UnSee

Networking and Synthesising

UnSee Update #4 // September 2024

Words by: Riccardo Torta

September was definitely a busy month for the UnSee team, fresh and rested from the summer holidays, we jump head into our busy schedules. Not everything that has happened concerned directly the research, but many activities gravitated around that liminal space between learning experiences and networking.

Figure 1: Results of a workshop at the Anticipation Conference.

Between 9th and 14th September some of us participated in the 2024 Anticipation Conference hosted by Lancaster University.

Here, we had the opportunity to engage in extremely insightful conversations about the relationship between futures, anticipation and design. We acknowledged the attractiveness of futures that might lead design practitioners to lose focus on the reality and the practical parts of the present. As the future might look empty at first, on a second look we realize that it is indeed filled or colonized already with the “ruins of the now”, social structures, values and mental models (and their physical manifestations) that will populate the future to a certain extent. Within this picture, we saw an emerging tension between the capacity to act in the “now” of designers and also the awareness of their inability to control the future. We also learned the concept of Anticipatory Systems (Rosen, 1985) to describe how biological systems evolve in relationship with their environment.

These topics emerged in conversations with individuals met across the conference and we will treasure them in our next reflections.

Figure 2: Linkedin annoucement of our participation to the RSD13 conference.
Another important moment of September was our confirmation as part of the next RSD13 conference by the Systemic Design Association. On October 18, we will present our early results via the paper titled “Systemic & Futures-Oriented Service Design: emerging design patterns for complex and uncertain transformations”, sharing the early patterns that emerged from the first round of practitioner’s interviews, connecting service design practices with systemic design and design futures. This presentation will be a wonderful moment to collect opinions from other researchers and scholars, experts in systemic design practices, plus expand the network of practitioners. Finally, as our didactic activities started with the new academic year, we had the chance to present the research and its contents to three fantastic academic reviewers for our internal midterm review. This was a boost of confidence for us, since we realize how much more ambitious we might be with the scope of this research. We are now in the process of digesting all the feedback among the team and plan what’s coming next. You will hear from us very soon 🙂