Version 1 of a new talk I'm exploring around design and design practice. Keen on feedback as it starts to grow, and thank you for the help in advance! I also mentioned another talk by Tobias Revell as an intro to Crit/Spec/etc design: http://blog.tobiasrevell.com/2013/12/critical-design-design-fiction-lecture.html

1. Designed Futures
in a Non-linear World
Image from chefsteps.com
Andrew Lovett-Barron
@readywater

2. Before anything else:
Problem Statement
Non-Linear design 07.10.2015@readywater

3. Poisonous Urbanism
Image from http://www.shanethoms.com/

4. Food scarcity
Image from REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

5. Climate Change
Image from CBS news

6. Social Justice
Image from blacklivesmatter.com

7. 4th Generational
Warfare
Image from HackCircus/Extinction Symbol

8. Inter- and intra-
national conflict
(with people caught between)
Image from Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

9. Observable outcomes
from infinitely complex
challenges that we
struggle to describe,
diagnose, and act upon.

10. A humble protagonist
enters the scene
Non-Linear design 07.10.2015@readywater

11. Designers

12. Point of Design #1:
Make sense of things

13. Point of Design #2:
Make a thing

14. Point of Design #3:
Critical analysis of
outcomes via things

15. Point of Design #4:
Iterate

16. We now have lots of
people who do this daily

17. But we’re getting
harder problems
Image from hbr.org

18. And we’re asked to
step into new roles
Image from hbr.org

19. We are in a better place than we
have ever been as designers;
We have never been in a
position of greater liability.

20. A
Whole
New
You
Non-Linear design 07.10.2015@readywater

21. And you may ask yourself
“Well...How did I get here?”
Image by Daniel Sieradski/culturebot.org.

22. We are in
over our heads
Image from The Fall by Tarsem Singh

23. Designers traditionally
make a thing to fulfill a
need or requirement
Image from Vladimir Vyatkin/AP

24. And we don’t take
responsibility for the
emergent result
Image from Sebastiano Tomada

25. We fetishize and lionize
the process of making

26. But what of the logistics
of design outcomes?

27. How might we shift
design outcomes
towards a
designed outcome?

28. Non-Linear design 07.10.2015@readywater
Let’s talk about
non linearity

29. Systems often sensitive
to initial conditions and
dynamic change

30. An input disproportional
to its output
Image from Mark P. Thomas

31. We tend to think
in linear ways

32. We problem solve
intuitively in a non-
linear world
Thoughtless Acts by Jane Fulton Suri

33. In analysis, we often
describe non-linear
effects in linear modes
Image by Thomas Homer-Dixon

34. And we communicate
those linear models
because it’s easier

35. But when linear analysis
leaves its boundary
conditions, it falls apart
Image from CNN

36. Too many of our analyses
have broken their
bounding condition
Image from the New Yorker (J. B. Mackinnon/April 21, 2015)

37. And we need to
change things now
Image from HackCircus/Extinction Symbol

38. Critical Design
and Responsibility
Non-Linear design 07.10.2015@readywater

39. A caveat:
Critical Design is not
the solution
Image by Alvaro León

40. It is a tool to
see the invisible

41. Faraday Chair
Dunne + Raby

42. Privacy, Attention, Space,
Community, Opting Out

43. Soft Suit
Michael-Owen Liston &
H. Lundberg & L.B. Borgersen

44. Violence, Resistance,
Embodiment, Justice
Image by Whitney Curtis/The New York Times

45. Clean Air Pod
Ant Farm

46. Climate, Aesthetics,
Policy, Authority
Image from Rueters/Liu Chang

47. Plugin City
Archigram (Peter Cook)

48. Urbanism, Waste,
Transience, Migration

49. Critical and Speculative
Design provide an early
frame around which to
deconstruct and iterate
on complex problems

50. Designed Futures
in a non-linear World
Non-Linear design 07.10.2015@readywater

51. We start by critiquing
our frame of reference
Image from Jorge Silva

52. San Francisco ≠ world
San Francisco ≠ future

53. Except where
it’s the worst
Image by Artem Shumnik

54. Empathy
through action

55. Our metaphors shape
our creations
Image from Nervous Systems

56. Make those
metaphors tangible
Image from Joe Linton

57. Does it penetrate the
meme-brain barrier?

58. We suck at foresight

59. In fact, we suck at
hindsight as well
Image from Buck Ennis

60. We must design the
boundary conditions,
and outcomes follow
Image from HackCircus/Extinction Symbol

61. We must design our
own metaphors
Image from Eye of Science/Science Source

62. This allows us to turn
the preferable future
into a set of actions
Image from Stuart Candy

63. It comes down to
figuring out what kind
of seed to plant
Image from Transition Network

64. What we use holds
the seed of tomorrow
Image from Paul Mackie

65. Build the amplifier to
human needs and
behaviours
Image from The Get Set

66. Help many small actions
create emergent change
Image from Unknown

67. We are responsible for the
future we are designing
towards.
Design is all about
responsibility:
making decisions for the
users and human collateral.

68. We must create and use tools that
reveal our roles within systems,
that enable critical analysis of
systems, and that encourage radical
action to enact systems change

69. We will continue to
discovered how much
we didn’t know
yesterday.
It won’t stop us.

70. Thanks
alb@ideo.com
@readywater
Non-Linear design 07.2.2015@readywater