We didn’t know the future could be so positive!!

This contribution is from Vibha Deshpande, representing Teach the Future in India. Vibha is a Professor of Practice at the Center of Excellence for Behavioral Science at the MIT Institute of Design, a Psychologist, a Futurist, and a Member of UN Be. Sci group in India. Read about her experience leading a workshop for youth on futures thinking.

This spring, I conducted a weeklong course on Futures Thinking for 3rd-year design students. I started the course by showing these two pictures:

I asked my students what they see. The answer is that the first picture shows the future, and the second shows the past.

Then we discussed trends, drivers, building foresight, and scenarios. The nine students who joined the course worked in four groups. They worked on developing futures of food, travel, retail, fashion, and pet care as topics. They created three futures each and selected their preferred futures for further development. Then came up with scenarios and artifacts from the future.

One of my students worked on wearable technology for pets as part of her Future of Pets project. One of them worked on a Dystopian scenario about the Future of Food, where she created an artifact consisting only of capsule foods with no taste but only nutrition. The student who worked on the Future of Retail Fashion outlet created a model of a virtual trial room.

Samples of student's work on futures thinking

Since this was the first time they had been exposed to futures thinking, they initially found it challenging. As design students, they had become so accustomed to focusing on solving problems that they could not imagine the future. However, after 1-2 exercises, they could think of future scenarios, and then they enjoyed the process.

Rendering of options for a product in the future

What I found most interesting is that at the end of the course, they said, 'We now see the 2nd picture as the future; we are going to build.' In the areas where they were skeptical, they now began to feel hopeful and take responsibility for it. I think that’s the beauty of Futures Thinking!!

Vibha's Futures Thinking students, Pune, India