Service Design Show Uncovering The Futures Blind Spot in Service Design / Lucy Kimbell / Episode #257
Jul 2, 2026
Lucy Kimbell, Professor of contemporary design practices at Central Saint Martins and author researching futures for professionalised design. She explores the 'futures blind spot' in design. Short takes on design autopilot and its human costs. Talks uncertainties and scenario methods. Highlights weak signals like cooperative AI and offers ways to build everyday futures literacy in teams.
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The Futures Blind Spot In Design
- Designers often omit applying futures thinking to their own profession, focusing instead on clients' domains like healthcare or education.
- Lucy Kimbell calls this a "futures blind spot" and urges reflexivity about where the design field itself is heading over a decade.
How Quantification Reshapes Design Work
- Quantification and financialization reshape professional life by turning aspects of experience into metrics and future value.
- Lucy links surveillance-capitalist tracking and futures markets to stress, disconnection, and decisions driven by measurable outputs.
Use Scenarios To Test Today's Decisions
- Use structured futures methods to map uncertainties and build plausible scenarios for professionalised design in 2035.
- Lucy recommends Oxford scenarios methodology and interviews, then translating scenarios into implications for leaders, students, and teams.
