Innovative design can shape the future

It’s up to today’s young designers to sketch out our future lifestyles. Trish Lorenz looks forward to a world where sleek, stylish and energy saving are synonyms.

The future is coming and it’s coming fast. By 2025 we could be living in a world we barely recognise today. A world where few of us own cars, and flying is the preserve of the very rich; where we live near our extended families in flexible, modular housing with communal spaces. Technology has raced ahead: digital paper is commonplace, and nanotechnology, personalised medicine and synthetic biology are part and parcel of everyday life.

Energy conservation is a top priority, and we’re expected to monitor our use on a daily basis. But homes are designed to help us along. Take one key feature of your living room wall: Digital Growth. It’s an artificially intelligent, surprisingly elegant electronic ‘tree’. It thrives when you’re conserving energy and wilts when you’re wasting it. There’s one in the office too, and you noticed when you walked past the headquarters of the multinational that their performance was improving, with some green shoots showing through. They must have finally paid off their minimum water offset. Perhaps you’ll start to reconsider your boycott of their appliance-sharing services.

Back home, your personal tree’s been growing much better since you installed Flick my Switch, which encourages the kids to turn off lights and appliances. They’re varied in texture – some are wobbly ribbed rubber; others sponge pyramids or bristles that tickle. When the switch is turned off, it mimics pleasant sounds: pebbles plopping into a puddle, the ‘pssschh’ of a drinks can opening (or a champagne cork with the premium variety). The kids love using them and now argue over who gets to switch things off. Switching them on again isn’t so much fun: you have to wind the little handle for a whole minute before it takes notice and kicks into action with a loud groan.

Water is scarce, and home bathing needs to be efficient. You’ve just bought the Keiri Mat as a special treat. It’s a fold-away bamboo bathing space that heats up for an indulgent wash in just two litres of water. Locally Pure, your neighbourhood shampoo, smells even better now the community has devised a new recipe using nettles from the edge of the playing field.

VOX POP
MICHAEL BRAUNGART, Chemist and Co-Founder, McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry

“We should not be aiming to ‘minimise’ or be ‘low-carbon’, this is not enough for the amount of people on the planet – we should aim to be beneficial to our environment, not simply minimise our impact. We should be like trees and give back as well as take from our surroundings; we should clean the air, not aim to reduce how much we pollute it. We need innovation that brings about products and services that are good, not less bad…”

You stroll around the house in the evening light, really happy with the way the place is looking. Last year, bored with the decor, you decided to give Palette a go. This clever surface-software lets you digitally change the colour or pattern of your walls, eliminating the need for liquid paint.

If you think all this sounds fanciful for a world just 16 years away, you’re not alone. “We are all prone to think too short term; people don’t believe big changes are achievable,” says James Taplin, Principal Sustainability Advisor at Forum for the Future. But with dramatic changes to our climate just around the corner, we need to get out of our embedded short-term thinking. In July, Newt Gingrich, of all people, told the World Future Society that we are exceeding the rate of technological innovation of the past 25 years by four to seven times. “This means,” he went on, “that, by the most conservative estimate, in the next 25 years we will experience the same scale of change experienced between 1909 and 2009.” (Gingrich, former Republican Speaker and die-hard conservative, is living proof of the potential for things to change at unnerving speed. As recently as 2005, he was ridiculing the notion that humans are responsible for global warming. By 2008, he was filming an advertisement calling on Americans to come together to tackle it.)

Designs on the future

The really dramatic changes needed will be in behaviour, as much as in technology, with innovation in all areas driven by the perceived need for new and rewarding lifestyles. Recognising this, Forum for the Future produced two briefs for the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) Design Directions competition – part of the Zero Emissions Enterprise programme funded by the Technology Strategy Board. The briefs challenged young designers to create product service systems that not only meet our lifestyle aspirations, but also help us to reverse some damaging habits without feeling put upon. The designers were asked to consider surface covering and personal care, and the ideas outlined above were just some of the concepts that they came up with.

“Working with young designers on these issues is like pushing at an open door” Emily Campbell, RSA Director of Design

For Taplin, the competition has demonstrated the extent to which design can shape the face of the future. “Design makes things fun and aspirational, and shows that changes can be positive, joyful and not a burden. Digital Growth is a good example. Gadgets that show numerically how much energy you’re using are unexciting and don’t necessarily mean much to the average person, but everyone can respond to a growing plant or beautiful forest,” he says. “Design can help make the future a positive vision to work towards, not just an intractable negative that we have to deal with. The assumption is always that the future will be worse; design shows it can be different – in a positive way.”

VOX POP
Clive van Heerden Creative Director, Design Probes, Philips

“Philips Design uses a tool called Design Probes to understand ‘far-future’ trends and developments that could significantly impact our business. Probes are future lifestyle scenarios based on ‘weak signals’ drawn from five main areas: politics, economic, culture, environment and technology. Most of the really big and important issues in the future have to do with sustainability.”

The great role design can play is to respond to necessity in ways that are beautiful and appealing. According to Fiona Bennie, Senior Sustainability Advisor on Forum for the Future’s Innovation Team: “Designers are able to evaluate issues at a systems level without losing track of individual and emotional needs”. She points to the elegant Keiri Mat and accompanying ceramic basin, by way of example. “The concept tackles the problem of water shortage, but is also in tune with the emotional side of bathing, the way people use baths to relax and showers to wake themselves up.”

Think people, not products

The Design Directions competition works in collaboration with major companies – in this case, Dulux on surface design, and Unilever on personal care – recognising that a great idea must be rooted in commercial reality if it is to succeed. “A collaborative model to change is very important. Long-term partnerships with corporations acknowledge that we can’t solve these issues overnight,” says Taplin. Engaging designers in long-term thinking makes sense. While some people consider design as simply useful for improving a product aesthetic, it goes far beyond that. “People often see design as a discipline, like product design, or an outcome, like Changing Rooms”, says Rob Holdway, Founder and Director of design consultancy Giraffe, and a member of the RSA judging panel. “But design is also about context and strategy; finding new business models for organisations or society.”

“We know we need to change the way we live,” says Taplin. “Now we need to create positive visions of the future world and draw people toward it.”

Locally Pure, one of the winning entries, is a great example of this. On the surface, locally made, totally sustainable shampoo that removes the need for packaging, transportation and large multinational brands, would seem to be a threat to companies like Unilever. But young designer Laura Morris, who came up with the idea, thinks this need not be the case. In her vision, Unilever would provide the starter kit, recipes, ingredients and equipment – and train communities in how to manufacture it themselves. It offers the company a new, more sustainable approach which could still be profitable. “Locally Pure changed the business model for Unilever to a facilitative role, providing education, ingredients and instruction, rather than shipping products,” says Bennie. “Exploring completely different routes to market and radically different commercial models can be a stretch for businesses. By presenting [radical new ideas] compellingly, via story boards, illustrations and prototypes, designers can help make an idea more tangible.”

The RSA is increasingly putting people, not products, at the heart of its design strategy. This means encouraging young designers to focus on the intractable social problems of our time, such as climate change and an ageing population. “Working with young designers on these issues is like pushing at an open door,” says RSA Director of Design, Emily Campbell. “There is a real hunger among students to find an ethical and social value in what they do. They’re fed up with the use of resources just to make more and more things.”

“We know we need to change the way we live,” says Taplin. “Now we need to create positive visions of the future world and draw people toward it.”

Trish Lorenz, a former editor at ‘Design Week’, writes for a range of titles, including ‘Grand Designs’, ‘Sunday TImes Home’ and ‘Guardian Space’.

4 January 2010

Trish Lorenz