FOAD Lecture Series
Doomsday Design
Workshop
22 September 2023
1pm - 5pm
This workshop touched on experience design with the design firm Eight Inc. where we were given a doomsday scenario in Singapore to design solutions for.
Firstly they gave us an overview and context to what their firm does, along with showing us two commercials (the Nike “Greatness” ad and the Apple “Here’s to the crazy ones” ad) on how they were not advertising their product, but an emotion. In their case, Nike was advertising accessibility — how anyone can be great if they use Nike products — and Apple was advertising their sense of rebellion — they are for the audiences who want more than the status quo.
With this in mind, we were taught about how Eight Inc. comes up with their experience design solutions — their framework is as follows.
Human Outcome
Strategy
Tactics
They did not just impart us this knowledge however but wanted to teach us how to apply it — which is where the doomsday aspect comes in. They gave us a doomsday scenario in Singapore along with some dummy data for us to come up with solutions for on the spot, so we could contrast it with what we come up with later in the workshop after we have gathered more data and taken into account the human outcome. To be honest I felt this was very reminiscent of the role-playing workshop we did recently in Design Insights as well, where we were given a scenario of a hypothetical future and had to choose a profession and give our view of what problems and solutions there would be in said future. So to be honest this all felt quite familiar, though this time we get more than an hour to really delve into said hypothetical scenario.
After interviewing the characters we were assigned to,we were tasked to now identify what human outcomes were desired from our results and the persona’s needs, goals and fears. (e.g the persona wants connection, the persona wants affirmation)
One of the main objectives of this workshop was to teach us about figuring out the general emotion the 3 personas all of us were given want, overall, as our personas are all facing the same base issue of the doomsday scenario and we are designing with it in mind.
They explained to us the point of this exercise and elaborated on what makes a human outcome (as some of us were misinterpreting it), and helped us to narrow down our thoughts into three main points which we were to now come up with solutions for.
Overall I felt this workshop taught us how to learn how to apply and consider the base emotions that is meant to connect with the users better. I enjoyed the way they let us apply it and the interview and persona segments felt very reminiscent of Design Studio and the previous Design Insights workshop class I mentioned too.
WGSN Big Ideas
2025 Talk
28 September 2023
3:30pm - 5pm
Christabel said that Singapore Design Week talks would count under a FOAD lecture, so I attended the WGSN Big Ideas 2025 talk. WGSN is the world’s leading trend forecaster, so I was hoping to learn what insights they would have to share from their expertly curated data.
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It was very insightful to hear from professionals how they forecast their trends in the first place. Often, this type of thing is the sort of thing that in hindsight, is an obvious result, but in the present is something we do not think as much about. Seeing the way they break down the current societal climate’s issues and predict the trajectory of how brands and consumers alike will approach things was very enriching to my learning.
The big ideas they will be forecasting revolve around these topics: Society, Technology, Environment, Political, Industry and Creativity, also referred to by them as STEPIC. It reminded me of the STEEP research we are tasked to perform in Design Insights class too interestingly enough.
Much of the ideas they forecasted had to do with the polycrisis our planet is going through environmentally and societal changes and the transitional period we are currently in with the advancement of technologies.
The ideas they proposed specifically were
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Flexibilities (Society)
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It is said we are living in a polycrisis right now, where a lot of societal crises are happening. Hence businesses should be more empathetic to their user base and offer products that provide more security and safety for consumers’ livelihood.
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Layered Realities (Technology)
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We are transitioning into a non binary world where there is craft and technology, physical and digital, and all these concepts are intertwined with each other. Thus we need to embrace the idea of symmetry with digital mediums
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Resource Ready (Environmental)
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We are running out of resources, so brands should devise new ways of looking at resources— We need to power down, and/or look at sustainable and nature-positive alternatives
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Urgent Optimism (Political)
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Consumers and citizens are losing trust with big corporations and governments because of all the issues we have as a society — thus people want extra control and have higher expectations of brands to take part to make change
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Preservation Mode (Industry)
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We have to combat our obsession with growth with the opposite — preservation, as we are near the end of our abundance.
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Strategic Imagination (Creativity)
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We are moving from an informational age to an imagination age — AI tools will be one of the key drivers that make things easier for anyone to create, and more issues will be raised regarding authenticity and ethics.
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Going forward in my career as a designer, I will definitely be referring to what I learned from this talk to apply to my work or future trend forecasts.