Ethical Futures
Design Futures/Fiction
Considering and addressing ethical implications and considerations in future design scenarios. Ethical futures explore how design decisions can impact individuals, societies, and the environment and seek to create responsible and sustainable futures.
In practice
Throughout the design process, ethical futures encompass a forward-looking approach that considers the moral and societal implications of design decisions. Designers engaging in ethical futures explore how design choices may impact individuals, communities, and the environment, aiming to anticipate and address potential ethical challenges. This approach encourages designers to proactively consider the ethical dimensions of their work, fostering responsible and conscientious design practices that prioritize the well-being of all stakeholders.
Questions
What is Ethical Futures?
Ethical futures is futures work that foregrounds who benefits and who is harmed in each scenario, rather than treating them as neutral projections.
Why do you use Ethical Futures?
Every future distributes advantage unevenly. Leaving that implicit means the harms are discovered by whoever they land on.
How do you use/apply Ethical Futures?
Build the scenarios, then interrogate each for its winners and losers, and design the interventions around the losers.
When do you use Ethical Futures?
In strategy, policy and any long-range planning with public consequences.
Who uses Ethical Futures?
Futures practitioners, ethicists and policy designers.
