Futures Prototyping: A menu
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✹ Project: A framework of approaches for Futures Prototyping, which explores different routes to making abstract visions of the future tangible and experiential
✦ Methods: Design research, futures thinking, prototyping
✦ Collaborators: Falay Transition Design
✦ Year: 2024
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The majority of our work at Falay Transition Design deals with the ambiguity of the future. But working with the future inevitably comes with some level of uncertainty and abstractness. After all, how can we understand and experience something which doesn’t exist yet?
Drawing on my background in service design and systems thinking, alongside the work we do at Falay, we’ve been developing a framework called Futures Prototyping. This approach helps us explore ways to make abstract visions of the future more concrete and tangible, so they can be experienced in the present, even if they don’t exist yet. It’s about bringing the future closer to today.
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To guide a Futures Prototyping process across different contexts, we crafted a set of approaches centered around two main questions:
Is your goal to generate insights that encourage critical thinking, imagination, and development, or are you looking to strategically drive and accelerate transitions?
And are you focusing on a specific aspect of the future—like a product, service, or material innovation—or taking a broader view of the larger systemic context this innovation will exist within?
These questions help tailor the approach to meet specific needs and objectives.
Alongside these pathways, we’ve collected a rich and diverse library of case studies (including our own work and other fantastic projects that touch on Futures Prototyping), and have developed some workshop canvases to support teams in planning their Futures Prototyping journey and objectives. We launched these in a lecture and workshop with VTT’s IBEX teams in February 2024.
Read more about the menu at our blog post here.
