The Field Guide to Design Futures

There is something inherently fascinating yet reassuring about manuals. They promise results as long as you follow steps and recipes that you can easily replicate and apply every time you need them. The Field Guide to Design Futures works on a different premise: you build your own understanding of what Design Futures and futures thinking are and design accordingly by selecting, assembling, scraping, and skimming different entries, voices, and contributions that make up this volume.

The book presents Design Futures as a discipline shaped by plurality, of approaches, perspectives, and destinations, through the assemblage of the lived experiences of the two authors and the assemblage of points of view of practitioners and academics who have left their mark on the field guide, exploring different territories and adjacent fields.

These voices invite reflection on the current state of the practice and push toward its advancement while helping you adopt an inquisitive mindset as you explore futures.

What sets this book apart is that over thirty people—academics, professionals, and designers—contributed to it. Many did to simply because they got an email from someone they might have only met once or knew from social media. They believed in this project before we did and helped make this publishing adventure a reality.
from the Authors’ Notes

CONTENTS
◊ Foreword ◊ Authors’ Notes ◊ Introduction ◊ Design Futures ◊ Reflections ◊ Afterword ◊ Bibliography and recommended readings ◊ Index ◊ Acknowledgments ◊ About the authors