Benedikt Groß and Eileen Mandir
Speculation, Critique, Innovation – What is Design Futuring? Perspectives on a new practice for designers
«Futuring defines a collective and individual disposition, a mission and the organizing of principles of practices. At its most obvious, it means giving the self a future. In this respect good design is futuring».
(Tony Fry)
As the complexity of our world is becoming more and more obvious, the demand for tools to think about, better understand and imagine preferable futures is growing. This opens up a new field of action for designers: Design Futuring. But how can we teach this in a methodical and robust creative process?
The intersection of Design and Futuring is an emerging field for designers. In this new role designers have to enable stakeholders from all areas of society to imagine and negotiate different (desirable) futures using the tools of design. By designing future scenarios that are tangible, experiential and imaginable in order to motivate decision makers from business, politics and society to take action.
Eileen Mandir and Benedikt Groß authored the book “Zukünfte gestalten” to offer designers an entry door into this new realm of design (published in October 2022, English edition will be available by ca. August 2024).
In a structured creative process, various thinking tools enable an analytical and systematic examination of many different future scenarios. Different creativity methods expand the imagination for »better« future scenarios that portray everyday life of ordinary people.
Because there is no seemingly inevitable future.
In their talk Eileen and Benedikt will present an introduction to the field of design futuring and reflect on some of the key ideas of their book:
Our world is complex and difficult to understand.
The task of designers is shifting towards strategy development.
Designers take on a new role as mediators between research and politics, society.
Designers need new methods from futures research in order to be able to negotiate futures.
With Design Futuring, designers can design future scenarios to generate a discourse on various future visions. These future scenarios enable the participants not only to imagine one future, but to imagine, discuss and negotiate many desirable futures.
Benedikt Groß is a speculative and computational designer who works antidisciplinarily. He is a professor of Strategic and Interaction Design at the HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd. His work deals with the fascination of relationships between people, their data, technology and environments. He is particularly interested to speculate about these relationships in the near future. He uses design as a vehicle to visualize potential implications and scenarios.
Eileen Mandir combines her experiences in design, engineering and coaching to create discourse and change – for people, systems and organizations.
She is Professor for Systemic Design at the Faculty of Design at the University of Applied Sciences Munich.
13.03.2024 – h 17.30
Room B2.1.16
You can attend the seminar online at https://politecnicomilano.webex.com/meet/francesco.guida