Making Futures Work

Glossary

Adversarial Design

Adversarial Design is a type of political design that evokes and engages political issues. In doing so, the cultural production of Adversarial Design crosses all disciplinary boundaries in the construction of objects, interfaces, networks, spaces, and events. Most importantly, Adversarial Design does the work in expressing and enabling agonism. (See also: Carl DiSalvo, Adversarial Design [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012].)

Applied Futures

Applied Futures Thinking is a construct of several theories and approaches that allow us to help organizations in making future perspectives actionable. Most notably, applied futures thinking is a form of futures studies: the study of possible, probable, and preferable futures.

augmented reality

Augmented reality (AR) is the real-time use of information in the form of text, graphics, audio, and other virtual enhancements integrated with real-world objects. It is this “real world” element that differentiates AR from virtual reality. AR integrates and adds value to the user’s interaction with the real world, versus a simulation.

backcasting

Backcasting is a planning method that starts with defining a desirable future and then works backwards to identify policies and programs that will connect that specified future to the present. The fundamentals of the method were outlined by John B. Robinson from the University of Waterloo in 1990. The fundamental question of backcasting asks: “If we want to ...