Conference Agenda

Transition design employs futuring to navigate change towards more sustainable and just futures. Although the development of transition design has been informed by futures studies, it could benefit from more detailed investigation of its futuring practices in relation to established concepts and approaches. A further exploration of, and integration with, futures studies offers opportunities to develop more conceptual and practical guidance. This paper aligns transition-oriented futuring with Slaughter’s levels of futures work (1996b, 2002), and Amara’s (1981) and Björeson et al.’s (2006) scenario typology to better understand what kind of futuring transition design engages in. An expanded applied approach is proposed to support a more rigorous and comprehensive practice to transition-oriented futuring by learning from established knowledge in its neighbouring field.

A key political challenge of addressing climate change has been that, despite its deep involvement with so many aspects of our society, its threat can at times feel abstracted from our daily lives— a gap futurists lament as the “experiential gulf” between our ability to imagine the future and our capacity to experience it. Immersive Design Fiction Experiences (IDFEs) use virtual reality as a way of bridging this experiential gulf by positioning participants as embodied subjects within a virtual storyworld. With IDFEs designers can explore a rich palette of experiential phenomena—such as speculative social rituals, embodied interactions with objects, and explorations of environments. Drawing from a range of pedagogical examples teaching IDFEs in the design classroom, the paper argues that IDFEs enable participants and creators alike to activate their imagination with and through body, unlocking new kinds of inferential activity and new pathways for critically unpacking social implications.

To support sustainability transitions, several different design approaches are required. In a series of Designerly Living Labs, we have prototyped possible sustainable futures in the context of people’s everyday lives to explore the complexities of lifestyle changes and socio-technical system shifts. Together with us-ers engaged as reflexive co-researchers, we have explored potential new practices and uncovered system-level tensions and deficiencies. System changes have been initiated by engaging relevant actors in learning processes and by bridging learning to decision-makers. However, the approach requires some rethinking of design as a practice. Instead of supporting people’s current needs and lifestyles, we design for sustainable futures that users do not yet request. This emerging design practice challenges traditional co-design and user participation methods, leading to new ethical considerations.

This exploratory paper presents an approach known as 'Design Imaginariums,' pop-up spaces based on speculative design principles and community driven cre-ative problem-solving to address systemic city-wide challenges. Drawing inspira-tion and insights from a one-day design sprint and a real-world prototype that fo-cused on mobility urban futures, these pop-up spaces serve as platforms to ac-tively involve citizens in the design process, prompting responsive ideas and rec-ommendations from city stakeholders. The paper begins by discussing the back-ground and motivations to initiate the research, elaborating on the City of Dun-dee’s aspirations for creating ecologically vibrant and socially inclusive urban spaces. It then outlines the research protocol and explores how Design Imaginar-iums can harness speculative thinking and community engagement to reimagine sustainable mobility. Finally, it discusses the capacity of imaginative scenarios to inform and influence policymaking and transformative change, emphasizing how Design Imaginariums might have something useful to offer the wider design re-search community.

The responsibility for sustainable futures extends beyond individual disciplines, necessitating the adoption of diverse approaches across various fields. Water pollution is at epidemic levels, valuable materials go to landfill, ocean detritus grows, many people are disconnected from green space, and biodiversity is plummeting.

We need new modes of climate futures, championing citizen agency. Societies require cross-collaborative, inclusive approaches to navigate climate future challenges. We seek to foresee ‘climate futures’ that signpost challenges, unpicking (appropriate) opportunities, benefits, and pitfalls. Through an Ecological Citizenship lens, the authors traverse situations, through preferable futures. It is an entry point for transition design, creating climate tangibility surrounding our everyday lives.

The article unpicks and communicates ‘preferable futures’, conceptualising how Ecological Citizenship could be deployed. We report on workshops which yielded insights from different organisational perspectives. Insights were illustrated for public audiences. Narratives navigate ecologically engaged forms of citizenship.