Aure - Designing in Deep Time
How might we use deep time forecasting and storytelling to first examine potential impacts of current trends and patterns, then apply sustainable design frameworks to create solutions to future echoes of those issues.
November 14, 2025
March 12, 2026
Updated:
Created:
Assumed Audience
Folks with some knowledge of futures forecasting or with an interest in how speculative writing techniques and design can circularly influence one another.
Epistemic Status
This final product of this project is PURELY fictional. It exists in a future timeline inspired by current day trends and patterns identified by our team's research, as well as black swan events provided by the professor. The project was completed over the course of a 10 week period separated into Research, World Building, and Final Design phases, with the first two phases representing 75% of that period to allow us to create a cohesive universe to design within. AI imagery has been used to supplement and illustrate ideas and worldbuilding efforts due to project time constraints.
Skills Used
PESTLE method of research, Verge Mapping, Horizon Scanning, Affinitizing Data and Trends, Futures Wheels, World Building, Speculative Design, Speculative Fiction Writing
About
This project took our team out of our comfort zone of designing within the world of today, pitching us forward in time and asking us to not only describe what we see, but design solution-oriented interventions to the problems we were confronted with. We spent the first 7 weeks diving deep into research of todays current events, extrapolating trends and patterns, and identifying how these could lead to an inevitable "Planet Junk", a world centuries in the future, that may or may still be habitable by humans, but where systems have collapsed. After identifying the how and why of our Planet Junk, we're sent back to the year 2063 to divert course through design.
It was an effort in collaborative storytelling and design that challenged us at every step, encouraging social, environmental, and ethical considerations as well as utilizing play and improvisation to create an extraordinarily unique outcome.
This website, set itself in our future timeline, explores our final design.
Process
Phase 1 - Exploration
The beginning of the design futuring process is grounded in the present. We look at what’s happening around us, discovering the signals, trends, and patterns occurring in our own world, then deepening our understanding so we can grasp what might happen should those patterns continue into the future and create speculative scenarios.
This phase involved:
PESTLE Research - A research taxonomy considering Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental lenses
Verge Mapping - An ethnological research method that looks into emerging social trends.
Futures Wheels - A visual thought tool for the structured brainstorming of the consequences of a trend.
Transformative Scenario Planning - A design methodology that seeks to transform situations by taking account of our understandings, relationships, intentions, and actions.
Phase 2 - Imagination
Using the scenario constructed from Phase 1, we begin to explore its world and tell stories that describe the people, artifacts, and systems found within it. This process looks to ideas found in the writing of speculative fiction for inspiration; seeking to describe what it feels like to live the scenario, down to even the most mundane daily routines of it’s inhabitants.
This phase involved:
World Building - Describing a wide range of facets that, together, create a fully realized universe complete with people, biology, technology, communities, and systems.
Speculative Fiction Writing - Asking the inhabitants of this new universe to walk us through their world; showing us what their lives are like from day to day.
Futures Mandalas - Affinitizing key aspects of the world we’ve created, categorizing and displaying them all together to offer us a high-level overview of everything.
Phase 3 - Strategy
Finally, now that we fully understand the world we’ve created, we begin to design artifacts in the space. We create the products, services, and systems with the express intention of steering its trajectory away from impending collapse.
This phase involved:
Theory of Change - A way to reflect on how each piece of your solution works together to drive towards the desired outcome.
Value Proposition Canvas - A tool to define the most important components of your offering, how you relieve pain and create gains for your customers.
Systems Mapping - A visual model useful for explaining the impact of complex services or systems you’re designing.
Storytelling - Bring your audience into the fictional space to show them how your design solution could operate in the real world.
Impact and Learning
This project combined two things that I love doing (telling stories and making things) in such a beautiful way. I'll admit that explaining to people the ideas and outcomes of this class often nets me a confused look and response along the lines of "and this was through a design program?", but I think that just means we have more work to do in connecting the dots between storytelling and design (outside of that super buzzwordy connotation you see over on LinkedIn...)
Fiction influencing design influencing fiction and on and on has been around for as long as we've been telling stories and it's a great way to get out of your usual grooves (or ruts, depending on your perspective).