Project Development (from left to right: Holly Zambonini, Callum Ferguson, Rosie McKenzie)
Future Experiences:
The Transient State
Redesigning Sustainable Development in The Global South
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The Droplet
The Soil Analyser
Nature’s AccountsGlasgow School of Art
BDes Product Design
Sept. - Dec. 2019
Future Experiences Part One: Group Project
BDes Product Design
Sept. - Dec. 2019
Future Experiences Part One: Group Project
Project Overview
The Transient State is the result of a group project exploring the role of sustainable development in the Global South in the year 2029, specifically in relation to the economy, and what it may look like. We partnered with the NGO Sustainable Futures in Africa Network (SFA).
Part One culminated in a group exhibition which was designed and curated by the group. My group members were Callum Ferguson, Rosie McKenzie and Nicole Wills.
The Transient State is a speculative territory which reimagines sustainable development in the Global South specifically concerning the economy. In the Transient State, the economy is no longer focused on individual wealth and accumulation of resources but instead based on a collective effort to preserve and enhance the environment of its inhabitants. In this scenario, the newly created role of the Social Entrepreneur emerges. The Social Entrepreneur promotes community values and helps to evolve the GDP away from a capitalist hierarchy through her work which actively contributes to maintaining and caring for the environment she lives in. The Social Entrepreneur best encapsulates the values of the Transient State and uses one of three newly created tools: The Soil Analyser, The Droplet and Nature’s Accounts.
The Droplet finds sustainable water sources for communities to farm effectively. It stores topographic and local knowledge to help locate water sources. By bowling The Droplet across the ground, the tip will point the user toward where the water is located. This provides necessary information on sustainable water use for communities where water is a scarce resource. The Soil Analyser allows farmers to test their soil for contaminants and to discover the best crops to grow for the soil conditions. By placing a small amount of soil on the analyser, it scans and identifies the contaminants in the sample, as well as any suitable seeds that could be grown in the area. This provides the community and individuals with the necessary information to farm and prosper from their land. The effective use of these products prevents the further destruction of the rainforest to make room for farmland. Finally, Nature’s Accounts collates information on the benefits of the rainforest and educates the community on the importance of preserving it. It acts as a databank of plant types and their properties so that those many generations in the future will have access to essential local knowledge and history that otherwise may be lost.
These three tools create an ecosystem of products that work most effectively when used together.
The Transient State is the result of a group project exploring the role of sustainable development in the Global South in the year 2029, specifically in relation to the economy, and what it may look like. We partnered with the NGO Sustainable Futures in Africa Network (SFA).
Part One culminated in a group exhibition which was designed and curated by the group. My group members were Callum Ferguson, Rosie McKenzie and Nicole Wills.
The Transient State is a speculative territory which reimagines sustainable development in the Global South specifically concerning the economy. In the Transient State, the economy is no longer focused on individual wealth and accumulation of resources but instead based on a collective effort to preserve and enhance the environment of its inhabitants. In this scenario, the newly created role of the Social Entrepreneur emerges. The Social Entrepreneur promotes community values and helps to evolve the GDP away from a capitalist hierarchy through her work which actively contributes to maintaining and caring for the environment she lives in. The Social Entrepreneur best encapsulates the values of the Transient State and uses one of three newly created tools: The Soil Analyser, The Droplet and Nature’s Accounts.
The Droplet finds sustainable water sources for communities to farm effectively. It stores topographic and local knowledge to help locate water sources. By bowling The Droplet across the ground, the tip will point the user toward where the water is located. This provides necessary information on sustainable water use for communities where water is a scarce resource. The Soil Analyser allows farmers to test their soil for contaminants and to discover the best crops to grow for the soil conditions. By placing a small amount of soil on the analyser, it scans and identifies the contaminants in the sample, as well as any suitable seeds that could be grown in the area. This provides the community and individuals with the necessary information to farm and prosper from their land. The effective use of these products prevents the further destruction of the rainforest to make room for farmland. Finally, Nature’s Accounts collates information on the benefits of the rainforest and educates the community on the importance of preserving it. It acts as a databank of plant types and their properties so that those many generations in the future will have access to essential local knowledge and history that otherwise may be lost.
These three tools create an ecosystem of products that work most effectively when used together.
The Social Entrepreneurs
Jacob: The Sustainable FarmerJacob trials the newest technologies in sustainable farming as well as looking at traditional methods. He teaches local farmers about sustainable techniques to maximise crop production and protect the environment from over-farming. Jacob created the Soil Analyser to measure the quality of the soil in a chosen area. By placing a small amount of soil on the analyser, it scans and identifies the contaminants in the sample as well as any suitable seeds that could be grown in the area. This provides the community and individuals with the necessary information to farm and prosper from their land.
Maria: The ExplorerMaria is involved in seeking and documenting groundwater sources. She created the Droplet to store topographic and local knowledge to help locate local water sources. Simply by bowling the Droplet across the ground, the tip will point the user in the direction of where there is water. This provides necessary information on sustainable water use for communities where water is a scarce resource.
Hannah: Rainforest Guardian
Hannah's role is to protect the rainforest from outside influences, keeping it at its maximum size and density. Hannah focuses on collecting data from the Rainforest and documenting plant types and their properties. 10 years ago, 25% of current medicines were derived from the rainforest, yet it was being destroyed at an unprecedented rate. Hannah created Nature’s Accounts to document all of the human knowledge we still have of the rainforest and harness it for good.
The ecosystem of products
The Droplet and The Soil Analyser 
Nature’s Accounts Development
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Brief
The Transient State is the result of a group project exploring the role of sustainable development in The Global South in the year 2029, specifically in relation to the economy, and what it may look like. We partnered with the NGO Sustainable Futures in Africa Network (SFA). My groupmates were Rosie McKenzie, Callum Ferguson and Nicole Wills.
Objective
The main objective of Future Experiences Part One is to delve into the evolving landscape of sustainable development in The Global South. Through interdisciplinary research and collaboration, the project seeks to investigate potential pathways and challenges in achieving sustainable economic growth and present a speculative world that has been sustainably developed.
Initial Research
My group and I began with initial research, consulting different case studies, to create a foundational layer of understanding of the current landscape of sustainable development. Through the identification of some of the current factors contributing to the present system such as wealth disparity and gender inequality, we were able to identify areas in which design opportunities could arise. We consolidated our research in the format of STEEVPLE cards, research cards which categorised research into social, technological, environmental, ecological, value, political, legal and educational factors, allowing us to justify and inform our design decisions.
The research cards gave our project a foundation to be built upon and gave us certain things to keep in mind such as the possibility of an automated future, the reliance on the gig economy and how most of the productivity is driven by manufacturing in the Global South, which were essential in helping us to further develop both the group project and our individual projects later on.
Studio Andthen Workshop
After having spent one week researching, we attended a workshop with Studio Andthen, a futures design-research studio, to understand the unintended consequences of our potential design opportunities/projects before we could get to the point in which we were executing them.
The workshop consisted of four parts. The first was identifying the stakeholders. This consisted of understanding who the stakeholders of development in the Global South are and led to our discovery of the discrepancy of power between some of the main stakeholders: the politicians and the civilians.
Part Two consisted of exploring the consequences of potential design opportunities and proposals. We imagined what the future of these interventions could potentially look like, including both the possibility for beneficial and detrimental outcomes. These predictions for the future were based on the research we had done, in week one, for the STEEVPLE cards.
Part Three consisted of repeating Part Two a further three times, imagining the consequences of the consequences. This step was essential in pushing the group to really consider the implications of the design work that we are putting out into the world before it is produced.
Finally, in Part Four, which acted as a consolidation of the previous steps, we were asked to develop future scenarios. We chose five outcomes from Part Three that were turned into a series of posters imagining the consequences of each outcome. The posters were small, encapsulated visions of how we imagined the world would look, in terms of the economy in 2029.
The Transient State is the result of a group project exploring the role of sustainable development in The Global South in the year 2029, specifically in relation to the economy, and what it may look like. We partnered with the NGO Sustainable Futures in Africa Network (SFA). My groupmates were Rosie McKenzie, Callum Ferguson and Nicole Wills.
Objective
The main objective of Future Experiences Part One is to delve into the evolving landscape of sustainable development in The Global South. Through interdisciplinary research and collaboration, the project seeks to investigate potential pathways and challenges in achieving sustainable economic growth and present a speculative world that has been sustainably developed.
Initial Research
My group and I began with initial research, consulting different case studies, to create a foundational layer of understanding of the current landscape of sustainable development. Through the identification of some of the current factors contributing to the present system such as wealth disparity and gender inequality, we were able to identify areas in which design opportunities could arise. We consolidated our research in the format of STEEVPLE cards, research cards which categorised research into social, technological, environmental, ecological, value, political, legal and educational factors, allowing us to justify and inform our design decisions.
The research cards gave our project a foundation to be built upon and gave us certain things to keep in mind such as the possibility of an automated future, the reliance on the gig economy and how most of the productivity is driven by manufacturing in the Global South, which were essential in helping us to further develop both the group project and our individual projects later on.
Studio Andthen Workshop
After having spent one week researching, we attended a workshop with Studio Andthen, a futures design-research studio, to understand the unintended consequences of our potential design opportunities/projects before we could get to the point in which we were executing them.
The workshop consisted of four parts. The first was identifying the stakeholders. This consisted of understanding who the stakeholders of development in the Global South are and led to our discovery of the discrepancy of power between some of the main stakeholders: the politicians and the civilians.
Part Two consisted of exploring the consequences of potential design opportunities and proposals. We imagined what the future of these interventions could potentially look like, including both the possibility for beneficial and detrimental outcomes. These predictions for the future were based on the research we had done, in week one, for the STEEVPLE cards.
Part Three consisted of repeating Part Two a further three times, imagining the consequences of the consequences. This step was essential in pushing the group to really consider the implications of the design work that we are putting out into the world before it is produced.
Finally, in Part Four, which acted as a consolidation of the previous steps, we were asked to develop future scenarios. We chose five outcomes from Part Three that were turned into a series of posters imagining the consequences of each outcome. The posters were small, encapsulated visions of how we imagined the world would look, in terms of the economy in 2029.
STEEVPLE Cards
Studio AndThen Workshop
Scenario Posters
Rapid Prototyping: Geographical Map, Chocolate Bar, Snapshot Boxes and Speculative Newspaper Articles.
Expert Input Day (from left to right: Nicole Wills, Vanessa Duclos, Rosie McKenzie, Holly Zambonini)
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Project Development
Project Development
The Products Before the Final Exhibit
Rapid Prototyping
We then began to rapidly prototype this future world through the creation of participatory props that we would use during our Expert Input Days. The props were created to promote discussion in the hope that we would get information, from the Experts, that could help us to further develop our project.
Our prototyped world consisted of four participatory props. A geographical map, a chocolate bar with a transparent and traceable supply chain, Snapshot Boxes and a series of speculative newspaper articles. The Snapshot Boxes depicted different visualisations of our future world.
Expert Input Day
On the Expert Input Day, we met professionals who worked with the SFA (Sustainable Futures in Africa Network). The purpose of this meeting was to gather feedback from those more knowledgeable than we were in a wide array of areas relating to Sustainable development. My group and I met with Vanessa Duclos (lead research manager at SFA), Sola Ajayi (Professor of Soil Science), Andrew Vincent (Founder of Nublvck and Classrooms for Malawi), and Diarmuid O’Neill (Senior Political Advisor, DFID). Our conversations centred around the future world prototype that we had created and these conversations acted as feedback sessions. We were able to understand how the experts we were meeting with predicted the Global South to look in 2029 and the ways in which they felt our project could be tweaked or pushed. Ultimately, our main takeaway from the conversation was the importance of small-scale change happening within the community, led by the community-members themselves.
Project Development
It was based on the information we received during the Expert Input Day that we were able to futher develop the parameters of our future world and the objects and people that would exist within it. It was at this point, that we were able to determine the following set of community values that our future world would be based upon:
1. Accountability for yourself, others and surroundings.
2. Transparency throughout society and freedom of information.
3. Community at the heart of every decision.
4. Cooperation from our nation to our neighbours.
5. Natural preservation of resources is critical to the preservation of our nation.
From there, we were able to indentify a character or future role that would align with the ideology we were creating. This future role that we developed was called the ‘Social Entrepreneur’, the ideal sustainable development worker who promotes community values and our vision for the future of the economy. The purpose of the development of this role was to allow the viewer to put the products that we would go on to create in context and to allow a deeper understanding of the world we were creating. This character was helpful in doing so because the group we were designing our preferable future for were those who live in a rural area, rich in resources, but were of a low socioeconomic level.
From there, we brainstormed different social enterprises that the Social Entrepreneur could be involved with. These entreprises would set the foundation for the objects that we would design. We then set out developing three concepts for three different objects that represented the livelihoods of three different types of entrepreneurs and their businesses based on the following three values: community, natural preservation and knowledge sharing. It was based off of these values that The Droplet, Nature’s Accounts and the Soil Analyser were developed.
Working Towards the Final Exhibit
We set out working on the final iterations of the products. In order to ensure that we met the deadline, we divided up the tasks, making sure that each person was working on a task relating to their strengths.
Callum was responsible for the data visualisations for the Soil Analyser, while Rosie and I worked on its physical design and the user experience. Nicole worked on Nature’s Accounts, researching plant-based remedies before we 3D printed plaques with plant names and QR codes. We all worked together designing the Droplet, while Callum was responsible for 3D printing it.
Finally we recognised it was important to include the Social Entrepreneurs we had developed and make them a central part of the exhibition. We featured small plaques with information about them right next to the podiums the projects they used were displayed on. To help tie everything together, Rosie and I made some digital drawings showing the objects in context.
The Final Products
Nature’s Accounts
The Soil Analyser
The Droplet
Final Exhibition at the Lighthouse
Final Exhibition at the Lighthouse
Finally the day came to present our work at The Lighthouse in Glasgow.
We placed all three products on their own podium with plaques right next to them explaining the Social Entrepreneur’s relationship to the product. On the windowsill, on the right-hand side of the photo, are two images that Rosie and I created to show the products in context to allow the viewer to understand how all three products work best when used together and help to create a system in which sustainability and community are at the core.
Conclusion
I believe that our design effectively addressed existing challenges within the sustainable development sector relating to the Global South’s autonomy over its own sustainable development and how by developing new working roles that are not only sustainable for the environment but sustainable for the worker and the local community, we were able to create agency for the worker.
Each step of our design process evolved from the one before it. The first prototype was a discussion tool designed to extract as much as information as possible from the experts. The second iteration was co-designed where we channeled information that we received from the experts directly into the design outcome.
At its core, we aimed to capture the human and community element of sustainable development work. The danger in this kind of project is to focus on ensuring survival (food, water, medicine), when in actuality the most important thing to focus on is agency and empowerment and how communities can work with pre-existing resources to ensure a sense of autonomy.
See Part Two of the Future Experiences Project Here. ︎︎︎
Finally the day came to present our work at The Lighthouse in Glasgow.
We placed all three products on their own podium with plaques right next to them explaining the Social Entrepreneur’s relationship to the product. On the windowsill, on the right-hand side of the photo, are two images that Rosie and I created to show the products in context to allow the viewer to understand how all three products work best when used together and help to create a system in which sustainability and community are at the core.
Conclusion
I believe that our design effectively addressed existing challenges within the sustainable development sector relating to the Global South’s autonomy over its own sustainable development and how by developing new working roles that are not only sustainable for the environment but sustainable for the worker and the local community, we were able to create agency for the worker.
Each step of our design process evolved from the one before it. The first prototype was a discussion tool designed to extract as much as information as possible from the experts. The second iteration was co-designed where we channeled information that we received from the experts directly into the design outcome.
At its core, we aimed to capture the human and community element of sustainable development work. The danger in this kind of project is to focus on ensuring survival (food, water, medicine), when in actuality the most important thing to focus on is agency and empowerment and how communities can work with pre-existing resources to ensure a sense of autonomy.
See Part Two of the Future Experiences Project Here. ︎︎︎