For Superflux, 2011 was a busy year: new projects, practices and people. But alongside all of this, it was also a year of self-contemplation, perhaps instigated by work on our new website. Blending the diverse ideas and perspectives of the co-founders, associates, and extended network, we found ourselves mapping a core set of themes and interests; revisiting our past work and personal origin stories to find a more considered, deliberate way to move forward.
From this, we pulled a detailed and structured definition of 'design futurescaping' – something I first talked about at LIFT09, in Geneva, back in 2009:
'As fear and uncertainty grows, I believe that it becomes imperative for us, as designers, to play an important role in building these alternative possibilities. Our thinking, methods and skills can become a formidable force in the think-and-do-tanks of the near future, alongside technologists, scientists, economists and futurists, shaping a future that is habitable and desirable.'
Bruce Sterling responded to my talk with a piece for Make magazine, and, though the design futurescaping of 2011-12 is a noticeably different beast to the open-ended practice I outlined in 2009, his comments are still relevant.
In the here-and-now, one of Superflux's key propositions is the organisation and delivery of design futurescaping workshops, as a springboard leading to work on strategy, invention and design. Usually, we would talk to prospective clients about these offerings directly, but given the uncertainties of the past year, we thought it might be a good idea to lay out some of our tools, best practices, and examples of our work.
WELCOME TO BLACK SWAN COUNTRY
Writing about 'Generation Flux' in Fast Company, Robert Safan hails a new era of uncertainty:
'From the rise of Facebook to the fall of Blockbuster, from the downgrading of U.S. government debt to the resurgence of Brazil, predicting what will happen next has gotten exponentially harder. Uncertainty has taken hold in boardrooms and cubicles, as executives and workers (employed and unemployed) struggle with core questions: Which competitive advantages have staying power? What skills matter most? How can you weigh risk and opportunity when the fundamentals of your business may change overnight?'
Over 2011, these kind of questions became increasingly common. As friend-of-the-studio Scott Smith noted, back in March, our 'sensibilities about the future are becoming pretty warped ... as extreme events and equally extreme hyperbole in between them confuse our ability to model possible futures well.' Anything is possible, with chaos and complexity increasingly accepted as the operating parameters of a 'new normal'. One way or another, we're in Black Swan country.
In this context, Superflux works with clients to explore their 'unknown unknowns', examining the space for new or alternative products, hybrids of products and services, and entirely new modes of business activity. Before taking a closer look at some of the specific details of this proposition, I feel it's important to clarify that when we talk about the future, this isn't something that comes at the expense of the present. Instead, the aim is to widen perspectives – challenging the tacit assumption that the future will necessarily resemble 'business-as-usual' – and not to provide next week's lottery numbers.
When we talk about the future, we are expressing our interest in the processes and dynamics that shape the present moment: in the tools and products we use, the things we experience, the ways we think about ourselves, and the world we inhabit. As Katherine Hayles notes in her essay, 'Computing the Human':
'Nothing is more problematic than predicting the future. If the record of past predictions is any guide, the one thing we can know for sure is that when the future arrives, it will be different from the future we expected. Instructed by the pandemic failure to project accurately very far into the future, my interest is not to engage in this kind of speculation but rather to explore the influence that such predictions have on our present concepts.'
With prediction off the table, how can we create, sustain and – ultimately – scale new products and services? What strategies play well with a wider environment of risk and volatility? How can companies and organisations engineer their ideas, practices, and values to meet the challenges and dilemmas of these uncertain times? Is there a way of doing business that's not fundamentally risk-averse, but risk-open?
One (rare) example of a company adept at long term thinking is Amazon. Jeff Bezos, the company's CEO, describes the organisation as a group of 'cultural pioneers', continually disrupting their own business model to ensure continual innovation. In an article for Forbes, long-form blogger Venkatesh Rao pays homage to Amazon's Machiavellian genius:
'The entire company operates with what you might call a game mind. Not a product-building mind, not a marketing mind, not a sales mind. The key to a great game mind is having a preternatural ability to figure out which game to play, against which opponent ... To have a game-mind is to be detached from the specifics of your business as it exists today. If you can look at your own roaring rivers of cash today with a dispassionate eye, not get attached to the great things you’ve built or achieved, and clinically ask yourself, what’s the next game?, you’ve got a game-mind.'
In his interview with Wired, Bezos expands on this mindset, explaining some of his unyielding focus on the long term:
'If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing to do that. Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavours that you could never otherwise pursue. At Amazon we like things to work in five to seven years. We’re willing to plant seeds, let them grow—and we’re very stubborn. We say we’re stubborn on vision and flexible on details.'
STUBBORN ON VISION, FLEXIBLE ON DETAILS:
It could be argued that there are already several foresight and futures organisations producing trend and foresight reports for private clients. What, as a design studio, can we offer in the way of value? Where do our interests lie, and what do those who work with us – as clients or collaborators – take from the experience?
Team Superflux is a network of designers, strategists, makers, futurists, and technologists. We work with uncertainty, deploying a set of tools and methods that allow us to provide the maximum value for clients with a minimum investment of time and resources. For us, the 'game mind' of long term thinking is not radical, but a necessary part of doing business in the twenty-first century. It is a way of approaching the world, an ethical responsibility, and a capacity that lends your activities a competitive edge. Cast-iron predictions are impossible but, led by signals, forecasts and drivers, iterative prototyping can provide a unique springboard for invention and design.
Enter design futurescaping– the short tail of long term thinking. Embracing risk and volatility, we lever our existing expertise in foresight, design, and technology, to help prototype new ideas. Working with clients to produce a shared inventory of possibilities, we filter the relevant variables into a set of scenarios, prototypes, and experiences; allowing stakeholders to appreciate the full impact and workings of their proposals.
DESIGN FUTURESCAPING WORKSHOPS
We prefer to get involved early in the project cycle, working with the client to draft an initial brief. Previously, we've worked in areas as diverse as neural retinal prostheses (scenarios, invention and design), platforms for informal services in 'smart cities' within India, strategic scenarios for the future of Emirati families, and the invention of domestic product systems for the internet-of-things.
Within the frameworks of design futurescaping, we focus in on:
1. The uncertainties within the field
Identifying key uncertainties and drivers of change, we work with workshop participants to unpick interconnections and map the systemic properties of the field.
2. Existing business models and alternative opportunities
Without understanding the client's existing activities, it can be difficult to instigate a sense of 'risk-openness'. Behavioural change needs to be cultivated, with support from the upper echelons of the organisation. By comparing our map of key uncertainties and weak signals with current business models, we can start to plot a way forward – building a strategy that works with the client's existing structures, culture and values, focusing on manageable change in the service of long-term goals.
3. The range of stakeholders (broadly defined)
Who are the people who will be on the front-line of these new business models and strategies? Ideally, we like early involvement from 'end-users', and aim to include insights from a range of stakeholders: business leads, technologists, product/service managers, researchers, and even manufacturers.
STRUCTURE, TOOLS, PARTICIPANTS
Usually, we kick off with a two-day intensive workshop, lead by two members of the Superflux team; one of the co-founders (Jon or Anab), and an associate with domain-specific expertise (designer, technologist, futurist). From the client's side, we try to involve the key stakeholders and decision-makers, alongside anyone with relevant interests, or prior experience in the area under consideration.
We work closely with the client to prepare initial materials for the workshop – including maps, quotes, pictures, videos, case studies of existing projects, lego, and physical artifacts. These items provide an anchor for participation, allowing all the participants to get involved, regardless of their level of pre-existing knowledge. Though the precise combination of tools and initial materials depends on the nature of the client and project, we find this default structure works well.
Armed with workshop materials, we begin with a round of annotation as an icebreaker, getting all the participants talking, reflecting, and contributing to the 'flow' of ideas. As we reflect and cluster the materials and concepts, we begin to derive a set of questions, which – taken together – structure the scope and outermost boundaries of the project. At this stage, these questions are extremely important, creating the space for fresh ideas. By the end of the first day, we will have identified 2-6 key areas of inquiry.
By day two, participants have started to narrow down on the themes they want to explore in greater detail. Breaking into smaller groups, we draw on our design methods toolkits, turning these emergent themes and ideas into stories, sketches, prototypes and diagrams. We believe it's particularly important to involve the key stakeholders in the making and prototyping – processes that, by their nature, tend to highlight things that might otherwise be missed, surfacing hidden assumptions and legacy futures.
These rough, iterative prototypes can be seen as a way of turning 'uncertain / risky / invisible / speculative' ideas into something more concrete and tactile. Participants will use the outputs of their making to depict a set of possible near-future situations and narrative fragments. Where do these products and services fit into the larger business ecosystem, and the user's daily life? Is there anything we're missing?
By the end of the afternoon, a set of new proposals will have started to take shape, allowing the participants to grapple with the full range of factors and drivers influencing both their project and the environment within which they are operating. By the end of the workshop process, they are primed to begin thinking about immediate challenges, use case scenarios, potential sites of conflict, and longer term opportunities and threats.
DELIVERABLES:
Once we've finished delivering the workshop, we spend 2-3 days turning the final proposals into a set of documents for circulation – which could be a compilation of workshop insights, a set of micro-briefs and future project trajectories. The clients will often use these documents to develop further internal strategy and product development, conduct exploratory user or market research, or communicate the key concepts to other sectors of their organisation, external partners, and investors. While we are often involved in further design development activities, it is entirely possible that the clients will have taken from the workshop process whatever insights they needed to move forward.
If you are interested in finding out more, drop us a line, and we'll organise a chai and a chat!
