Futures Thinking – Where are we?
In the words of Stuart Candy (Candy 2018) “Amid pervasive uncertainty and accelerating change, one of our great challenges, and opportunities, is to make high quality engagement with the yet-to-be, more widespread.”
Obfuscating Futures Thinking
One hurdle for Futures currently is that it goes by many different names. For the sake of this site and the research I undertake, I use the term Futures Thinking. In the graph below there’s a strong awareness to the term Strategic Foresight from a recent online survey (September 2019). While this has been used interchangeably with Futures Thinking it does have some grounding in the political arena, for this reason I elected to use Futures Thinking which ranked second strongest in the response.
Let’s get familiar — Some terms in use for ‘Futures’
Have you used or participated in any methods of Futures Thinking in your practice?
The same online survey conducted by FHbD indicated only about a 1/3 of designers (with over 10 years experience) have regularly used any type of Futures Thinking techniques.
Would you like to learn more about Futures Thinking and how to apply it in your practice?
However, 85% of responders want to learn more about Futures Thinking and discover how to apply it in their practice.
What steps would you take to start learning about Futures Thinking?
Yet the the most voted way for these designers to acquire knowledge of Futures is through Google Search. This shows that though there is curiosity, even a drive, to learn about Futures, people are perhaps not learning it in the best manner.
Future Human by Design was created to help designers become more engaged with Futures Thinking and anticipatory methods to apply within their practice. By consolidating diaspora information from the Futures field, this site will, I hope, offer a good cross section of information and directions for their next steps in this journey.
Over the short term FHbD will be adding links to external resources for Futures learning to help centralise options for learning.
Bibliography
Candy, S. 2018. Gaming futures literacy: The Thing From The Future. In: Miller, R. (ed.) Transforming the Future: Anticipation in the 21st Century. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.