Futures

Can we design for the future? ...well that depends.

In today’s world we are constantly planning for the future. Technology and design are changing and improving every single day. So its obvious that designing for the future can indeed be done, no questions asked. However, saying that a design will be effective and influential in the next few years might not be true. It is quite a paradox really. We spend all this time designing the newest and most improved products that are considered “the future”, only to find ourselves designing “the future” three or five years after the previous thing we considered to be “the future” product.

A good example of a product that is constantly improving and being redesigned would be video game systems. Despite not having any real impact or significance in our daily lives, video games are a forever-changing product with little to no design sustainability. Computers, on the other hand, hold a much greater purpose, because at this point in time our lives seem to revolve around them. They are our source for organization and infinite information. However, again, regardless that their purpose is must greater than video games, they too are constantly changing, much quicker actually. It seems like every month there is a new computer out there that’s faster, more powerful, more advanced, has more memory, etc. The same idea can be applied to cars, mp3 players, television sets, DVD players, and so on.

Basically what I want to say is that yes we can design for the future. However, I think that it is important to determine what we consider to be the future. I mean a minute from now is the future, and so is 50 years from now. It is obvious we are designing for the future, but when designing is complete, we find ourselves redesigning the same thing we just designed for “the future” all over again. Really it is just a vicious circle of designing and redesigning until perfection is reached…which for the most part may never be reached. Ultimately, it just boils down to sustainability. If the world were to end tomorrow, then everything we have designed to this point has proven itself sustainable… but if the world continues one for the next million years then all those designs are unsustainable.