A Handbook to Desirable Futures

An Open Source Handbook

In the past few years a group of science fiction authors and enthusiasts, designers, policy analysts, and other people from different disciplines interested in exploring futures has gathered different methodologies, approaches and concepts of designing future scenario-building. Our aim is to share these experiences and methods in a format that allows others to work with them and adapt them for their working contexts. We also wish to share back to our communities who have actively contributed to Designing Tomorrow/s. The result is this website, a sort of handbook for running speculative workshops about the future. This handbook will be an open source publication. All of the content and design of this handbook and website is under the MIT license.

Most of all we want to enable radical and open minded thinking about the future and create agency – we do not live in a predetermined world, powerless to shape what’s coming but that we have the ability to imagine positive futures in order to actually build the world we want to live in.

Fiction / Fact / Fiction / Fact

The content of this book crosses boundaries by combining different genres: We have collected, worked with and refined different methodologies and written them up as hands-on guidelines of how to design (desirable) futures. These methodologies and the case studies of their use are at the core of the handbook. In order for us to open our minds and imagine the future as we want it, this publication also includes science fiction short stories, academic essays, graphic and design contributions.

Our target audiences are professionals in academic institutions, companies, NGOs, foundations in management positions, and the wider interested community. Whether you are a manager in a company, an academic or a designer, this handbook will equip you with tools and ideas you can apply to your work.