Empowering change for future-making: Developing agency by framing wicked problems through design

As the world and its challenges are becoming more complex, students and practitioners alike need to develop a more nuanced understanding of how to navigate problems today for envisioning desirable futures. Design’s inherent focus on future-making and dealing with ill-defined problems has been identi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Futures : the journal of policy, planning and futures studies planning and futures studies, 2022-05, Vol.139, p.102952, Article 102952
Main Authors: Lehtonen, Miikka J., Yeow, Pamela, Chew, JiaYing
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agency theory
Catalysts
College students
Design
Design thinking
Environmental changes
Framing
Futures consciousness
Global challenges
Higher education
Higher education institutions
Multidisciplinarity
Potential futures
Social change
Students
Sustainable development
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Summary:As the world and its challenges are becoming more complex, students and practitioners alike need to develop a more nuanced understanding of how to navigate problems today for envisioning desirable futures. Design’s inherent focus on future-making and dealing with ill-defined problems has been identified as a potential way forward. Yet, there is a paucity of studies looking at what elements support (or hinder) students developing agency when it comes to framing and identifying problems. By taking the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals as an example of ill-defined problems, we studied a multidisciplinary student body in a higher education institution attending a three-week intensive course focusing on how design can serve as a catalyst for social and environmental change. Our findings suggest future-oriented problem framing is dependent on the following aspects: combining theory and practice, engaging with the world and its complexities, reciprocal trust in design teams, self-reflection, changing perspectives, and emotional investment. Based on the findings, a model is crafted to illustrate how agency for future-making can emerge and be developed by engaging with real-life problems through design. Implications for research and practice point towards a more balanced relationship between skill development and ways of engaging with the surrounding world. •Due to increasing complexity, students need to develop a more nuanced approached for navigating desirable futures.•Design has been perceived as a means to drive societal and environmental change.•Yet we know little about how students learn to autonomously apply design.•Visual learning diaries were analyzed on how students engage in future-oriented problem framing.•A framework that illustrates how agency emerges through the intersection of design and futures studies is presented.
ISSN:0016-3287
1873-6378
DOI:10.1016/j.futures.2022.102952