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How to Unlock Creative Vision
- 9. James Dator
- 10. “The future cannot be predicted, because the future does not exist.” - James Dator
- 11. futures
- 12. possible futures
- 14. probable futures
- 17. “Every designer is a futurist.” - Stuart Candy
- 18. The Thing from the Future
- 19. Act as time travelers. Generate compelling artifacts from the future.
- 20. Four Cards: 1. Arc 2. Terrain 3. Artifact 4. Mood
- 23. Let’s say you drew:
- 24. Try to make the most compelling vision & artifact that you can. Get started!
- 25. Let’s hear your prototypes of the intangible
- 26. Share your prototypes! Post your artifact to social media #bigwidesky.
- 27. <Last Slide> We are Bigwidesky. We hope you enjoyed this! @bigwidesky
Editor's Notes
- I’d like you to take a moment to look at this image and see how it makes you feel. There are things that may jump out. <Wait a beat>
- This image is brought to you by the Institute For The Future in Palo Alto. They’re THE premiere futures institute. Maybe that gives you some hint about what’s going on here.
- <Beat> I’m sure you’ve noticed some things. In particular, I enjoy the deal you can get on roadkill. It’s grade-A. What you’re looking at is referred futures artifact. It was designed to do something to us – something that all artifacts do.
- Think about what artifacts from the past do for us. The man in this photo is Rod. <Details> What does it do to me? Well. It lifts me out of right here, right now. For a moment, I am living in a moment that I do not actually recall experiencing. It constructs who I am today.
- Artifacts from the future do very much the same thing. They create for us the opportunity to leave the present moment. To use imagination. And it is this kind of exercise…this kind of thinking that is at the core of what makes us human. Machines cannot do this.
- The reason I want to talk to you today has to do with the future: How we interpret it and what contours really exist. The reason that a lot of organizations struggle with growth and effectiveness has to do with how they see the future. By the time we are done today, you will have a new way to see the future. And, as designers and design thinkers, it is our role to create scaffolding for what is usually an abstraction.
- Today we will be playing a game, but before we do, it is useful to give context to design futures thinking – how to characterize it. This disciple has been adopted first by the Rand Corporation and the department of defense. They use it to create scenarios to keep our country safe from even unlikely threats. And architecture firms have used this thinking for decades. Buildings have long lives; they can even outlive their architects. Most recently, firms like Google and Apple have created full-time leadership positions for futurists on their staff.
- The future cannot be predicted because the future does not exist. At first this may sound almost Yogi Berra- like. Like a no-duh thing. But how many of us live like we know what is going to happen in the future. One way that we know that the future – just the one future – does not exist is due to its plurality.
- That is why the future is better understood as futures. And futures are not unlike shining a light into a dark room.
- possible futures > plausible futures
- plausible futures > probable futures
- probable futures > and preferred futures
- and preferred futures. And our preferred futures may not necessarily line up with what is probable or even plausible. This language and this metaphor can equip you with a powerful way to make a vision more tangible and it makes suggestions about what would be necessary to achieve a vision. (If you know that your preferred future is in the plausible space, that is going to change how you structure a strategy.)
- With this understanding we are going to play a game. This game is based on the work of a guy named Stuart Candy. A protégé of James Dator at the Institute for the Future. In an effort to pander to the crowd, Candy is famous for pointing out that…
- Stuart Candy
- Get into groups, grab some paper and pens, find a spot.
- This game is played when a pair chooses one of each card from a deck. The card represents some constraints on your future scenario. It is then up to you to create the most compelling articulation of the future you can given that scenario. The First Card is Arc – The backdrop of the future. The Second Card is Terrain – The domain in which your future artifact dwells. The Third Card is Artifact – The artifact in itself. The Fourth is the Mood - The emotional response to your future artifact to present day viewers. Spend more time – especially on the Arc card.
- The Arc card is based upon Jim Dator’s Four Visions of the Future.
- In his 40 years of studying the way that humans look forward, he says that there are basically four ways that people cast vision. Those are growth – things get better, collapse – things get worse, discipline – can’t get better and don’t want it to get worse, transformation – the unexpected happens.
- The best way to describe the remaining categories of cards is to walk you through a sample draw.