I enjoyed Exercise 3.3 the most. It reminded me of my love for scenario planning and futurology. It also made me think about how we could use the ‘speculations way of thinking’ to sell design ideas. By thinking of a design idea from multiple standpoints into the future, we could help preempt many questions that will be raised in response to our design recommendation.
For example, if we are designing an experience like a river park, it is going to compete with many other projects for resources. A city, as we know, has many more challenges than there are resources ($$) to address those challenges. However, if our design recommendation can think through its potential impact in the future, in ways that cannot be seen today, then we’d be building a stronger case for our design recommendation. Policy makers, politicians, and various other decision-makers do not fear doing interesting things, they fear the negative consequences of their actions. If we ‘de-risk’ their choices by helping them ‘see things into the future,’ and if we can give them a story and a strategy to take that future to the potential nay-sayers, then selling bigger, better and long-term design ideas will become that much easier (and enjoyable).