"Future Cultures" authors Scott Smith and Susan Cox-Smith discuss integrating strategic futures thinking into organizations, emphasizing mapping current networks and cultivating diverse champions. Starting small with regular gatherings and writing future scenarios are recommended tactics. Their book provides a methodical guide for leadership to adopt prospective practices tailored to their existing culture. It emphasizes starting small, embedding foresight into operations, and building demand for innovation and resilience.

This episode is a Digest from General Seminar S04E04 where we went into some Circular Economy Futures and found a bunch of stuff to help us more tangibly imagine what these futures could feel like. https://generalseminar.com

Gemma Jones from School of Critical Design discusses their excitement about developing toolkits and methods in future, speculative, and critical design. They also talk about the challenges of using design methods in organizational contexts and the importance of engagement, collaboration, and coordination within the School of Critical Design.

Last Week from the Near Future Laboratory Episode 002 The Show where we look at some highlights from, you know _ Last Week in the Near Future Laboratory Let’s Go! 1.    • Daniel Schmachtenberger l An introduc...   2. https://www.futures-in-maps.com/san-t... 3. https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/... 4. https://aw.network/2023 5. https://uxdesign.cc/a-smart-home-is-o... 5.5 https://lamemage.com/microscope/ 6. https://github.com/srspear/scifitropes 7. https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-image... 8. https://www.designfictiondaily.com/p/... 9. The Work Kit of Design Fiction Digital Edition Test Session https://lu.ma/8xk3dkql 10. https://daydreambelievers.co.uk/https://vimeo.com/870581365

Episode 076 is a discussion with Jan Rod and Kenta Kondo from IDEO Tokyo sharing their Project Inari in which created a sushi box as Design Fiction artifact. They collectively imagined a future that considers and reflects upon sustainable harvesting and issues of food security. It is a public project that also served to allow IDEO to explore how Design Fiction can be brought to bear to help clients make sense of their possible futures, whether food futures or any other topic. Chesterbot 🤖 Says 👇🏽 "confidence": 0.9519705766608136 IDEO designers Jan Rod and Kenta Kondo in Tokyo created a fictional sushi box to explore food security. They made an uncanny metal box resembling disposable supermarket packaging. Inside were sushi pieces they crafted. Details like powdered condiments provoked questions about the fictional 2027 world. Through workshops, the box aligned perspectives on food systems. It activated imagination beyond abstract concepts. "question": "What was the main purpose of this conversation?", "answer": "The main purpose of this conversation was to discuss how design fiction and props like the fictional sushi box can help organizations explore potential future problems and spark imagination and alignment among diverse stakeholders. The guests spoke about their experience using a fictional sushi box prop in workshops to get participants to think about future challenges around food systems." "question": How does the topic help people imagine more thoroughly the contingencies and challenges to be faced in the future? "answer": The topic of using design fiction and props helps people imagine future challenges and contingencies more thoroughly in the following ways: - The fictional sushi box created a tangible artifact that participants could examine and discuss. This helped ground the speculation in a concrete object. - The highly detailed prop packaging and labels sparked participants' imaginations about how future food systems might evolve. - The familiarity of sushi helped participants project their thinking into the future starting from something they knew. - The prop provided a shared reference point for workshop participants from different backgrounds to discuss future implications. "question": "What are five key take-aways from this presentation?", "answer": "Five key take-aways from this presentation are: 1. Design fiction uses props and artifacts to help imagine future scenarios, not propose solutions. 2. Tangible props can align stakeholders by creating a shared object to spark discussion. 3. Design fiction aims to explore future problems worth solving, not just extrapolate the past. 4. Making design fiction practices mainstream involves connecting them to company innovation processes. 5. Detailed props provoke questions about future contingencies and implications." "question": "What's a good summary of this conversation that can be used to post and share in an email?", "answer": "The Near Future Laboratory podcast featured IDEO designers discussing how they used a fictional highly detailed sushi box prop in workshops to spark participants' imagination about future food system challenges. The prop packaging and mock sushi helped ground the speculation and align diverse stakeholders in the discussion." "question": "What's a good summary of this conversation that can be used to as an engaging exciting way to get people excited to listen to the podcast?" "answer": "Hear how IDEO designers created a fictional sushi box prop to take workshop participants on a imaginative deep dive into future food system contingencies and innovations!"

A new show. Last Week from the Near Future — a summary of some interesting things that came through and around the Near Future Laboratory Discord. 1. The Imagine Harder Summit (Detroit, Sept. 22/23, 2023) 2. Dave Eggers is outraged by AI on the Ingenious Podcast https://open.spotify.com/episode/3Ngt80qNlrtDMH3j5jBf3p?si=1e27914d58544887 3. Donna Harawy & Bruno Latour (RIP) at ZKM's "Critical Zones" exhibition https://zkm.de/en/media/video/storytelling-for-earthly-survival-discussion-on-the-film-with-donna-haraway-bruno-latour-and-peter https://www.icarusfilms.com/if-donna 4. Thomas Euyang drops off Green Pages - our magazine from the future of filmed entertainment / Hollywood 5. Androids? They Dream of Electric Sheep? https://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com/products/androids-dream-of-electric-sheep 6. Evan Raskob shared a link to a podcast he was on, the Ludogogy Podcast (good luck pronouncing that into a microphone.) https://ludogogy.co.uk/evan-raskob-on-speculation/ 7. Don't forget — Office Hours is a great way to get some perspective on Design Fiction, Speculative Design, and all that kind of stuff, and learn more about what we're doing in the Discord! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tbqg4S7EDM&list=PLLeCmAPS7v1ll9SxykBfosFGju_IihvEU 8. Go pick up something in The Shop — support all the things on Patreon! Do it now! https://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory 9. Ursula K. Le Guin's Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction — a reflection I had while on a walk. https://otherfutures.nl/uploads/documents/le-guin-the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction.pdf

This Episode is a rebroadcast of Episode 030 with Tony Dunne and Fiona Raby, preceded and amended with various explications and questions posed to the Chesterbot container of the conversation's semantics. **Speculative Design Practice** Tony Dunne and Fiona Raby's design practice has evolved over time. Initially focused on conceptual models, they now also create prototypes. They find models give more creative freedom. Their work with complex technologies like biotech led them to embrace fiction and modeling. The term 'speculative design' emerged from their critical design work engaging science and tech. They value fiction for its own sake, not just for discussing the future or selling concepts. **Teaching Speculative Design** Dunne and Raby direct the Design Reality Studio at Parsons, teaching posthumanism, quantum theory and designed realities. They collaborate with faculty and choose their own research. They are writing a book on new ideas and approaches in design. **Interdisciplinarity and Collaboration** Dunne, Raby and Bleecker value letting disciplines interact in surprising ways while retaining disciplinary roots. Bleecker proposes a 'general seminar' where diverse people make sense of ideas together, as Dunne and Raby have long practiced. They hope design, science, tech and industry collaborate more, though science and tech currently do so more than design. **Representing Imagined Futures** They aim to represent imagined futures expanding beyond the typical narrow range. They explore 'impossible objects' and how constraints limit collective imagination. **Recognition and Validation** Dunne and Raby were delighted to receive the Royal Designers for Industry award, valuing its recognition of their trajectory, not just current work. They appreciate the range of practices recognized. Bleecker sees it as validating their creative practice.

Sascha Poflepp was a German artist, collaborator, and friend. We dedicated The Manual of Design Fiction to him. It's important not to forget his contributions to creative thinking and making. In that spirit, I managed to extract the audio tape from a panel I organized at SxSW back in 2010 on the topic of Design Fiction in which Sascha contributed a remarkably clear and cogent perspective through his own work. Also contributing to the panel were Stuart Candy, Jake Dunagen, Jennifer Leonard, Bruce Sterling, and myself. You can see Sasha's slides cued to his presentation here: https://youtu.be/XDp_TsKqk3o

Lila Feldman is a designer based in NYC. She received her BA in 3D Design: Product + Furniture from Northumbria University and her MFA in Design + Technology from Parsons School of Design. https://lilafeldman.com/ Lila and I discussed finding purpose in creative practice and how creativity, imagination, and a futures-oriented mindset can help reinvigorate the potential for bringing about meaningful change through individual as well as team-based design practices. If you want to hear more of these types of conversations, become a Patron over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory. If you want to read more about creative practice and the approach I use here at Near Future Laboratory, check out all the books and artifacts from the future over at https://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com, especially "The Manual of Design Fiction" and my follow-on book just released the other day, "It's Time To Imagine Harder: The Reader's Guide To The Manual of Design Fiction". (Plus there's the 10th Anniversary printing of a rejuvinated "TBD Catalog" — the product catalog from the future. Thanks for listening! _Julian

If you're curious to hear about what it takes to dream into, create, build, grow, maintain an independent creative studio and practice, you'll want to listen to this conversation with Che-Wei Wang and myself. We talk about the importance of creativity and how it can be used to create meaningful change, and the need for a balance between creativity and structure and how to create an environment that fosters collaboration. https://cwandt.com If you want to hear more of these types of conversations, become a Patron over at https://patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory. If you want to read more about creative practice and the approach I use here at Near Future Laboratory, check out all the books and artifacts from the future over at https://shop.nearfuturelaboratory.com, especially "The Manual of Design Fiction" and my follow-on book just released the other day, "It's Time To Imagine Harder: The Reader's Guide To The Manual of Design Fiction". (Plus there's the 10th Anniversary printing of a rejuvinated "TBD Catalog" — the product catalog from the future. Thanks for listening! _Julian