Envision the Future

What will happen in the future? What are the possible scenarios that will take place? Will there be a drastic change in the economy, technology, society, environment, and health? There are so many questions that can be asked yet cannot be answered concretely. There are so many uncertainties. Specific events of the future cannot be necessarily told at the moment but we can only predict. The challenge for us today is having a vision of the future and realizing the possibilities of getting to that vision whenever it will take place. Although it is very easy to say to have a vision of a future and working towards it, it is actually something a lot of people do not bother to ponder on because of the realities of today. This is very understandable as of course the reality of life is experienced in the present. So, what is it about having a vision of the future that is of great importance? What is the role of designers and business people in all this? And how will people outside of the exclusivity of the professionals (designers, engineers, scientists, etc.) be included in envisioning a future and working towards it?

As Stuart Candy, the Senior Foresight and Innovation Specialist at the design and engineering firm Arup put it in his lecture on Design Futures: How to Build A World, “The reason I say “futures” rather than “the future”, that “S” is critical, the “S” that pluralizes, that makes multiplicity of potentials available to us.” Whether you coin it as “futures” or “future”, the concept is not hard to grasp, as today was once the future, we are well award that time passes and days, trends, events occur continuously. As evident today, choices made in the past greatly affect the future. Now this leaves us with a challenge of looking ahead and envisioning what is to come or you can say, “creating a new world” and gearing towards it strategically without disregarding being imaginative and designers in particular have the potential to not only stimulate their own minds but the minds of others and ultimately guide them to act. Creating awareness of a plausible future is key to communally gear towards it. Not only must it be a goal to reach a certain future but this future world must also have depth and meaning for it to be able to make good impact in society. Particularly to those who want to bring out an innovative solution and make it into a business, the goal is not to simply make money but to have the desire to change the world with your innovation. As Guy Kawasaki puts it,  “Great innovation occurs when you decide you want to make meaning in the world. That is, when you want to change the world and make the world a better place, if you look at the great companies, they made meaning and as the natural outcome of that they also made money.” With this statement it can be realized that innovation or creating a new world involves a more complex process than just simply making things work and profiting from it alone but it is creating some sort of experience. Experiencing the change, experiencing the shift in events, this is what people, the audience or customers remember and holds most value. If they have a pleasant or thought-provoking experience in envisioning with you or interacting with what you have envisioned and created then it can be said to be a success. This may all seem vague ideas but we can look at certain companies such as Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook, to name a few; these companies have helped change the world in the way we work and interact with each other. Just looking around and seeing people use these successful companies’ products can be enough evidence of the innovation they have made available.

“Eventually, the most significant question managers can ask themselves is ‘What specific experience will my company offer?’ That experience will come to define their business.” Although it is in the context of a managerial role, we can agree with this statement by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore in their article Welcome to The Experience Economy that the meaning they put into what they want to offer to the audience will eventually be experienced by the audience. This not only applies in present businesses or innovations but also the innovations that are to come in the future. Presenting our ideas for the future play a big role in helping shape the world we want to create. We can do this in many ways such as story telling using media, presenting a persona and scenario in presentation, creating an interactive event where people can go around and physically experience your proposals, these to name a few.

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In the studio: Today we were grouped together for our future projects. This was just an initial meet up so we did not end up talking about the project too much. But it was good to be able to meet each other and establish what we need to do as a group and how we will work together. But from the lectures today we were able to gain insight on how we may tackle our projects. We were able to gain knowledge about business ventures and how to go about them as well as creating scenarios to grasp the context of our business.

Resources:
Pine, J. & Gilmore, J. 1998, ‘Welcome to the Experience Economy’, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 76 (July-Aug), No. 4, pp. 97-105

Kawasaki, G 2009, Guy Kawasaki Explains the Art of Innovation in 10 Steps , online video, viewed 26 June 2012, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCpViu8kY3o&gt;.