Greetings everyone. Today's presentation is about the design of the future and the future of design. These are two interrelated connected things, but we'll talk both of them separately as a part of this conversation. So, let's first talk about the design of the future. So, one of the things designers do overall, whether they are product designer, graphic designers, architects, interior designers, etc. One of the things that they do is they look at current condition. They look at the needs of people that exist right now. And when they design something and when that something that's been designed goes out into the world when it converts from an idea into a tangible product or when it converts from a concept into a building. It actually happens in the future. So, you might be designing something now, but it goes out into the world a few months, a few years, a few decades down, down the road. So, designers are always designing for the future, so if you think about that, one of the things that designers do is they imagine existing conditions, but they're actually designing for the future. So in a sense, you can see design as an activity that creates potential futures for us all. So, that's one thing the designers do. We look at current conditions and imagine what the future could look like. So, all sketches, all prototypes, all renderings, all the vision expressions that you see from designers. And in some sense scenarios of what the future could look like. So, very often we hear about two things, technology and society. And very often we imagine that technology is a force that changes society. Technology changes society to lead us to future conditions. That's a dangerous way of thinking. We cannot think purely in terms of technology as a driver of human society. It's important fit to think in circular ways. So, just as technology can drive certain social conditions, social behaviors. Similarly, it is social conditions and people who drive technology. So, the relationship between technology and society is in mutual relationship, it's not that one drives the other is that both influence each other moving as forward. So, one thing to keep in mind is not to imagine, the fact that digital technology would really transform who we are, yes they will. But similarly, we by being who we are, we transform digital technology as well. The future conditions depend up on us as social beings and also depend up on us as creators of new futures. And if you think of designers as creators of potential new futures, one person that comes to mind who has been thinking about this quite a bit is a designer and actually someone who's referred to as a visual futurist, Syd Mead. And what you see in this rendering, this illustration, is one potential imagined future. That came up that Syd Mead came up with. Syd Mead is a transportation designer, so he's known for his amazing designs of vehicles. He designed sets for scientific fiction movies. He has done a series of these environmental graphics rendering presentation about the future. So, he's referred to as a visual futurist and in this quote, you can hear him saying, in virtual futurism, the line between total fantasy. So, what you might imagine the future to look like. And what's futuristic is a thread of reality. So, any imagine future essentially is how you as a human being in the current time, imagine reality to be in the future, so it's a thread that connects the now to the future, the present to the future, right? And so, Syd Mead has done an enormous amount of work in thinking about what does potentially futures could look like. If you have seen the movie, Blade Runner, Syd Mead was responsible for the design of the sets of Blade Runner, he's responsible for the design of the vehicles that are seen in the movie. So, what you see here in this illustration, this rendering is a sketch of the vehicle that was referred to as the spinner. So, you can see that has imagined what these future conditions could look like. What transportation or the future could look like and that is what express in these drawings. You see some more renderings as well, you can see entire cities with people wearing certain kinds of clothing, vehicles, transportation mechanisms all on a very large scale in this landscape. You see people standing, you could see people clothing as well. So, in a sense it's an expression of future conditions from the perspective of what we will wear, what we will drive, how we will live and what our environment could look like in the future. Being a transportation designer here is been quite a bit of fun thinking about of the vehicles of the future. What could those look like and here you see some examples of some potential transportation design concepts. And this is, auto another sketch of his, which an imagine landscape for the entire city and urban environment and its relationship to nature. So, you see, some of this is really incredible expressions of what the world could look like in the future by these visual futurists and designers who imagine what the material landscape would look like a few years, decades or centuries down the road. So, that is one aspect of design. So, the process of design actually is about imagining what future could look like. On the other hand, one of the things we can do in this presentations is think about, okay, so we know that design in some sense play's a very important rule is shaping our future, right? So, the design of the future. But what about the future of design itself? How will the practice of design change in the future? We know how product design, graphic design, architectural design, landscape design, interior design, etc., how they operate now. But, how could design itself change in the future. So, let's look at some of the changing conditions that we see right now that could shape the future of design. So, the one thing that's been happening, one thing that designers are thinking about is what is the role that design plays in practices of innovation. And so, very often companies think of innovation in very, very broad terms. They think of innovation as any new ideas that can be productized, that can be marketed, that can be sold and bring some sort of value, right? And a value is value to the people, value to the company. Financial value, as well as social value, environmental value. So, value is really important in some of these definitions of innovation. So, what role does design play? And there is more and more conversation about the fact that the way designers think, the way designers practice their craft. The practice of design itself can play a really important role in engaging other disciplines and making innovation real. So, that's one really important way about which design is changing. It's playing a broader, deeper and more important role in the practice of innovation. Another thing is the prominence of this whole area that's refer to as design thinking. And we have talked about this in this class before. Design thinking can be broken down to seven different components including everything from being emphatic to the people that you're designing for to being collaborative, to be an so this diagram. Essentially shows all of the different aspects or components of what design thinking could be like. But, these recognition especially in the business world about the fact that designers have a unique way of thinking. And that unique way of thinking can be very beneficial in a very broad sense about how an organization operates, what an institution does, how a company behaves, and so it's an important piece of what design does now and it will continue to be so into the future as well. Another really important thing, this is happening quite all over the world, is something that is referred to as the Maker Movement and the DIY Movement. So, the Maker Movement essentially refers to people who like to make things and are more energized and empowered by various things happening in society at the moment. That allow them to be successful at making things. People who have ideas who launch companies. The DIY movement essentially DIY refers to do it yourself. So people who, instead of going out and buying products that are off the shelf they want to make thing themselves. They also want to make things for themselves, but also to be able to create a new business. To be able to sell them to others on the like minded people. So, there's an enormous ground swell in the world right now about people who want to make things themselves. People who don't want to buy things up the shelves. And have several things happening that we talk about in just a moment. Around them in society that actually enables them and empowers them to do so. One of those things is referred to as desktop manufacturing, also referred to as additive manufacturing, also referred to as rapid grow typing, also sometimes referred to as 3D printing. So, what this refers to is the prevalence and the availability, at very low cost, relatively low cost, of machines that can be used for rapid prototyping. Machines that you can feed a computer file to, a CAD file to, a virtual solid model to, and it will create a part for you. So, there's quite a bit of this happening these days. You can buy these 3D printers and rapid prototyping machines for fairly low cost. So, what it has done is it has given people the ability to build things themselves. So, if you have some software program. If you can create a virtual model on the computer off a product that you are interested in or interested in designing or interested in manufacturing. You can actually create that model and have it built by machines like these at your home, right? So, this whole idea of desktop manufacturing. But you don't need massive factories to make things as long as they're simple and not too complicated. You can actually make some of these things at home. So, this due technologies of rapid prototyping have made it easier for people to be able to make things themselves. And that is one of the things that is fueling, the DIY and the maker movement today. Another important thing that we see these days is this notion of crowd funding. What that does mean? What other things that becoming really easy these days or become a lot easier these days is to get funding for your projects by reaching out to a broad range of people. So, that companies like kick starter for example, who allow you and encourage you if you have an idea for a new product, which you don't have the money to actually take it to market, you can present this in the form of video, explanation etc., on the kick starter website. What it does, is it sends this out to a broad range of people who can then access that website, who can access your video, who can see what you've done. And if they find that interesting, they can invest in your idea. So, a large crowd can fund your project and these are strangers, these are people who you don't know, but through access to that website, it actually would have raised money from a large number of people, and that crowd sourcing, crowd funding model has made it easier for people without any funding to support themselves to create these new businesses, new markets, and new products, new company. That's another thing. One thing that will become more important as we move forward is this whole idea of sustainability, yeah. We know that, we only have one planet on which we live. And we have to make sure that this one planet that is sustaining life for us as human beings, but also life for all the plants and animals, all organisms, all living things on this planet. We only have one of these planets and we have to make sure that we do not destroy this planet. We have to engage in the right kinds of behaviors by design to make sure we minimize environmental impact. We clean up our ocean, we reduce the pollution and we take care the planet. In as many ways as possibly can because it's the only one we have. So, sustainability will become more important in several ways. Number one, it will become more important because consumers will ask for it. Consumers will want to have products that are more sustainable. Another thing that will happen is there will be more regulations. There will be more regulations from governments, from regulating bodies to ensure that companies, individuals, designers, engineers, business people do not harm the environment more than they already have, but actually keep it in check. So, more demand from consumers and more regulations from regulating bodies will really two important things that will drive sustainability in the world. So, that's one other really important factor to consider in the future of design. The way designs happen today is entirely global. So, things could be design in one part of the world by one designer. They could be prototype in another part of the world. They could be manufactured in the third part of the world. Warehouse in a fourth part of the world. And sold in a fifth part of the world. So, this is not unusual for companies to have multiple satellite locations, vendors, long supply chains, distributor supply chains where things are designed, conceptualized, manufactured, stored, sold all over the world. This is a model that exists right now and it only continue to happen more certain in the future. because what companies are trying to find is where is the best, cheapest, most affordable, fasted way for me to get products made, right? And that will continue. At the same time though, there's more and more emphasis on thinking about the local. The problem with being global is that you have to engage in enormous amount of transportation. If I'm designing something in California and getting it manufactured in China, there is an enormous amount of transportation that happens in between the two countries. And that leads to pollution, that leads to environment impacts and therefore, one of the things that's being talked about is the idea of making things locally using local materials and local sources that cuts down tremendously the amount of environment impact that we might have by cutting out transportation. But, the other important thing it does is it provides local employment. So, being local has two really important benefits. One is the social benefit. It provides employment, it keeps fund, it keeps money in the community itself. And second, because it cuts down on transportation. It minimizes environmental impact substantially. So, we will have global. But with that in mind, we also have lots of emphasis on the local. Such as things like farmer's markets or local farmers, it's important for us to buy produce that is made the fruit and vegetables that are made in, that are grown in our neighborhood rather than getting them shipped from halfway across the world, right? So, there'll be an emphasis on global and the local together. What we can do locally, we should. What we have to rely on globally, we will. And that's I think one important trend that we continue to happen in the world of design. Another thing that's important is that of transdisciplinarity. In the future, we will be tackling, addressing, solving problems that would be a lot more complex and we see today. The problem also will accelerate a lot faster than we see today and for that we have to work in teams. This is an example of something that we are doing as at a State University. We have students working in teams from business, from design, from sustainability, from graphics, from engineering and together we come up with solutions for the problems that we are solving right now. And one of really, really important thing is to think of this notion of thinking in systems. We have to realize that any one thing that you do in the world could have lasting, unexpected consequences as part of the world. It's like dropping a rock in a pond. You have these ripples that emanate and those ripples could go from the center of the lake to the shores of the lake. And that is an impact that we have to consider. Therefore, if you think in systems, as you recognize that everything is interconnected, you drop one thing here, it has impact over there. Enforce you to think, it will help you to think insistent and therefore, when you design something new, you'll keep in mind the fact that it could have lasting impacts somewhere completely unexpected and far away from you, where you are right now. So, what we've done in this talk is we've looked at two key things. We've looked at the design of the future. So, actually what that means is that designers, when they come up with new ideas, they are being sent out into the future, anything that you design now can only be realized into the future, so that's one aspect of design. And the second thing we looked at was the future of design, the professional design itself, how is it changing and what are some of the key factors that changed design for the future? Thank you very much.
