Abstract
In recent years, there has been a need for design that contributes to "futuring" as Tony Fry points out. The emergence of educational programs that promote futuring, such as transition design seminars at Carnegie Mellon University, is beginning to be observed globally. Yet their business applications have not been fully designed in many cases, and effective design education on defuturing/futuring is urgently needed. Keeping the status quo while challenging the global environmental crisis has contradictions and limitations. To drive business, it is imperative to transition the underlying worldview itself. For such a transition to succeed, business professionals with the necessary skillsets and mindsets are required. Against such a backdrop, Japanese ministries have been developing creative human resource development programs. However, there seems to be a lack of methods for cultivating fundamental literacy: the ability to envision different worldviews. It is not only difficult to teach and learn, but also hard for people to believe in such alternative worldviews and to apply them in the real business context. How might we then develop the business professionals’ capability to envision alternative worldviews and consider the possible business implications? Are they willing to design alternative worldviews in the first place? To partly answer these research questions, this paper reports on the implementation and evaluation of the worldview design educational program for business professionals in Japan.
Keywords
transition design, speculative design, pluriversal design, worldview
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2023.271
Citation
Mizuuchi, T., Mizuno, D., Yamasaki, Y., Tajima, M.,and Kawachi, M.(2023) How might we design alternative worldviews? Assessing a design education program for business professionals, in De Sainz Molestina, D., Galluzzo, L., Rizzo, F., Spallazzo, D. (eds.), IASDR 2023: Life-Changing Design, 9-13 October, Milan, Italy. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2023.271
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
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How might we design alternative worldviews? Assessing a design education program for business professionals
In recent years, there has been a need for design that contributes to "futuring" as Tony Fry points out. The emergence of educational programs that promote futuring, such as transition design seminars at Carnegie Mellon University, is beginning to be observed globally. Yet their business applications have not been fully designed in many cases, and effective design education on defuturing/futuring is urgently needed. Keeping the status quo while challenging the global environmental crisis has contradictions and limitations. To drive business, it is imperative to transition the underlying worldview itself. For such a transition to succeed, business professionals with the necessary skillsets and mindsets are required. Against such a backdrop, Japanese ministries have been developing creative human resource development programs. However, there seems to be a lack of methods for cultivating fundamental literacy: the ability to envision different worldviews. It is not only difficult to teach and learn, but also hard for people to believe in such alternative worldviews and to apply them in the real business context. How might we then develop the business professionals’ capability to envision alternative worldviews and consider the possible business implications? Are they willing to design alternative worldviews in the first place? To partly answer these research questions, this paper reports on the implementation and evaluation of the worldview design educational program for business professionals in Japan.