Before coming to the UK, my life was surrounded by various convenient Internet products. I am accustomed to using mobile payment, food delivery, online shopping, and even smart home products to control my life. I don’t think there is anything wrong with this. After all, I have been listening to all kinds of stories about life-changing due to technology. Of course, I do not deny the vital role of technology. Technology is an essential part of our foreseeable future. But as designers, we may be more responsible than others to reflect on technology and our future.
Compared with the benefits that technology can bring, the future is even more remote. In a way, the future of our generation is made up of the effects of various technologies. We will unconsciously focus on the current results and make changes based on the current situation. For example, in the face of global warming, we have seen more countries begin to introduce policies related to carbon emissions to delay the melting of glaciers. We have also seen some responsible citizens start to change their lifestyles and attitudes consciously. But most people stayed the same. After all, the invisible future is not worth mentioning compared to the convenience of life. What’s wrong with having fun in time?
So for a long time, I did not understand what our future is? How to think about the future? How should the future be designed? Just as I can’t understand some of the design works that are very “avant-garde” and “concept”, I think they are empty, boring, and unable to stand in the moment. I would indeed imagine if one day I could use all kinds of very extraordinary abilities like in science fiction movies, or if human beings could leave the earth and leave the solar system. But fantasy is fantasy. I still don’t know how to think and reflect on these futures, and I can’t use design thinking to find possibilities.
From the time I opened the book “Speculative Everything,” my prejudices about the future are broken step by step. As stated in the book, we have not yet concluded the degree of social change technology will bring. In this context, the design task cannot simply be to get bogged down in problem-solving; instead, it is even more critical to identify the problem. As people living in the modern age, we need to walk with the future and distinguish what needs to be shaken, what needs to be vigilant, and what needs to be realized. In this way, before the technology develops into an unavoidable “unpreferable” reality, the result can turn it into a possibility that we “preferable”.
With this kind of thinking, I started the Design Future course.
The theme of our group is consumption, which is a severe and complex problem at present. Consumption is one of the behaviors closest to our lives. It has the most significant impact and many related technologies. We have long been accustomed to the convenience brought about by various consumer trends. In other words, we are currently taking advantage of the multiple conveniences that come with consumption to enjoy our lives better. But because of this, we are no longer confronted with a single product for everyday consumption; more invisible products are also appearing in our lives, which undoubtedly adds to the complexity of the situation. As we discovered from Southwark, compared with other issues that have clear goals, consumption appears to be more unspecific, and at the same time, it always feels that the content is applied to other fields. Because of this, we set our sights on the most fundamental solution to sustainable problems, behavior changes.
However, behavior change is a highly complex matter. People have a variety of different abilities, motivations, and difficulties. We can’t specifically imagine the power of the individual in it. Therefore, the influence of the community is significant. We hope that through establishing a sustainable community organization, people will think about future consumption, not only on food but even plastic problems and transportation problems caused by food. We believe that this idealized community organization may be Open, Complex, Dynamic, and Networked, which can influence and educate the growing Gen Z and Millenials, which, like a domino effect, triggers people’s overall sustainable behavior changes.
Our team is still thinking about making such a future more visible and listening to more voices from other places.
