Three Dimensions of Foresight

THREe dimensions
of foresight
Stuart Candy, PhD
Director, Situation Lab
Associate Professor of Design
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA
#FromTheFutures
Columbia DSL
April 09, 02020
@futuryst / futuryst.blogspot.com
@sitlab / situationlab.org

Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall, CMU, Pittsburgh PA

“In a time of extreme change, From the
Futures attempts to collectively make sense of the
present, through the shared imagining and
prototyping of a better tomorrow.”
Source: fromthefutures.org

“Instead of just hoping to return to our old normal,
what would it mean to collectively muster our
courage, creativity and resilience to make the
futures we envision a reality?”
Source: fromthefutures.org

Most of us have extensive experience
with science / speculative fiction
images of the future

We could have a very interesting
conversation about the ways in which
these stories do and do not prepare us
to navigate actual change in the world

The field of futures studies or foresight
has emerged over the past half century
to tackle the challenges of thinking
more effectively about various possible
worlds that might actually come about

It has a more academic side
(e.g. understanding the “images of the
future” people carry and how these
influence action), and an applied side
(e.g. understanding how to help
organisations, companies and communities
of all kinds navigate change)

The best futurists I know are usually
interested and involved in both

Over the past decade and half, building on this
foundation, my colleagues and I have been
developing new theories and practices that bridge in
particular to media, the arts and design…

Experiential futures:
“the design of situations and stuff from the
future to catalyse insight and change”
See: Candy & Dunagan (2017). Designing an Experiential Scenario, Futures, 86: 136-153

Experiential futures
Stuff Situations
@futuryst / thx @gregvan
Design fiction;
Speculative and Critical design
Immersive scenarios; Roleplaying
and simulation

Today I’ll introduce futures/foresight in general,
and experiential futures in particular,
by talking about three kinds of thought
that these practices call for

1. Difference
2. Depth
3. Diversity

The first dimension is addressing that the
future context is not the same
as the present context

Everything that exists once did not.
Everything that currently exists one day
will no longer.

Pace layers diagram: Brand (01999). The Clock of the Long Now

Source: Beja & Lorente (2011). The constructal law origin of the
logistics S curve. Journal of Applied Physics 110, 024901-2.

Yet often we think in terms of whatever
is going on in the present,
just extended indefinitely

An alternative approach is to look for
seeds of change in the present and
imagine them growing into something
more significant

Example: Coral Cross
See: Candy (2020). When Reality Outruns Imagination
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-reality-outruns-imagination-stuart-candy/

The first serious game funded
by the CDC, Coral Cross (2009) was
an alternate reality game commissioned
by the Hawaii Department of Health
to support pandemic preparedness

Design: Matthew Jensen for HRCFS, 2009

Designed in late 2008 / early 2009 (early in
the days of social media), the story was based
on a flu pandemic set 2-3 years into the
future, and it imagined an effective peer-to-
peer emergency response in the islands,
coordinated on social media through an
(imaginary) organisation, Coral Cross

Shockingly, just weeks before the scheduled
launch of this painstakingly designed
pandemic preparedness alternate reality
game, there was an actual pandemic, the first
in over 40 years (H1N1 swine flu)

We retooled the project as an “emergent
reality game.” Since the pandemic was real,
Coral Cross had to be as well…

This story helps make the point about the
dimension of difference in two ways:

1. Imagining then-nascent social media
platforms as a seed of positive community
change was a way to try telling a story about a
different future

2. The future is almost never what you expect!
(even when you’re actively anticipating it)

Example: NaturePod™
See: Candy (2016). NaturePod™ https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/05/naturepod.html

With a group of graduate students,*
we created a hypothetical product and
launched it as if it were real, at Canada’s largest
architecture and interior design show
* Situation Lab team at OCAD University (2015), Toronto: Bergur Ebbi Benediktsson, Nourhan Hegazy, Jennifer McDougall, and Prateeksha Singh

NaturePod™ (2015) put together the vogue for
“biophilic architecture” with the march of
screens into every aspect of our lives, taking
both to their logical (?) conclusion

Photo: NaturePod | Connie Tsang for Situation Lab

Difference
The future is another place.

Source: Schacter and Addis (2007). Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 362, 773–786
elaboration of past and future events
past events future events

We use our experiences from the past
to navigate change

Raising the theoretical possibility of a
different future is not enough

Here’s how the world’s top climate
scientists have tried to get the world’s
top decision-makers to take climate
disruption seriously

While this is what’s at stake…

There is an ‘experiential gulf’
between how we typically
represent/narrate futures
for serious purposes, and
what real situations feel like
on the ground

Thinking about change in the abstract,
at a high level, is one thing. But how
might we get under the skin?

If we want hypotheticals to make a real
difference, we need to experience that
difference for real

Example: Plastic Century
See: Dunagan (2010). Our Plastic Century. http://www.iftf.org/future-now/article-detail/our-plastic-century/

Plastic has in recent years become a kind of mini
environmental cause célèbre. A decade ago, for the
hundredth anniversary of mass plastic production,
we* did an installation at the California Academy of
Sciences to help put this issue on people’s radars.
* Stuart Candy, Jake Dunagan, Wallace J Nichols and Sarah Kornfeld

Image credit:
Plastic Century |
Candy, Dunagan,
Kornfeld, & Nichols, 2010

How to make the historical reality of
exponentially increasing plastic, and the
disturbing forecast (expected production
2010-2030 exceeding total ever
produced 1910-2010) register with
people at a gut level?

Photo: Plastic Century | Mike Estee, 2010

Photos: Plastic Century | Mike Estee, 2010

Tool: The Experiential Futures Ladder
See: Candy & Dunagan (2017), Designing an Experiential Scenario, Futures, 86: 136-153

Experiences
Objects
@futuryst 2020
Stories
Ideas
ABSTRACT
CONCRETE
WHAT FUTURES
HAS TRADITIONALLY
BEEN GOOD AT
WHAT DESIGN
HAS TRADITIONALLY
BEEN GOOD AT

Situations
ABSTRACT
CONCRETE
Stuff
The Experiential Futures Ladder
@futuryst 2017
EXPERIENTIAL
GULF
Scenarios
Settings KINDS OF FUTURE;
VAGUE DESCRIPTIONS
SPECIFIC FUTURE
HISTORIES OR STATES
1:1-SCALE, VISITABLE
REPRESENTATIONS OF TIME
AND PLACE
ARTIFACTS OR
MATERIAL INSTANTIATIONS

Depth
Any future that we get
will be as real and complex
as the present is.

But there is still another
essential dimension…

Many of us have inherited a linear
conception of time, and think the task is
to work out what “the future” holds

the present
time à
the futurethe past
@futuryst

But: any single image of the future,
no matter how compelling,
is incomplete

“History is merely a list of surprises.
It can only prepare us to be surprised
yet again.”
– Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick

A key to
investigating real-life futures
is hiding in plain sight

@futuryst
(after Minkowski, Hancock & Bezold, Voros, and others)
the present
moment
time à
futureS

There are lots of different generative
processes and frameworks; ways of
generating scenario sets

Source:
GBN
(1992).
Deeper
News 7(1)

Source: Jon Worth Euroblog,
Brexit Diagram Series 3, v. 21,
19.9.2019, 21h30
brexitdiagram.files.wordpress
.com/2019/09/brexit-
what-next-21.png (CC-SA)

Collapse
Transform
Discipline
Grow

How may this idea of diversity or plurality
of possible futures be used in practice?

Example: Hawaii 2050
See: Candy (2016). Ghosts of Futures Past. https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/08/ghosts-of-futures-past.html

A scenario from “Hawaii 2050”
Source: Candy, Dator, & Dunagan (2006). Four Futures for Hawaii 2050. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253641086

To help kick off a public conversation and a process
intended to co-create a sustainability plan for
Hawaii (in 2006), we* turned four written scenarios
about the islands in the year 2050 into four
experiential scenarios for 500+ people to inhabit
* Stuart Candy and Jake Dunagan, then at Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies, with a team of designers, improv actors and volunteers

Source: Stuart Candy / Hawaii Research Center
for Futures Studies 2006. Photos: Cyrus Camp

the present
moment
time à
@futuryst
(after Minkowski, Hancock & Bezold, Voros, and others)

Example: The Time Machine
See: Candy (2013) in Briggs, ed. 72 Assignments. Paris: PCA Press. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305333152

The Time Machine is an experiential futures approach for art, design, and foresight
practitioners and learners to create a room-scale experience from the future.
Developed / deployed to date at:
• Carnegie Mellon University
• North Carolina State University, Durham NC
• CEDIM, Mexico City
• OCAD University, Toronto
• California College of the Arts, San Francisco
• National University of Singapore

Any changed future world would manifest
in countless rooms within that world

A Time Machine is a room created to make it
possible to visit and immerse in a future world

How can you make use of this principle
now? Especially since, in your teams,
you’ll be telling one story rather than a
whole set

1. Make your future different from the
future stories that you are
most used to seeing

2. Ideate diversely before you
choose what to do
(diverge before converging)

Diversity
The future is always multiple
potentials, not just one

Tool: The Thing From The Future
See: Candy (2018), “Gaming Futures Literacy.” In Miller, ed. Transforming the Future. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312016855

The Thing From The Future is a card game for scaffolding imagination,
discussion and prototyping of specific things from countless alternative
futures. Co-designed with Jeff Watson (USC).
Deployed to date, for example, at:
• International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Geneva
• Museum of Tomorrow, Rio de Janeiro
• Nesta’s FutureFest, London
• UNDP, New York
• UNESCO, Paris
• Cook Inlet Tribal Council, Alaska
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• New York University
• The INK Conference, India
• Maker Festival, Toronto
• IDEO
• Dropbox (…and many more)

governance
future
there is a related to
what is it?
monumentjoyful
In a
#FutureThing by Stuart Candy and Jeff Watson | @sitlab 2018

governance
related to
what is it?
monumentjoyful
In a
future
there is a

THE FAMILY
future
there is a related to
what is it?
DEVICEFEMINIST
In a

THE FAMILY
what is it?
DEVICEFEMINIST
future
related toIn a there is a

The structure works and is infinitely
customisable – whether or not you
have the card deck

{THEME}
what is it?
{THING}{KIND OFfuture}
future
related toIn an there is a

First dimension: Difference.
The future is another place.
Look for seeds of change that could be really
transformative if they were to grow

Second dimension: Depth.
Any future that we get
will be as real and complex
as the present is.
We must try to not just think, but also feel,
our way into these future conditions,
to grapple with them effectively

Third dimension: Diversity.
The future is always multiple
potentials, not just one.
Look for something new and valuable
to bring to the ecology of thinkable futures

And futures imagined with
Difference, Depth, and Diversity
enable a fourth D:
Design

We can’t exercise wiser choices
without alternatives.
We won’t discern alternatives
without looking for them.

Not just successful organisation-
level navigation of change, but our
collective future as a species,
depends on using our capacity to
imagine worlds together –
“social foresight”
See: Candy (2010), The Futures of Everyday Life. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305280378

The risks of not having these
competencies built into our
societies and institutions are
increasingly obvious

At the same time, the huge upside
potential of making these ways of
thinking and designing normal is
only just starting to be seen

thanks
谢谢
gracias
‫ﺷ‬‫ﻛ‬‫ر‬‫ا‬
Хвала
ありがとう
terima kasih
@futuryst @sitlab
futuryst.blogspot.com

Three Dimensions of Foresight

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