Future gazing scenarios at the Design Council
we are:london attended a Design Council event yesterday evening. Dr. Alex King, project leader at the government’s Horizon Scanning Centre gave a fascinating talk about supporting Governmental policy making through the use of scenarios. An ambition of the Horizon Scanning Centre was to consider what would happen to the effectiveness of policies should “assumptions about the future turn out to be falseâ€. Policies are designed to work in specific conditions – Dr. King looked at what would happen if those conditions changed.
Four future scenarios were presented that represented possible societies following a major global economic disaster. Each varied along 2 axes; an open vs. closed society, and a society built around individuality vs. collectivism.
The scenarios described variations in societal characteristics such as job security, innovation, centralised and decentralised control, globalism etc. All were recognizable and plausible, some less desirable than others. Dr. King introduced the scenarios and then described how 5 real government policies stacked up against them. The result was revealing. Some polices would fail terribly should society veer towards an ‘individual-closed’ scenario. Policies faired better if a society veered towards ‘open-collective’ scenario.
A comment from the audience was insightful – we can’t predict the future, therefore the most effective approach to design is to build-in flexibility and adaptability. This didn’t make the scenarios redundant but highlighted their true value. In the context of policy-making they might not change the way we design but we’re thankful that someone has at least thought through possible variations in the context of use.
Scenarios are design tools – central to the User-Centred Design process. I call them ‘models of the things end-users want to do’ (to go with personas – models of the user and prototypes – models of the experience). Scenarios do something important – they ensure decisions are explicit rather than tacit. Informed design supports the creation of products that are better matched to end-user needs.
The future society scenarios presented yesterday were higher-level than those we use in our design projects but support the same goal – to encourage informed decision-making.