja Ohotnikova
Niina Mäki
Kaisa Pulkkinen
Mariana Salgado
Renita Niemi
Marjut Sinivuo
