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Future Scanning
To ensure the long-term relevance of a product, it is crucial to move beyond designing solely for the immediate needs and preferences of current users. While it may be instinctive to prioritise "your users" when creating features, this approach can limit the product's potential for growth and adaptation.
By solely relying on the feedback of current users, there are three significant risks to consider.
Therefore, it is vital to balance user insights with a broader strategic perspective, considering the long-term goals and aspirations of the product to drive innovation and maintain relevance in an ever-changing landscape.
In order to create inclusive digital products and services you need to not only consider the features you build (i.e. ones that are accessible and empowering for all), but also the macro level impact of your innovation. This means being accountable for, and taking intentional action to ensure your products have a positive impact on your users and society.
into your innovation lifecycle is a practical way to embed this thinking as standard.
Ethics isn’t just about stopping bad things happening: there’s a growing realisation that responsible design is also a seed of innovation and a competitive differentiator.
Futures toolkit
This is a set of tools and techniques used in design and innovation to help shape future outcomes and consider potential implications and impacts of new products and services. They help you to be better prepared and make more informed decisions that minimise harm and maximise positive impact.
This might include techniques such as speculative design, horizon scanning, consequence scanning, and scenario development. Each have their own unique focus and application.
The key to using these techniques for inclusive design is to not just to imagine the future, but to imagine the future through the lens of a diverse range of people and communities.
Whichever technique you use make sure you consider how you will that may arise during the process and ensure in the process.
Future scanning techniques
Speculative design is like having a magic wand that can create anything. It is a design approach that speculates on future possibilities and outcomes by creating prototypes, products or artifacts. It uses creativity and imagination to explore possible future scenarios, alternative realities and challenge existing norms. It is used to spark discussion and challenge assumptions about the future, technology, and society.
Consequence scanning is like playing a big game of "What if...?". It involves analysing the possible consequences and impacts of a particular design or innovation, both positive and negative. By thinking about the possible consequences of your actions, you can make better choices. This helps to ensure that designs and innovations are safe and have a positive impact on society.
Scenario development is a way of "playing pretend" with what the future might look like, based on different possibilities and events. It is a method of creating detailed, plausible scenarios of how a particular design or innovation could play out in the real world. It helps to visualize the potential outcomes and implications of a particular design or innovation, and inform decision-making and risk assessment.
Horizon scanning is like using special binoculars to look into the future and see what's coming next. It is a method of monitoring the environment for emerging trends, technologies and ideas that may have a significant impact on the future. It helps us imagine what could happen and make plans so we can be prepared. Horizon scanning helps us think about the future from the perspectives of different people, with different backgrounds, abilities, and needs.
Benefits
Each approach has its own unique benefits and applications, and they are often used in combination to help create more comprehensive and informed design and innovation outcomes.
They are all important tools for inclusive design because they allow us to consider:
Performing a future mapping exercise can help you to:
Ultimately making better decisions and creating more inclusive solutions will deliver a tangible return on investment, through increased efficiency, cost savings, and improved stakeholder relationships.
Using a futures toolkit helps to avert potential disaster, by managing our risks and liabilities. It can also help you to be a part of creating a future where everyone is included and no one is left behind.
Values alignment
Using a futures toolkit is a great way to ensure alignment with core values. It forces explicit consideration to the impact of your innovation and provides an opportunity to check that the impact will be aligned to your overall values.
For example, take an app in the property space. Conducting a futures exercise might prompt you to explore potential of gentrification or investment into run down areas.
This kind of discussion can really boost morale and motivation as people start to connect with the bigger picture of the positive change they can contribute to.
Why isn’t this common practice?
Stepping back into today's current reality there are a myriad of reasons why using a futures toolkit to design more inclusive solutions is not a common practice. These include:
Human nature: People just stick with what they know and don't like to imagine different possibilities.
Complexity: Complex systems create competing consequences. It isn’t always easy to determine whether a benefit outweighs a harm.
Low industry maturity: It is the few, rather than the many that have this embedded as standard practice. It somehow becomes acceptable to make bad choices if everyone else is doing it. The more common these practices become, the harder it will be for those not embedding them to keep up.
Hierarchical decision making: Instead of systematic practice, often organisations are steered by opinion-driven debate, won by the most senior voice (often a white, middle class, straight, cis gender male who does not have diversity and inclusion at the top of their agenda).
Short term thinking: When people design solutions, they often focus on the most immediate and pressing needs and the feature requests customers are shouting about. They may not consider the potential impact on all stakeholders and diverse communities.
Extra time and effort: People are busy, busy, busy. Who has time for this, anyway? Why do we need to do more?
By using a futures toolkit, the design process becomes more inclusive, holistic, and forward-thinking. It opens up possibilities, protects you from the impact of negative consequence and helps you to ensure that your solutions are comprehensive and take into account the perspectives and needs of diverse groups. This can lead to better solutions and more equitable and sustainable outcomes. Even though it may require more time and resources in the short term, it will ultimately save you time and resources in the long term.
Real world examples
Unilever, a multinational consumer goods company, used a futures toolkit to explore the potential impact of different trends and scenarios on their business, and to design more sustainable products and solutions.
The City of Amsterdam used a futures toolkit to design a more inclusive and sustainable city, taking into account the perspectives of a range of stakeholders and communities.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation used a futures toolkit to explore the potential impact of different global health scenarios and to design more effective solutions for global health challenges.
Top tips for making it happen in your organisation
Sell the benefits - use this playbook to help you paint a compelling picture for the need to systematically create inclusive products and services and how future scanning can help.
Find your allies - find the key decision makers and influencers in your organisation that will help you build support and enable you to realise the full benefits of using a futures toolkit.
Start small - don’t try to boil the ocean. Find an opportunity to test the approach, show the benefits and iterate to scale and embed over time.
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