A practical approach to product design for future worlds using scenario-development

The focus of consumer product design is shifting from primarily offering functionality, towards experience and emotion driven product characteristics [1]. At the same time the functioning of products is more and more defined in its social context. Product designers can play a major role in developing our future social context, as long as they are aware of the responsibility towards users, society and environment. In the master ‘Design & Styling’ of the Industrial Design Engineering program of the University of Twente, we created a course “Create the Future”, addressing both these future- and society oriented aspects of design. In this paper we describe the course structure and the associated teaching methods, give examples of student results and discuss the points of interest and application possibilities. In the 2008 edition the students explored the future of food. First the students created a future context by investigating, building and visualizing multiple scenarios. Subsequently they designed a future product concept within these scenario contexts. It showed that the structure of this course was particularly suitable for designing products for the not so near future, i.e. 15-20 years ahead. Especially scenario development proved to be a good instrument for the students to be able to create a tangible context for designing future products and services.