Relational Design Futures is a process and practice that combines design fiction, futurism, community-centred design, and emergent strategy.
We include stakeholders and the community served by the organization in a speculative experience that helps us discover mutual concerns and goals through creative and collaborative experience.
In RDF, we begin by identifying a context (usually the organization’s mission and vision) and then bring together people from the organization, the community, and other stakeholders (funders, partners) to imagine a future.
Projects culminate in a half-day workshop with maximum participation and an artifact and narrative as a result. There is typically about 2 months of research leading to each workshop.
A future that helps us understand the now
This isn’t a visioning exercise, or “what future do we want?”
Instead, we imagine the world as it might be in 10 years for people in the community, a “mundane day in the life.” Through the design of an artifact from that future, we explore some of the forces and signals that allow us to see the relationships with systems, contexts, and cultural aspects of our community that otherwise might be missed.
We are not trying to ‘predict’ the future or shape it. We’re trying to understand the forces at work in our community and how our organisation’s activities impact and are impacted by those forces. We get a relational view of the possibilities of the future that include context beyond our typical visioning practices.
The future is a safer place to encounter some of the challenges we face now, as it introduces possibility. This future is about the present, and the choices we have today.