A simple tool for designing the future

Whether you’re creating innovative products or reinventing existing services, an over-insistence to analyse what is and not what could be is holding us back. This simple tool is for realigning the fundamentals and creating design principles rooted in the future.

If an industry’s success is founded on 30+ years of doing something right, then when does “the right way” become wrong? See, the problem with the environments within these industry’s is that they can’t see themselves for anything but for what they are. The issues that people experience today. Today’s competitive landscape. The way things work.

It’s only recently that the ever-increasing presence of start-ups have started to shake things up by giving people the experiences they expect. Industries like travel, health and banking are all finally being changed for the better.

These start-ups aren’t reinventing the wheel though, they’re mostly acting on the ignorance and resistance of established companies that can’t think differently. Challenger banks like Monzo haven’t change the way banking works, they’ve changed the way people bank — and people love it.

“You wouldn’t dress for yesterday’s weather, so why design for yesterday’s behaviour?” — Mark Wilson, Wilson Fletcher

This is where it doesn’t matter if you’re creating an innovate product or reinventing an established business — the fundamentals of your approach need to be focused on what experiences could be and not what they are. This is what’s missing from today’s design tools — they are stuck in a “what-is” and not “what-if” mode, focusing on today’s needs, behaviours and trends.

A simple tool for designing the future: From/To

I believe that if you want to create successful products and services for the future, it’s necessary to unlock peoples imaginations. In it’s purest form this tool is a juxtaposed list based on Dunne & Raby’s A/B manifesto. It’s designed to add another dimension to the way we think. The method…