Futuring Peace: Project Overview
Creating Peaceful Global Futures with the American Family Enterprise Design Strategy Team.
Curious and disruptive by nature, I’ve been engaged in the active reimagining of our collective future before I even knew there was a name for what I was doing. I studied Industrial Design because I wanted the skills to optimize the relationship between people and products, and it didn’t take long to realize that the products with the greatest need for redesign were systems rather than smartphones. In these Postnormal Times the language of systems can be used to explain how fast our world is changing, but it’s up to us to imagine how it might be different and create a future we want to inhabit.
Imagination unlocks countless opportunities, and guiding the Strategic Foresight initiatives for the American Family Enterprise Design Strategy team is as fun as it is important. Our creative storytelling offers functional views of possible futures which allow our operating companies to create products and services that meet our customers where they’ll be with solutions that are effective no matter which future emerges. The 2020 team is comprised of some of the most passionate, creative, and disruptive thinkers I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. So, when the United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (DPPA) and the Design Futures Initiative (DFI) requested speculative design submissions that looked ahead and offered new solutions for peacebuilding, I knew we had a voice that the UN needed to hear.
We had 20 days, zero to submission, to understand peacebuilding theory, dig into the history of the UN’s actions as well as current peace efforts, imagine outcomes of the natural convergence of trends and issues, and build a submission that would get noticed on a global stage. I started the process by organizing a choose-your-own-adventure schedule of Zoom workshops and Mural board ideation; by the end 14 designers found time in their schedule to contribute ideas. Together, we framed our focal issue, “How might the UN assist with peacebuilding in recent post-conflict societies in the year 2040?” There are unlimited possible futures but, with our time constraints in mind, we created just three possible futures: an optimistic, pessimistic, and baseline projection of 2020 current events.
Mural Board Brainstorm:
CONTRIBUTING DESIGNERS
Alexandra “Alex” Cummings, Pandian Chandra, Urba Mandrekar, Mary Burton, Kristine Spengler, Dan Sarbacker, Ian Bever, Joe Engle, Jae Stanton, Yuke Huang, Francesca “Frankie” Spallato, Kristin Sanner, and Kevin Werth
Once these futures were outlined and framed as headlines in a 2040 news source (baseline pictured), the self-appointed submission team stepped up to start the process of creative storytelling for each future. Working out of my Madison-based home with Alex Cummings and Pandian Chandra in Savannah GA, and Urba Mandraker in Goa, India, the four of us devoted our nights and weekends to creating peacebuilder characters and imagining their daily lives. We told the stories of Anlu, a Chinese immigrant working in the aftermath of America’s second civil war, Inaya, a renegade trans woman committed to democratic reform in her home nation, and Ivy Teresa, a newly minted Peace and Development Advisor on her first UN field mission in Africa.
Engaging stories like those of our peacebuilder characters, allow us to develop shared experiences that guide creative problem-solving and thoughtful decision-making. The stories of Anlu, Inaya, and Ivy Teresa helped us to empathize with needs twenty years from materialization. To meet the deadline, the innovation process was truncated to a simple brainstorm around new solutions and concrete tools for peacebuilding. Ultimately, the judging team from the Innovation Cell of the DPPA and DFI agreed that our team’s voice deserved a place in the global conversation around world peace, honoring our submission with semi-finalist status.
The world continues to change rapidly, but none of us are sentenced to one inevitable future, it’s up to us to imagine how it might be different and create a future we want to inhabit. What does your future look like?
