Benedikt Groß & Eileen Mandir # Introduction > ‘Despair is the state we fall into when our imagination fails. When we have no stories that describe the present and guide the future, hope evaporates. Political failure is, in essence, a failure of imagination.’ —George Monbiot - Designing futures therefore means that by creating and communicating future scenarios, you can shape the futures of your fellow human beings and can thus indirectly influence the future course of events. - Using design methods to think about possible futures is part of a larger change in the perception of what design is. It is becoming more strategic as a discipline, moving away from ‘making things beautiful’ to ‘thinking creatively’. - As a strategic designer, it is your task to close the gap between ‘researchers’ and ‘decision- makers’ in business, politics and society. - Design futuring is not about clear answers, but about questions. Unwieldy questions. Big and important questions that encompass many areas of our society, our lifestyles and business models, our behaviour as consumers and even our human ontology. # Foundation - ‘The future cannot be studied because the future does not exist!’ says Jim Dator, meaning that there is no true future, but only ideas about the future. - Every person constructs a subjective future in their head, shaped by the sum of their experiences, values and ideas. In futures studies there is a technical term for this: Images of the Future (after Fred Polak). - The realization that one single future does not exist, but rather that the future is influenced significantly by people’s present ideas about it, is central to an understanding of the design futuring process. - The quotation ‘The future cannot be studied because the future does not exist’ is also known as Jim Dator’s First Law of the Future. - …a society’s images of the future strongly influence the direction in which that society develops, and its images of the future are a meaningful indicator of its current state. - Images of the future are created in our minds, since a person’s context– their everyday life circumstances, cultural values and experiences– always shapes their assumptions about the future. - ‘Design is the process of going from an existing condition to a preferred one.’ Milton Glaser - Sometimes it is not about directly designing a solution that can survive in the market tomorrow, but about using design to show possible and preferable futures and make them discussable. - it is less the how-can-we questions, but rather the what-if questions that help you think about what is possible and desirable. - there are also situations that require fierce critique, where future scenarios serve solely to put a finger on the weak spots, to show what could go wrong if normal operations continue. With design, you can not only present concrete solutions, but also formulate targeted criticism by pointing out the consequences and problems inherent in possible futures, thus making them discussable. - Reasoning out and realistically designing a negative future can be rewarding. Many people find it easier to develop an opinion from their own experience than to discuss abstract ideas. - Is it really about a product or solution in the end? Would speculation or critique be more effective?