Interview with We Create Futures
Cluster Crafts is pleased to invite strategic innovation, futures and foresight practice We Create Futures to our journal. Forming new combinations of design, research and strategic foresight, hear from founder and CEO Chris Jackson as he unfolds some insights as to how such tools can aid the development of regenerative futures, and build upon projects that support sustainable future scenarios both across the design sector and wider community.
Experiential Futures Workshop - Image credit: Jen Hadley
Innovative strategic foresight are aspects that can feed into the design community. Are such points integral to advancing the future of design and what would you like to see more of from the design community?
All industries are going through a period of introspection and soul-searching in the current global climate. Interrogating the past means rethinking and reimagining how the future(s) might look. The design industry is experiencing this, alongside other challenges, such as the closing of design education courses.
What exactly is strategic foresight?
Strategic foresight is the process of using phenomena of the past and present to think about the future. This process can include examining macrohistory or using trends and signals of change to explore future possibilities. Strategic Foresight evolves from a more scientific and predictive point-of-view with iconic practices growing in places like Shell Oil and the RAND Corporation. Futures studies and futures thinking is a more overarching and holistic approach to the study of the futures, exploring emergence and unpredictability to orient towards desirable futures. There is also a movement towards anticipatory systems through the works of Riel Miller and UNESCO, and although there are overlaps between these practices, they also have their distinct voices, approaches and opinions.
The futures movement is growing as different practitioners come into the field, from design, social science and also from different cultural backgrounds. They bring with them points of view and practices that challenge a lot of western-style thinking, growing new approaches and methods in the process - which we think is very exciting.
Via We Create Futures
The desire and need for more equitable and regenerative futures is ever present in today's society. We'd love to hear how We Create Futures helps navigate those interested in creative strategy and sustainable futures? What aspects do you see class a future scenario / project under these terms?
This is an interesting question, as it's not our job to be deterministic in what the people we work with produce. Inevitably, when people are dealing with significant drivers of change, such as climate change, these emerge as concerns and challenges through the process. We also work with clients naturally drawn to these ways of thinking and broader concepts. We choose our clients carefully, and our principles guide who we work with whose briefs we politely decline.
Our job is to help people think more critically and creatively about the future, using the collective intelligence of the organisation as a sensor network to feel and see things in new ways. We act as navigators for this process, but our role is also to reveal truths about the organisation that require addressing to realise new strategies or approaches.
What is needed within the creative design community to strengthen and diversify the network in sustainable ways? Does strategic research and long term future planning have a role to play here?
Community is the operative word. It seems counter-intuitive, but I believe that the pandemic has catalysed people and communities to be more collaborative and supportive toward each other. Maybe this is particular to New Zealand, but it appears people are making many more digital connections and communities of practice are finding ways to amplify their voices and connect to more like-minded people all over the globe.
The work we do is not about long-term planning. It's about exploring the future in longer timelines, alongside planning and action in short cycles, while fostering an organisational ability to scan the environment for novelty and emergence. Strategy is an iterative process, as well as being a plan. Setting a long-term plan is where people make mistakes, as they ignore what's happening around them in their dogma to execute the plan.
We Create Futures covers four main elements of Strategy + Planning, Strategic Foresight + Future Studies, Research + Insight and Strategic Design + Delivery. How do each of these aspects aid in the development of design thinking?
They all overlap and intersect. Research is about increasing situational awareness, which is a critical part of the strategy cycle. Futures Studies uses scanning to raise situational awareness, but to also project into the future to think about probable, possible, plausible and preposterous futures. Thinking creatively and asking what if? helps to build more robust strategies and triggers things we can do in the present to make a desirable future most likely. Strategic Design and Innovation then help create projects, initiatives and gameplay, to move in a specific direction.
We try and avoid design thinking in our practice. It's a term that has credence but increasingly holds less relevance for us as we deal with complex domains where design thinking tools are not appropriate.
What advice can you offer for designers out there and the value of exploring such tools when developing new concepts?
I think the most value is in thinking critically about your work. Design has changed a lot since I graduated from University. The ethics of design are increasingly being questioned. From what I can see, thinking in systems about what we create has never been at the forefront of the minds of young designers as it is today.
I believe designers should look at fostering new practices built on existing ones and move beyond some of the limits of what we perceive contemporary design to be.
What does the future hold for We Create Futures?
As we tell clients, the future can't be predicted, but we can be better prepared for what the future may throw at us. We are always looking for novelty and new opportunities as we develop our business. We are only two years old, so we're still evolving our approaches, tools and collaborations. Although we face a lot of uncertainty in the current environment, we're optimistic about the future and look forward to working with clients who are committed to making positive change within and through their organisations.
Chris Jackson - IDSA - Industrial Designers Society of America - International Design Conference
We recently discovered Kelly Ann McKerchers' Co-design club, a community of practitioners to provide practice & support in response to COVID-19. What organisations have you seen that focus on social engagement and environmental concerns? What key insights have you seen?
I'm fortunate that I know both Kelly Ann and Emma, so it's been great to see the success they are having with the co-design club, even though it's in its early stages. Kelly Ann has also recently launched a very well-received book about co-design, so I'd recommend people go out and find "Beyond Sticky notes".
One of the most prominent examples of social design in New Zealand is the Auckland Co-design lab. Penny Hagen currently directs it and they have great practitioners in there like Angie Tangaere, developing place-based and culturally-oriented design methods to work for the local context and community.
Via We Create Futures
As a judge on the panel for Next Generation Foresight (NGFP), how do awards such as this support practitioners to build innovative concepts for the future? What benefits can be found from these networks and what role does diversification play in expanding strategic foresight practitioners?
In the case of NGFP One of the most important things is that it gives them some capital to develop an idea which may be at the periphery or overlaps of practice. It also connects them to other similar innovators and a network of luminaries who are either judges or previous winners of the prizes. One of the most important things for me about NGFP is that it strives for inclusion and diversity in its criteria, reflected in the entrants and winners.
As mentioned before, inviting other disciplines into foresight to broaden the field and build new practices on what already exists is essential to creating a more resilient practice fit for the challenges of the present-day and future.
Via We create Futures
Neri Oxman' Material Ecology' at MoMa displays alternate ways of thinking about materials, objects and new frameworks creating new possibilities for the future. Exploring material science and digital fabrication technologies, we're keen to hear your thoughts on how exhibitions tackling complex concepts can increase accessibility and awareness for designing better futures?
I have a lot of issues holding up American institutions with any form of aspirational qualities. I used to admire Oxman's work, but I now can't separate it from MIT's affiliations and funding from Jeffrey Epstein. The freedoms, opportunities and reputations of many of these organisations rely on this type of financing or from ethically questionable business practices. At the very least, practices that lack integrity - which we have experienced first-hand recently.
I think physical exhibitions are fantastic, but their audience is limited to who can attend and often, who can pay for that privilege. One of my favourite shows that I saw last year was at the Museum of Art and Science in Singapore. "Futures Imagined" included a bespoke version of Superflux's "Mitigation of Shock". This approach is an excellent example of Experiential Futures, where you are transported into a room in an apartment in Singapore in 2219 after many catastrophic climate change events. You experience how people in the apartment are living, brought to life by considered details, such as a government radio broadcast. A brilliant experience, but again, one I could only experience due to a lot of privilege.
How we get around this is probably a multi-pronged attack, but I think immediately many people will be shouting "VR" - but I don't think technology is the solution to any problem.
Experiential Futures Workshop - Image credit: Jen Hadley
We're interested to hear your thoughts on planet-centric design and the role of the designer and how design thinking can aid innovation and growth in the industry?
If anything, growth could be the last thing we need anywhere. Growth of uptake, conceptually - but this is one of the challenges and potential paradoxes of things like regeneration - for it to create a paradigm shift, it needs to affect industries at a commercial level. In doing this, is it contradicting the very thing it aims to disrupt?
At the most basic level, none of these ideas are new, but like many other things, western practitioners are "rediscovering" them.
I was speaking to an indigenous futures practitioner only this week, who was talking about how first-nations concepts about the future don't need rediscovering, we need to make space for them. I think that's an excellent way to think about planet-centric or more-than-human centred design. We need to be led by others and use our privilege to make space for thinking, conversations and actions that follow.
Does more emphasis need to be placed in design education on concepts around future planning and strategic thinking? How might this look?
What I'm personally disappointed in is how the language and practices of design thinking seem to have been taken on by many universities as the default way to teach design. There appears to be a perspective that all designers use the same process and by teaching the same process, all designers can design anything. I think design schools often set their students up to fail by continually telling them how fantastic they are and that design can solve any problems.
Design thinking is the ultimate hammer looking for a nail. There seems to be an increasing number of hammer-wielders out there.
I think the most exciting developments in design are in non-traditional design settings, such as social innovation and futures practice. Here people are developing new approaches that build on design practice but are more inclusive and dynamic while acknowledging systems and complexity.
Maybe in such a fast-moving environment, we shouldn't expect educational institutions to be at the forefront of design practice, especially as tertiary institutions face such severe cut-backs, and subjects, like design, are increasingly defunded.
Thank you for reading,
Cluster Team
Foresight and Strategy Practice
We Create Futures - www.wecreatefutures.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/futureswecreate
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wecreatefutures
Career Coaching for Designers and Creatives
The Strategic Switch - www.thestrategicswitch.com
https://www.instagram.com/thestrategicswitch/