Service Design Show · 2026-07-02 · 1h 4m
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
38 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Lucy Kimbell challenges the design industry's tendency to operate on autopilot, disconnected from the external conditions that shape practice. She traces this disconnect to financialization and quantification - how digital networks and surveillance capitalism separate our sense of self from lived experience and community, with particular impact on students entering the profession amid debt, expensive cities, and uncertain futures. Rather than predicting what design will look like in 2035, her book maps eight strategic uncertainties (including politics, sustainability, decolonization, and more) that design leaders and practitioners can monitor and respond to. Using the Oxford Scenarios methodology, she develops three plausible but not preferable future archetypes for how design studios and practice might evolve differently, with winners and losers in each. Kimbell's work is grounded in futures research, 21 interviews, and participant observation across the design industry, offering a practical framework for leaders, students, and institutions to anticipate change rather than simply react to it.
The book explores what professionalized design might look like in 2035 by mapping eight strategic uncertainties in the contextual environment, then developing three plausible future scenarios to help design leaders, practitioners, and students anticipate change and make better decisions in the present.
Designers often operate on autopilot due to financialization, quantification through digital networks, and pressure to focus on immediate project delivery rather than external conditions like geopolitical shifts, climate change, and labor precarity that indirectly shape their practice.
The transactional environment includes things an organization can directly influence, while the contextual environment comprises broader factors like interest rates, carbon levels, and election outcomes that impact practice indirectly and are largely beyond direct control.
These systems separate life from work and self from world, creating mental health strain and disconnection from community; they also quantify future value (like university degrees measured by earning potential rather than thinking development) in ways that shape what designers prioritize.
She mentions design for transitions or sustainable design addressing ecological crisis, more-than-human design decentering humans to recognize broader ecologies and impacts, and decolonizing design that confronts historical injustice and destructive consequences of design's own history.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
A handful of interesting concepts appear - the 'futures blind spot' framing, the distinction between transactional vs. contextual environments, and 'cozy AI' as a weak signal - but they are rarely developed past the label. Large stretches of the episode are meta-commentary about the book rather than actual content from it, and the guest explicitly withholds the scenarios and most of the eight uncertainties.
I open the book by saying, um, maybe, um, there's a futures blind spot for professionalized design because. Absolutely. Design professionals are often called in to do something a bit like featuring
they shared an example of something called cozy AI. So this is a network of organizations who are trying to develop AI in a m, collaborative and open way. Um, not really a proprietary and closed way, uh, for shared benefit.
The core move - turning the Oxford Scenarios methodology back onto the design profession itself rather than a client's product or service - is a genuinely underexplored angle. However, the surrounding arguments (design is political, surveillance capitalism, financialization) are widely circulated in design academia and are explicitly acknowledged as non-original by the guest herself.
it's not original to say that design is political. Um, what's probably more useful is to suggest in what ways how it might be understood to be political.
service design obviously really does deal with temporality more than, for example, say other forms of professional design practice. But the idea is like, what's the time frame we're thinking about
Lucy Kimbell is a legitimate senior academic with 20 years at Central Saint Martins, real access to the Oxford Scenarios community (Said Business School), and a completed research manuscript - not a thought-leader-for-hire. However, from a B2B operator lens she is a pure academic theorist with no recent practitioner experience at scale, and much of the conversation underscores that distance.
I work at Central St. Martin. So this is a, uh, quite large um, art and design, uh, school
I've been actually not even full time but ah, sort of primary. Primarily an academic for 20 years
Concrete data is almost entirely absent: the guest declines twice to share the actual scenarios or name most uncertainties, cites no specific research findings beyond vague references to 'a vast number of futures reports,' and the few numbers given (24,000 students, 21 interviews, 60 attendees) are institutional context rather than evidence for any claim.
So the problem with me outlining the scenarios is they might change in the final version.
I map out eight of them in the book and now I'm going to have to remember them all.
The host makes genuine, persistent efforts to redirect toward substance - flagging audience impatience about the scenarios and asking for practical takeaways - but he consistently accepts long, vague answers without pressing for specifics and never challenges Lucy's repeated deferrals. The conversation ends without the promised scenarios, uncertainties list, or actionable framework.
I hear people screaming in my ears, bark. When are we going to actually hear about the scenarios?
Could you unpack that a little bit for us?
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Are we actively designing our own future, or just everyone else's? Discover how integrating "futures thinking" into your practice can help you spot industry shifts early and make better, more deliberate decisions today. It’s easy to get stuck in the day-to-day grind of deadlines and deliverables. But if we don't think about the long-term role of design, we risk building a world we don't actually want to live in. In this episode, Marc sits down with Professor Lucy Kimbell - author of the upcoming book "Futures for Design" - to tackle a fascinating issue: the "futures blind spot." We explore why designers work tirelessly to shape the future of healthcare or education, yet rarely apply that same forward-thinking lens to our own profession. In This Episode The Futures Blind Spot: Why designers often fail to apply futures inquiry to their own professional practice. Strategic Uncertainties: Why studying what you don't know is far more valuable than trying to predict a perfect, clear picture of the future. Growing Your Futures Literacy: Practical, everyday ways to integrate futures thinking into your team's workflow without adding to the overwhelm.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: Hello, I'm Lucy, and, um, this is the Service Design show, episode 257.
Speaker B: Okay. Imagine yourself ten years from now. You're looking back at the work you're doing today, all the interfaces, services, and systems that you're putting into the world. What do you actually want to be proud of? We're so often stuck in the project to project grinding that we rarely stop to ask where we're actually heading. In this episode, we're stepping out of that cycle to look at the messy strategic uncertainties shaping our practice. Hi, my name is Marc Fontein, and this is the Service Design show, where we try to figure out together, uh, what it actually takes to design services that work for people, for businesses, and, of course, for our planet. Our guest today is Lucy Kimball, a professor of contemporary design practices at Central Saint Martins in London. Lucy's career is fascinating. She almost took a completely different path as an arts administrator before she ended up in academia. I think that might be why she's so good at cutting through the noise. She's able to balance serious, heavy theory with a very human sense of humor. And she's obsessed with helping us break out of our design autopilot. In this conversation, we talk about why we have such a blind spot when it comes to the future and why we're so terrible at actually looking ahead. We get into how to spot the weak signals before they become trends and why we need to stop designing ourselves into a corner. I thought that this would be a neat preview of what design in 2035 would look like, but Lucy pushed back on that. As you'll hear, she argues that trying to predict the future is way less valuable than just getting better at dealing with the uncertainties of it. So whether you're just starting out or leading a design team, this is a great reality check on how to stop reacting and start anticipating. So let's jump in and make sure to stick around for the end, as I'll be back with a few closing thoughts.
Speaker C: Welcome to the show, Lucy.
Speaker A: Thank you.
Speaker C: Nice to have you on, uh, exciting times for you, exciting times in the world in general. Um, you have been on a very interesting journey, which we'll, uh, definitely talk about in a moment, but, uh, sort of to set the stage. Uh, I always try to frame these conversations as a puzzle for me and the audience that's listening as an adventure that we're going on. And this is going to be a spicy adventure because I think, uh, if I read, uh, between the lines of, uh, your thinking and your notes with me is um, your take on design is that design is inherently political. Uh, we have a lot more responsibility um, than we sometimes might say think. Uh, we are maybe often too stuck into just delivering the work on a day to day basis. And I hope that in this conversation we'll sort of figure out how we can break that spell. Um, so if somebody is listening to us right now and they resonate with the idea that a lot of the design work that they're doing is on autopilot, do you recognize that as well? And what would you say to them?
Speaker A: So thank you Mark for the invitation to be with you here today. Um, I would agree that um, a lot of us and um, the U.S. i mean people who are working in institutions, uh, in the global north with stable environments, uh, or possibly in niches or working as freelancers in relation to opportunities, um, in those institutions. So in my case it's a university and so yeah I think a lot of us in the university are on autopilot. Um, maybe not the people who are on insecure contracts for example, um, and certainly not our students who are gathering
Speaker D: large debts to be here and study at university.
Speaker A: So um, your question was about being on autopilot. That's what I experience in m, myself amongst others. And then with occasional moments of reflexivity and paying attention to the external conditions, not just the uh, highly uncertain, um, and often destructive geopolitics, um, um, the
Speaker D: climate change, the habitat destruction and so on.
Speaker A: So all those external conditions which most of us don't have a direct um, opportunity to impact on but indirectly we're impacting on, um, and to the extent to which we're aware of those things on a day to day basis is where I think the blind spots come in and the paying attention to the here and now, um, and dealing with
Speaker D: our own dilemmas, what's for dinner, what time am I picking up my children from school, et cetera.
Speaker A: Um, and our own familial and friendship obligations. Um, and it's hard to think about
Speaker D: all those external fast moving things.
Speaker A: So yes, we're not.
Speaker D: We, those of us who are in positions of responsibility and power are often not paying attention to the external things.
Speaker C: Yeah. And uh, it's great that you mentioned it already. It's first and foremost I think important to have empathy with everybody who's doing this. Um, a lot of obligations, a lot of responsibilities and just uh, trying to get through the day is already a major task for most uh, of us. And then um, again it's not to blame, uh, people to be heads down when they're doing the work and actually doing the work. But I guess there are consequences of being in that mode of operation. Um, what consequences do you see?
Speaker A: Well, maybe we could, before going into the consequences, um, why is this happening? So, um, you could say one of the reasons is financialization and quantification. That reality is quantified, um, and a sort of separation between life and world, life and other people, uh, uh, what's
Speaker D: important to you and what you have to do as part of your job or just to keep your job or to get a job in the first place, to have a stable home and so on.
Speaker A: Obviously there are many, many billions of people not living in those circumstances of stability. Um, but for those of us, why is this happening? Um, uh, unequal allocation of resources. Um, and the consequences, um, which was your original question are ah, um, um, mental health issues from that separation of life and world and purpose and world and community. Um, dealing with the uncertainty, negotiating those, um, the breakdown that's unfolding between uh, um.
Speaker D: The way humans live on the planet and the disproportionate effects, uh on um, people of color, um, global communities in the global South.
Speaker A: Uh, you know, this is all quite serious stuff. I don't have any massive, super, super duper perspective on it. I'm just trying to pay attention. Um, and so the consequences are often felt in the body as ill health, um and stress and um, uh, tensions and so on. And also impact on I think people's
Speaker D: relations with one another, with their families, with their co workers, disconnections from community and place, uh, as part of the. Trying to manage and survive.
Speaker C: Yeah. So the consequences are quite serious. Uh, nevertheless, uh, it seems very hard to escape um this way of being, of working, um, a lot of people. I want to hear your take on that as well. But you mentioned as one of the underlying principles, you uh, mentioned um, an equal allocation of resources. But you also mentioned quantization. Could you unpack that a little bit for us?
Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So financialization and quantification. So the idea that you know, through these digital communication networks are um, we, um. Those of us who use them and rely on them and allow us our data to be captured and tracked, um, our reality is being captured and quantified and analyzed, um, in real time. Um, and on the one hand, oh here, have this. Here, look at this. Here's this lovely thing for you to look at or might be of interest to you and so on this seduction of um, entertainment and um, affect and um, um distraction. Um, but on the other Hand, there's
Speaker D: these, um, the continued separation from self
Speaker A: and world and from being in here and now. So that's really the digitalization I'm talking about. And, but the quantification, because those things are happening through digital channels. Um, and then that's part of a wider thing which is, you could call it financialized capital or speculative capital, uh, or speculative futures, um, uh, which has
Speaker D: been um, turned into something that can be, you know, the futures market.
Speaker A: So the capturing of future experience, the
Speaker D: capturing of future value in the present, that the value of a university degree being something to be uh, assessed and quantified. Uh, how much will you earn in the future? Not um, how will you think in the future, for example. So this idea that our beings are quantified, our, our sense of self and relating to others, our self worth, our relationships with communities we're part of, these things are quantifiable and that has become, um, um, you know, even more um, present through uh, digital networked media.
Speaker C: Am I hearing you correctly that because we are living a bigger part of our lives mediated through, let's say numbers on a screen rather than experiences in the outside world, um, we are losing something?
Speaker A: Uh, yeah, I think it's not just about the screen. If you go to a shop, you know, buy your groceries at a supermarket, um, you might not be looking at a screen there, but you are being tracked. So it's the surveillance capitalism idea of um, um, this, that everything we do, even if it's out in the world,
Speaker D: is being tracked and recorded, analyzed, um, um, with some kind of value attached to your choices.
Speaker A: So it's not necessarily about you individually looking at a screen.
Speaker D: It's about the quantification of your reality and networks that you're part of.
Speaker C: Definitely happening over here. If I just look around me and I go to the grocery store, uh, cameras everywhere, filmed everywhere. Uh, super. Yeah, that's. I would say that's reality. It's become the normal. I don't even question that anymore. Uh, so how does this link back to us, the world of design?
Speaker A: Um, that is a great question and one I'm trying to make sense of. Um, I work at Central St. Martin. So this is a, uh, quite large um, art and design, uh, school, a higher education institution, part of University of the Arts, London. In total, the university has about uh, 24,000 students, something like that, across our six colleges. Uh, with everything from fashion to communications
Speaker D: to architecture to graphic communication design to product design to jewellery, costume, et cetera, et cetera. You know, all the different disciplines, um,
Speaker A: And I see, uh, all sorts of, um, experiments. Uh, our students at the end of year show, for example, and then their various projects, trying to make sense of the world they're in and respond to
Speaker D: it in some way, often critically thinking about um, ethical perspectives, political perspectives on what is happening, what could be happening and the consequences.
Speaker A: So that's a good thing, right? The spirit of inquiry is still here
Speaker D: in the art school mode.
Speaker A: Um, but the extent to which we think about the external conditions, what is shaping the moment now, what might be
Speaker D: changing and how all of these experiments connect to change is, um, a live question.
Speaker A: I don't think I've answered your question mark. I've just started talking about the art school model of education. Um, but I suppose I, uh, see, I learn from seeing uh, what this much younger generation are doing and thinking about and, And I am I suppose concerned about the extent to which they are able to critically analyse, um, and go beyond um, current assumptions. And that's partly the conditions under which
Speaker D: they're studying, you know, with the pressure
Speaker A: of their student loans, their expectations about
Speaker D: what their professional practice or activist practice
Speaker A: might be after, where they might be able to live, um, in these incredibly expensive global cities like London, uh, or
Speaker D: wherever they're from, uh, and their ability to negotiate all of that, um, with some degree of autonomy.
Speaker A: Uh, I think these are all um, in play at the moment. So it's a worrying time, um, which I look at and am concerned by.
Speaker C: You have been looking at this quite uh, a lot recently because you've been working on a book. By the time that our conversation here is published. The book won't be out yet, but I think we can already share, uh, the key ideas in the book. Could you tell us a little bit more about um, your journey and your exploration into this topic of the future of design?
Speaker A: Yeah, so huge topic, uh, the future of design understood as a professionalized practice, um, with the starting point of where uh, some aspects of design are in say 2025. So that includes service design, design thinking, human centered design, sustainable design, systems design, those kind of terms. So not architecture nor engineering design, not
Speaker D: hci, um, uh, although there's relationships with all of those.
Speaker A: So I look at some of the themes and developments and this is something
Speaker D: I, along with other design academics, I pay a lot of attention to about what is happening and the recent thinking on that.
Speaker A: But also then I really try to focus on what, what might be, uh,
Speaker D: what might professionalized design look like in say, 2035 and the specific scope.
Speaker A: So it's that year 2035, a decade
Speaker D: from now, more or less.
Speaker A: Uh, um.
Speaker C: Um.
Speaker A: And in the Global North. And the Global north really just a construct for describing the assemblage where, um. Um. Particular nation states and globalized capital are concentrated.
Speaker D: Um, um.
Speaker C: Um.
Speaker D: In the book I have to sort of justify why am I using that term rather than say global minority. But there is.
Speaker A: I am focusing on, um, the Global
Speaker D: north, meaning they are geographically associated with uh, you know, Eurocentric north, uh, American Western. There's all these other terms which are slightly related.
Speaker A: Even though I have interviewees from the book.
Speaker D: In the book, for example from the Philippines, um, and examples from, for example Lebanon.
Speaker A: Um, so I'm trying to understand what might be the external conditions for the thing we call professionalized design.
Speaker D: And I map out what I think those conditions are.
Speaker A: And the way I do that is by um.
Speaker D: Sharing um, some perspectives from a vast number of futures reports I read and digested. And also, um. 21, uh, interviews, um, and some workshops and just also being around participant observation in various conferences and so on and so on.
Speaker A: So I put all this together and map out.
Speaker D: Here are some things to pay attention to which I argue. Uh, shape, um, what that professionalized practice in the Global north might be like in the mid-2030s.
Speaker A: And then I, um, bring them to life in three future scenarios suggesting uh,
Speaker D: what a studio might look like and its practice. So three sort of archetypes for how things might play out differently, um, which are intended to be plausible, uh, but not preferable.
Speaker A: I don't make a judgment about which
Speaker D: of these is better. Because in each of these future worlds, um, some people are winners and losers,
Speaker A: some people are excluded and marginalized and
Speaker D: other people do well and uh, have uh. Their assets or their potential supported and reinforced. So this methodology that I'm referring to is um. That I build on, sorry, is the Oxford Scenarios methodology, um, developed by Rafael Ramirez and colleagues at uh, said business school where um. I was based for some years and had access to, uh, learning about that.
Speaker A: And so it's not about trying to
Speaker D: set out this is how it should be. It is more this is how it could be.
Speaker A: And then, um, in the final chapter,
Speaker D: what might be the implications of these developments be? If you are a design, uh, leader, if you are a uh, designer, a design student, if you are a, uh,
Speaker A: design academic, um, or professional running a design institution, what do you think the future of design might be and what
Speaker D: the students might be wanting or needing, um, in this future?
Speaker A: So it's a book about futures trying to bring Futures, plural into view for professionalised design. Constrained um, as I've said by a
Speaker D: particular time frame and a particular um, sort of geopolitical context. Um, and drawing together different insights from other people's work. Um, and there's also quite a lot of using of bits of academic research in there as well about for example business models or sustainable transitions, uh, or political science. So it's an exploration of futures for professionalized design. Um, um is anticipating what the future conditions might be and um, in a quite practical way what any of us who are in that ecosystem, how that might shape our own thinking and decisions that we can make in the present. Um, for example organizational strategies or decisions to follow this path or that path or prioritize this thing over another thing.
Speaker C: We are right now frantically looking in the show notes trying to find a link where to buy the book or download the PDF but it's not there yet. Uh, everybody, uh, this was a good teaser for what the book is about. Um, I've won, uh, many uh, people listening with me. Be super curious to hear those scenarios. I don't know, uh, if you can already ah, tease them out and can we go over them one by one. Which scenarios have you explored?
Speaker A: Um, before we get onto the scenarios, um, maybe we could talk about the uncertainties. And you know what, I don't have them in front of me either. So we're relying on my brain. I finished the book 10 days ago, the manuscript. Um, and you know, in the way of writing it will change and develop,
Speaker D: you know, in little tweaks here and there before it's published.
Speaker A: Which should be early 2027.
Speaker D: Yes, that's right.
Speaker C: So you mentioned you'd prefer to explore the uncertainties instead of. Or um. Before we dive into the actual scenarios first, uh, of all, why the word uncertainties? How did that uh, emerge into the. Is it in the title even? I don't know.
Speaker A: Um, yes, the current title of the book, actually it's changed is currently Futures for Design. Uh, Uncertainties, Scenarios and Implications.
Speaker B: Um, so why uncertainties?
Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A: So this comes from a strand of futures thinking um, which uh, pays attention to strategic uncertainties. What might be shaping, what factors might be shaping the um, the transactional or contextual environments. So the things um, that an organization can directly have some agency in relation to, that's called the transactional environment where they can transact and influence and do things. And then there's a broader, uh, sort of, let's call it. If you visualize it as a circle,
Speaker D: there's an outer Circle, which is the contextual environment stuff that an individual design agency for example or designer or design school, um, or team in an organization,
Speaker A: you know, interest rates, um, how many parts per ah, thousand uh, of carbon
Speaker D: are in the environment, things like that. Right. So these are huge.
Speaker A: Who's, who's going to win the next
Speaker D: um, uh, who's going to win the midterms in America, et cetera. All these things which are massive and may have an impact but are ah, um, sort of further away.
Speaker A: So the book is focusing on things
Speaker D: um, that are more in the middle
Speaker A: circle that things that uh, are uncertain. Um, but um, the organization um, can
Speaker D: to some extent have some agency in relation to. And so I map out eight of them in the book and now I'm
Speaker A: going to have to remember them all.
Speaker C: No, no, we don't have to go like again this is not a lecture. We are not uh, uh, presenting anything. Maybe you can pick one or two that spark uh, your curiosity or your interest the most uh, and then we'll uh, keep the other ones uh, for people to read in the actual book.
Speaker E: I want to take a quick break
Speaker B: to ask do you ever feel trapped
Speaker E: in your organizational bubble? You look around and uh, realize that
Speaker C: you are the only true expert in
Speaker E: the room and struggle to find peers who can inspire, challenge and truly support you. Peers who help you grow and ultimately push you to deliver work that you genuinely proud of. It's easy to feel stuck and limited in this situation. But there's good news. You are not the only one. There's a whole community of professionals who are eager to break out, find new ways to deliver their best work, live up to the industry best practices and bring fresh perspective to their projects. So you might wonder, where do I
Speaker C: find these professional pairs?
Speaker E: Well inside the Circle. The Circle is a community for in house service design leaders and those who aspire to be. It offers a unique safe space where all the conversations you engage in are relevant to the challenges you face as an in house service design professional. Day in and day out, it's not about fancy theories but based on the lived experiences of your peers who have been there and done that. We meet regularly in small high trust groups to share wins, failures and those hard won lessons. We go beyond the basics of service design and dig into the stuff that's in between the lines of textbooks. Those details that aren't details at all but turn out to be the difference between success and failure. The conversations in the Circle are real, honest and without a hidden agenda. It's a breath of fresh air compared to the endless LinkedIn doom scrolling hoping for a nugget of wisdom, but often drowning in the loudest voices. So if you are ready to break out of your bubble and stay on top of your game, the circle is your answer. Head over to servicedesignshow.com circle for all the details on how you can join this community of smart and generous professionals. That's service designshow.com circle and you'll also find the link in the show notes of this episode. I'm looking forward to welcoming you inside. Okay, let's get back to the conversation.
Speaker A: Yeah, all right. Why don't I try and do a couple of them? So um, there is an order to them because the first one is basically
Speaker D: politics, which is where we started talking.
Speaker A: Um, so it's not original to say
Speaker D: that design is political.
Speaker A: Um, what's probably more useful is to
Speaker D: suggest in what ways how it might be understood to be political.
Speaker A: Um, and at the time of us talking now 2026, um, you know, we can already see in the last say five years a uh, real concentration on forms of design that uh, are clearly
Speaker D: actively engaging with political topics. Um, they include things like um, design
Speaker A: for transitions or sustainable design that are
Speaker D: dealing with the ecological crisis, uh, more
Speaker A: than human design which is trying to uh, decenter the human as the.
Speaker D: The subject and the beneficiary of designing and have a more holistic approach recognizing ecologies in which designing takes place and the consequences, the impacts on worlds. Um, another political form of design in the contemporary arena is for example decolonising design. So recognizing the histories and presence of injustice and um, uh, inequality and destructive consequences of colonization on uh, different populations and how design is tied to that, for example through the reproduction of modernity and um, particular kinds of thinking, um, about what is uh, ordinary or what is to be expected and different ways of relating uh, between self and world.
Speaker A: So these are all forms of political design. There's also, you know, accessible design, um, and so on.
Speaker D: Design justice. These are all contemporaneous terms where m,
Speaker A: they're practical efforts and theoretical efforts and political efforts to um, recalibrate uh, or
Speaker D: reconstitute um, assumptions that are in design, um, in its forms of practice in the early 21st century.
Speaker A: So those already exist. Right? Um, but you could say they're niches.
Speaker D: Maybe if you go to a big
Speaker A: tech firm you won't find those things or you might find a niche. Um, and to what extent are they dominant? They're certainly very visible in design academia,
Speaker D: um, its own little bubble which I'M part of.
Speaker A: But within big organizations, you know, a financial services provider with a service design team, the extent to which that team is able to explore uh, or make use of those concepts, any methods that they think might be useful to bring those approaches, uh into view and so on. All of that is more probably more
Speaker D: difficult uh certainly than in academia.
Speaker C: Um.
Speaker D: And of course there's independent agencies that then um, um do important experiments and um, work to explore and render visible those kind of approaches.
Speaker A: So that's the sort of swirling stuff I see around. Um.
Speaker D: And.
Speaker A: And they are political in as much
Speaker D: as they are challenging, questioning, challenging um,
Speaker A: the status quo and trying to think
Speaker D: and do otherwise in the context of professional design. And I, in a sense in the
Speaker A: book say one way, one uncertainty is the extent to which those become mainstream. Um, not any one of them, but
Speaker D: more the sense of that design has this political agency could become substantially more um. The case not just in niches or in academia or in some individual small studios and so on.
Speaker A: That's an uncertainty.
Speaker D: Um, um. Or do these remain niches, um.
Speaker A: And then if there is a more
Speaker D: political design, it could also be that it's tied up with some of the
Speaker A: other things we see in the contemporary landscape.
Speaker D: So around polarisation, um, intensification of positions
Speaker A: taken, um, the fact that terms like right and left no longer really work in the current arena.
Speaker D: You see strange alliances, um, that don't really make sense. If you look at things through the political logic of the um, mid 20th
Speaker A: century, um, so how polarization plays out in society, which we can see, or
Speaker D: I can see all around, um me in the uk, um and also when I pay attention to news, uh, media and geopolitical events.
Speaker A: So polarization, fragmentation of institutions, um, possible
Speaker D: collapse of um, um ordering institutions which um.
Speaker A: Have served some countries and interests well, um, but no longer have credibility, uh, or may not maybe just be too destabilized to continue, which has implications for things that are you know, I am not at all expert in but around for example security, um, and have impacts
Speaker D: on global finance and so um, on.
Speaker A: So I'm just sort of listing some of the things that ah, I do try and pay attention to in the book, um in the opening sections, which is this polarization, institutional fragmentation, the importance of niches and experimentation which is there. Um.
Speaker D: But actually perhaps that becomes even more important uh with more fragmentation. Um, um.
Speaker A: And then whether there's growing, I mean again you could say there's growing recognition of design and the arts and the humanities as playing incredibly important roles in reconstituting um, worlds. How societies could be different and otherwise, um, um.
Speaker D: Uh.
Speaker A: So doing political work you could say
Speaker D: to make a difference, um, and design with its materializing and embodying capacities could become even more important than it is. So not simply the let's be human
Speaker A: centered, let's look at the person's journey
Speaker D: through a service or system, but actually the politics of that.
Speaker A: So it could be the case that
Speaker D: design as a competence, as a capacity becomes more visible or it could just
Speaker A: be um, in its pockets as it is now. So these are examples of uncertainties where
Speaker D: none of us know what that might be like. And I'm not saying these are the only things to consider, but in that sense, um, design, uh, professionalized design, um,
Speaker A: may uh, what it might look like
Speaker D: may not be the same as we, uh, as it is generally thought to be in 2025 or so.
Speaker C: Investigating these um, uncertainties, I can imagine that you could have listed 100 uncertainties. A thousand. Some are uh, quite visible and tangible already. Like you mentioned, the different flavors is maybe not the right word, but the political flavors of design or where design is infused by political or ideologies, um, those like we can recognize them. I'm curious, like were there any weak signals that surprise you or that in your journey you found, oh, this is so important, but isn't yet on the public forum, but definitely should be in the book.
Speaker A: Uh, yeah, so you use the term weak signals, which is uh, a word that is often associated with futures methodologies. So uh, yeah, there's some uh, weak signals. I'll give you example of one. Um, so one of the other themes, uh, is about technology obviously, um, which is related to that um, cosmopolitical question
Speaker D: that the first topic that I just was talking about.
Speaker A: Um, so, um, I give an example. Something that cropped up through a network I'm part of that focuses on AI and cooperation. And um, they shared an example of something called cozy AI. So this is a network of organizations who are trying to develop AI in a m, collaborative and open way. Um, not really a proprietary and closed
Speaker D: way, uh, for shared benefit.
Speaker A: So uh, aligned as I understand it,
Speaker D: with thinking around say open source, for example.
Speaker A: So um, it's a network, it's a network model. Um, and that's an example of a
Speaker D: weak signal that instead of the giant, um, massively dominant, uh, few tech firms which are shaping the AI landscape as far as I understand it, in 2026, which are in the news every day,
Speaker A: the news I see anyway, um, that
Speaker D: actually there's Other ways of thinking, um, about AI and not just in a critical way. Oh, we should control it or we should regulate it, and here are all the dangers.
Speaker A: But actually, no, let's try and try and do something with these emerging technologies.
Speaker D: And let's do it in a way that's open and, um, collaborative and shares, uh, the tools and the opportunities and the models and so on.
Speaker A: The extent to which that still exists in one year, five years, who knows? But I think that is an example
Speaker D: of a weak signal.
Speaker C: Okay, so, um, eight, uh, uncertainties, um, that could have an influence on, uh, the design profession, uh, in 10 years from now. How did you move from those eight uncertainties into just three scenarios? Because, um, like, the number of combinations, uh, is probably unlimited. So could you share a little bit about that process before you dive into the actual scenarios that emerged?
Speaker A: Yeah. So, uh. Yeah, so in this Oxford scenarios methodology, which I'm used to loosely using, um, and then I sort of add some other stuff to it, I did a version of these uncertainties, I don't know, two years ago, two and a half maybe. And then I developed some draft scenarios, um, where different aspects of those uncertainties play out in the three scenarios. Um, what's now in the book is a much more structured version of that. Back then two and a half years
Speaker D: ago, it was more creative that I'd digested a vast number of futures reports and these.
Speaker A: I'm um, not calling them trends. I mean, there are trends.
Speaker D: Again, there's different terms in these methods or factors, drivers of change.
Speaker A: Um, and, um, tried to identify the things I thought were most uncertain, um, some of which are not in the final version.
Speaker D: You know, different things emerged in the writing because it's a research process.
Speaker A: Um, and how they were combined then was to try and create stories, uh, of future worlds where there is differences
Speaker D: between, um, those uncertainties in those future worlds.
Speaker A: Um, so I developed these scenarios and then I worked with six, uh, graduates from, um, Central Saint Martin's ual. Um, over the course of, um. I think I had enough money to pay them for 18 days each. So I gave. They worked in pairs, um, and by this stage there were three scenarios. Sometimes you could have four scenarios, sometimes
Speaker D: you could have two.
Speaker A: It depends on the purpose. But the way, um, these archetypes work
Speaker D: worked out, it was that there were three.
Speaker A: So experimentally, having given them these quite short form versions, I worked with these pairs of graduates, um, who I invited to be in a project. So, uh, two years ago we worked
Speaker D: together over about three months.
Speaker A: And their brief Was to um, make an installation, ah, of a, ah, future studio in that world. So they were all working in one of the three worlds. Um, um, and then they basically made
Speaker D: a story, a story of the studio and its world and then they made an installation. And then we had a day or two maybe it was two days, yes, were here actually on this floor at
Speaker A: Central St. Martin's where we had 60
Speaker D: people come and experience the installations and do a sort of guided tour through them.
Speaker A: So actually for your listeners, viewers, um, there are um, short form videos, one each of those and we can provide
Speaker D: the link for that because they're on
Speaker A: YouTube, um, and using the work of
Speaker D: these graduates and very early stage version of these scenarios.
Speaker A: So they were, yeah, a creative generative
Speaker D: project to try and make sense of
Speaker A: if those things, if it were like that, what might it mean, uh, for
Speaker D: a professionalized design, uh, entity studio, let's call it a studio.
Speaker A: They were all in London in the book.
Speaker D: Um, they're not, they're in three different locations. Um, and so they did the thing
Speaker A: that one of the things that design
Speaker D: is good at is making something tangible and, and communicable and experience something you can experience. And then we had very interesting conversations with the 60 people who came and experienced. They had this sort of guided tour. Excuse me, with our graduates.
Speaker C: So yeah, maybe by now, um, and thanks for sharing this process. Um, almost sounds, uh, and I'm not an expert in any means, but it almost sounds like writing a sci fi novel. Thinking about the future. Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker A: Uh, I'm a big fan of sci fi, always have been. Um, and that's a, ah, very important, um, you could say strand of cultural futuring, exploring what futures might be like. Uh, but usually what you have in a film or a novel is a future. And with this Oxford scenarios methodology you're trying to create several futures. So uh, that you're not saying it is like that, it could be like this, this or this. And let us now consider those possibilities
Speaker D: in the present to clarify, you know, decisions we need to take in the present.
Speaker A: Um, for learning, for thinking about, you
Speaker D: know, our current strategy, our current plans, how would they play out in those future? If it was like that, our current
Speaker A: plan to do blah, blah, blah, what
Speaker D: would that, where would that leave us?
Speaker A: Yeah, so the point of the sort of structured scenarios approach is to try and quite mindfully and intentionally do futuring
Speaker D: for uh, stuff in the present, for impact in the present. Whereas the cultural form, you know, the sci fi movies and you know, all this wonderful series and uh, you know, can be thought provoking. Like the Ministry for the Future by Ken, um, Stanley Robinson.
Speaker A: I've got the name wrong and is really uh, absolutely brilliant novel.
Speaker D: I'm just reading another one now by
Speaker A: um, Stephen Markley called the Deluge, which is.
Speaker D: I just was reading it last night. The bit I was reading was set in 2027.
Speaker A: So yeah, we need all these different forms. Um, and um, I suppose that's also one of the other insights I came to. And again there are other people writing about this.
Speaker D: I wouldn't say any of this is massively original, but some of it is. The idea of temporality in designing and
Speaker A: service design obviously really does deal with
Speaker D: temporality more than, for example, say other forms of professional design practice.
Speaker A: But the idea is like, what's the time frame we're thinking about when we're designing something or thinking about a future system that's going to be delivering something to some people, some beneficiaries, some users,
Speaker D: achieving something or other for some customers or an organization?
Speaker A: Uh, and what are the consequences of uh, that system, that service, those artifacts,
Speaker D: those experiences being in the world and over what time frame do we do that thinking?
Speaker A: So uh, there is thinking about temporality in design, but this is a particularly
Speaker D: structured way of doing it. Um, for the profession itself, which I don't. I found two other examples actually which I refer to in the book.
Speaker C: Yeah, uh, usually, uh, like you mentioned, we think if we do scenario planning or thinking about futures, it's usually for the thing that we're working on, the challenge that we are approaching, the problem that we're addressing. And it's not to reflect upon our own practice. Right. And that is like the interesting. We're applying the methodology onto ourselves here.
Speaker D: Yes.
Speaker A: Basically I said, I open the book by saying, um, maybe, um, there's a futures blind spot for professionalized design because. Absolutely. Design professionals are often called in to do something a bit like featuring, um, what might the future of this healthcare
Speaker D: service be like, what might be the education for uh, this age group look like, et cetera.
Speaker A: And of course on all those topics there often is futures research going on. Uh, not always. And it depends very much by geography
Speaker D: and institutional investment and politics and so on.
Speaker A: But often designers are ah, sort of implicitly doing a kind of futuring, you know, something that doesn't yet exist. Our job is to design that thing. So it is an implied future, but it's not, uh, often a really systematic futures inquiry. Um, and there have been already in the last decade in particular, quite a Lot of stronger intersections between futuring or futures and design taking different forms. Um, but overall, uh, I'm basically arguing there's a futures blind spot which is paying attention to the conditions of um,
Speaker D: the professional, uh, capabilities, um, the professional knowledge, the expertise itself.
Speaker A: Um, and given the prominence of design,
Speaker D: uh, that's grown in the last 20 years, in particular with design thinking, service design and the human centered, et cetera,
Speaker A: the potential um, goods and the potential uh, damage from that professionalized capacity um, has more consequences than it might have
Speaker D: done 20 years ago because that capacity or that competence is more widespread across many different types of organisations and sector
Speaker C: and thus we should be more um, aware uh, of our responsibility, of our influence, of uh, the consequence of the work we do. Um. Instead of being. Is naive the right word? Uninformed?
Speaker A: Uh, yeah, naive would put me in the position of some kind of expert, kind of telling people off like oh, you're being naive. So I would say I'm also on a learning journey, uh, as a design academic. I mean I did practice for a long time mostly in um, what we now would call say hci. Um, actually it was probably called HCI at the time but I just didn't
Speaker D: know because I was in a practitioner bubble.
Speaker A: Um, uh. So uh, I'm also on my own learning journey. Um, I've been actually not even full time but ah, sort of primary. Primarily an academic for 20 years. Only 20 years because I did lots
Speaker D: of other stuff earlier in my life
Speaker A: like being an artist and uh, living
Speaker D: in different places, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker A: So I feel I'm learning about this stuff, um, and I'm trying to pay attention.
Speaker D: Um.
Speaker A: And um, there were several points in the development of this book because all books uh, as you know, take some time and you know, really it started you know, three years ago. Yeah, maybe. And then I kept thinking should I do this and try trying out versions of. Of it talking to different publishers? And then, um, it got clearer. Um, yeah, maybe not yet two years ago. And then it was like no, I'm really clear what it's doing. Um, and actually how it's played out
Speaker D: is slightly different because when you actually do research things develop in a way you didn't expect because it's research.
Speaker A: So m. It's still me trying to make sense of things. Um, I think, you know, we all do that in our work professionally, different ways in an ac. You know, I feel like as an academic I have some responsibility to make
Speaker D: the vast amount of stuff I've read and had access to over 20 years of being an academic, I have a
Speaker A: responsibility to translate some of that to
Speaker D: others into a format that might be useful. So that's what I'm trying to do.
Speaker C: I, uh, hear people screaming in my ears, bark. When are we going to actually hear about the scenarios? Uh, because talking about the process is always important and interesting, but talking about the actual content is as well. Uh, and now I'm sort of on a crossroads whether to ask you to share, uh, a few of these scenarios or whether to dive into, uh, something that you mentioned a, uh, moment ago. What made you eventually decide that this was the moment to write the book? So I'll leave it up to you. What, which avenue would you like to explore first?
Speaker A: So the problem with me outlining the scenarios is they might change in the final version. So, uh, uh, and also readers will be able to go and watch these short films, you know, which are on YouTube. So they, you know, these are two, three minutes. So that will give an overview, um, you know, by clicking away from this.
Speaker C: Um, don't click away from this.
Speaker A: This, don't click away from this. So, yeah, so I'm not going to. And also I might just get it wrong because I didn't prepare in that way. Mark. For this. So sorry.
Speaker C: Um, okay, yeah. So, uh, let's go back to that moment where you were contemplating on whether or not to turn this into a book. What tipped you over? Uh, what is it? The scale. What tipped the scale?
Speaker A: Over three years. Yeah.
Speaker C: Yeah. Like writing a book is hard. It's a lot of work.
Speaker A: Yeah. So. And the actual writing started last summer. So, um, basically it's been nine months part time.
Speaker D: Yeah.
Speaker A: Um, so one reason is I've seen the um, power of uh, futures thinking by having access to some really inspiring and interesting people over the last 10, 20 years, including this colleague, Rafael Ramirez, uh, at Oxford, and many others. Many others. So I've been inspired by the rigor and the depth of thinking deeply about futurity, um, and um. Um, finding myself drawn to that. The second reason is that, um, some of the encounters between designing and futuring, um, which again I've observed in different ways and done a little of myself, um, don't seem, uh. I thought there was a gap. Um, so one example of that encounter is obviously speculative design, um, or um, you know, doing some kind of futures,
Speaker D: some kind of creative practice which takes the future as um, a uh, context to do some designing in. And often that work ends up in say, galleries and, and looks a bit like uh, strange objects or videos and so on.
Speaker A: And um, I uh, have paid attention
Speaker D: to that and had access to some of those people and those things.
Speaker A: And I often don't find it persuasive. There's an initial, um, pleasure in the artifact and the quirkiness, but the depth of thinking about the future scenario, that future world is not uh, communicated or present.
Speaker D: Perhaps it's there.
Speaker A: Um, and then there's also a sort of strand of futures and design intersection
Speaker D: which is really critical thinking, recognizing the
Speaker A: consequences, uh, the varied consequences which are
Speaker D: not always intended of design decisions in futures so that it's constituting different kinds of outcomes and recognizing that. So with a kind of critical mindset, thinking around pluralism and justice and so on.
Speaker A: Um, um. And so, um, and then temporality, I
Speaker D: already mentioned recognizing the sort of varied, like what's the time frame that actually we assess or to what extent do we pay attention to temporality and designing. So all of these things were there,
Speaker A: but what I didn't see.
Speaker D: Um, and I go to all sorts of conferences, pay attention to all sorts of things, plus also have access because
Speaker A: I'm working at Central St. Martin's to all our visitors and all our students, ah, and colleagues. And I just wasn't hearing some of
Speaker D: the stuff I hear, heard from the futures community. Um, so that's what kept me going, uh, when I checked in and out. I think no, no, there's still a reason to do this and I'm still finding it interesting. So I guess I'm just going to trust that.
Speaker C: So what's the reason?
Speaker A: Uh, oh, that there was a gap. Yeah, there was a gap, um, in this, What I called the blind spot,
Speaker D: that there was something that hadn't been done in quite this way.
Speaker C: Okay, uh, um, great. A curiosity gap. Now the book will be out in a year, we'll be able to read it. Um, how do you hope this book will help to close this gap or.
Speaker A: Mhm.
Speaker C: What do you hope that this book will achieve? What's the ripple effect that you're looking for?
Speaker A: So that is a great question. Um, so the last chapter very much addresses the reader, uh, about how they can bring some of the insights in quite a practical way to their own team, their professional work individually or working
Speaker D: together in kind of workshopy situations.
Speaker A: So it's the translation of the material into uh, implications.
Speaker D: Um, and um, that you can take that make actionable.
Speaker A: Um, so I'm hoping people uh, do read it. But I also recognize, uh, most of us don't read books in a linear way. I certainly don't um, I'm an academic, so I just. Now, these days I start at the beginning, then I go to the back
Speaker D: to see what the references are in
Speaker A: the bibliography, um, and then pick up a few things in the middle and then sometimes, you know, start again and
Speaker D: read the whole thing.
Speaker A: So books is a strange format, you know, um, you know, this. Maybe, maybe I should have done a podcast.
Speaker C: Uh, you can still edit it. Nobody's stopping you.
Speaker A: Yeah, no, but I, um, actually think writing and taking time over writing is an example of paying, um, attention to temporality, to the way, um, the Western brain has been constituted to work. And of course they're not all the same neurodiverse. People may not, uh, depending on the, the neurodiversity, uh, may find different kinds
Speaker D: of concentration in different ways better.
Speaker A: Um, uh, I take seriously the work of research and translating things into a form for others to engage with. So writing is one, I think a
Speaker D: profound form and books are a profound form for that.
Speaker A: So, uh, that was why I kept going and, um, the gap. Your question was about the gap, how to make it useful. So is that people go away thinking, oh, I haven't thought enough about those things. What might be the business model, uh, that we are basing our future teams work on in five years, in 10 years? What might be the kind of, uh, if the world is political, more political, and these polarization issues, for example, play out in a particular way, what might that mean for how we choose as a team projects to work on, for projects that we don't want to work on, um, and where we position ourselves, um, uh, ah, as being responsible or having agency within our professional work. Um, so these kinds of topics, um, and what might it mean for what knowledge is, you know, what's the kind of knowledge that is needed and where
Speaker D: might I get that knowledge, uh, and continue to develop as a practitioner beyond being a student?
Speaker A: Um, to what extent does design work need to be regulated? Um, so all of these topics, these are some of the uncertainties so that the person comes away thinking, oh, I
Speaker D: need to think about these things.
Speaker A: Uh, the book is not didactic in the sense of saying, here is the answer.
Speaker D: It's more. It's uncertainties.
Speaker A: It could be like this or it could be like that, it could be
Speaker D: like this, it could be like that,
Speaker A: so that, um, people give some consideration to these topics, um, and then can, uh, individually or in their team, their
Speaker D: organization, bring that thinking into their prioritization, their strategies, their professional practice.
Speaker C: So if we look back to the start of our conversation, we Mentioned that, uh, the work that we're doing as design professionals very much is heads down. At the moment, you're inviting us to look from left to right, up and down, uh, behind us, maybe even um, around. Yeah. If we start to train one skill, one muscle today, tomorrow to get better at this, um, futures scenarios oriented way of uh, practicing design, what would you encourage us to practice, to develop?
Speaker A: Um, yeah. So there's a term called futures literacy, uh, developed by Real Miller, um, and others. And then there's critical thinking about
Speaker D: has
Speaker A: it got a load of assumptions in that? But the idea of uh, paying attention to uncertainty, um, in the future, uh, paying attention to how the future is constructed, um, what assumptions you might be making about the future yourself that um, are your own blind spots, um, about not just a particular project and its
Speaker D: cycle, time, time horizon, but your professional practice and its time horizon, your team and their time horizons.
Speaker A: So making all of these more uh, conscious, uh, having an anticipatory mindset, um,
Speaker D: to be aware of the future and
Speaker A: its uncertainties, that would be uh, an
Speaker D: outcome that I would recommend, uh, for um. Well, I can't say everyone that's a bit too globalizing, but for myself and
Speaker A: others, uh, to think through, uh, with a broader time horizon, I would love
Speaker C: to hear uh, more about that and how to help to bring order to chaos. Like it. It seems so overwhelming. It feels so overwhelming. There are so many uncertainties, uh, about everything. Uh, and how do we actually make that into uh, a uh, workable model, Something that is actually helping us on a day to day basis, strive. Helping us strive to a worldview that we actually want to contribute to and not just uh, extend the worldviews that are uh, implicitly in place already. Um. Yeah. All right, uh, we're heading towards almost the end of our conversation. Lucy. Um, I'm very curious if people want to um, learn more about the book, about your work. Uh, I can imagine that some people will be um, eager to take these eight uncertainties and put them in a blender, uh, and come up with their own scenarios. Are there ways we can already engage with this material or what would you advise?
Speaker A: So this is where I'm not very snappy as a self promoter. Apologies. Um, I am uh, planning to share some of the material, um, um, in a substack, um, and to have some workshop events just to uh, share some of it and get people thinking. I have done a couple of keynotes where I used some of the material
Speaker D: and sort of tried it out, um,
Speaker A: but I don't have Ah, all that
Speaker D: snappy stuff just now.
Speaker A: And I have massively withdrawn from social media as many people have um, over
Speaker D: the last few, few years.
Speaker A: So um, uh, maybe, maybe where. This is where I don't even. Yeah, I can't say, look at Twitter. I'm not on Twitter anymore. So um, I suppose I'm so the. I mean for the foreseeable future I uh, anticipate working at Central St. Martin. So that's my sort of home, uh, institutional webpage. Um, my own Lucy, uh Kimball.com domain is more from when I was an artist in a former life. Um, and um, it's from such a time when screen um, resolution was much smaller and I did look at it recently to show someone and the images were so low res and looked absolutely terrible. So I am going to have to update that. So I'm not giving, I'm giving a long rambling answer of. I think I set up a substack uh, with my. I can't remember my name but um, I am certainly on LinkedIn and um, uh, reluctantly post there because of this social mediaization and the endless performativity that
Speaker D: we're expected to do.
Speaker A: Um, but certainly my institutional page. And by the time um, ah, in a few months as the book is entering production I will probably start running some online workshops um, just to share
Speaker D: some of the material.
Speaker A: So I would say follow me on LinkedIn would be a start. Um, connect with me on LinkedIn m have a look at my University of the Arts uh webpage and then I'm
Speaker D: pretty sure I set up a substack.
Speaker A: Um, I can't remember what the name of it was.
Speaker C: We'll make sure to link everything in the, in the show notes that is relevant. Uh, when the time comes uh, I'll definitely uh be able to share that the book is uh, up for grabs and uh, uh, this is also already an invitation to, to join us in the Circle community and uh, maybe talk uh, there about the work. So uh, in a more engaging form. M. Um, good for you that you're not on social media. You're not trapped in uh, in that space. Um, and we'll look up that substack. Lucy. Um, on this podcast we try to leave with better questions than we started with. Um, what's something that you'd like us to chew upon? Think about, uh, after this episode.
Speaker A: Um, think about what from your professional artwork or activism, the competence you have as a designer, as a design professional. What do you want to be still proud of in 10 years?
Speaker C: Sounds like a important Question to reflect upon not once, but on an ongoing journey. Um, thank you for sharing. Thank you sort of for lifting the curtain upon what you're working on, for flipping the methodology onto ourselves. Uh, we should do that, uh, more often for sure. I'm looking forward to hearing more about the book, the uncertainties, how we can bring that into our own practice. Uh, and of course everybody is curious what, uh, the sound will look like in 2035. One thing I know for sure, it's not going to look as we think it will. Uh, so thanks for coming on, sort of scratching, uh, that curiosity itch and, uh, for doing the work that you're doing.
Speaker A: Thank you very much for the opportunity and sorry for rambling answers.
Speaker C: Uh, this is the place where we ramble and explore together. So no, uh, worries about that. Uh, once again, Lucy, thanks for being on.
Speaker D: Thank you.
Speaker B: I'm really grateful to Lucy for this one. The thing that kept nagging me after we finished recording is how often we design futures for our clients, but we almost never apply that same rigor to our own careers. Hope you agree that that is a, um, massive blind spot. As Lucy said, we can afford to be naive about the systems we work within. So take that question with you. What do you want to still be proud of 10 years from now? And don't forget that if you still feel like you're the only one trying to break that design autopilot inside your organization, you don't have to do it all, uh, alone. The reality is that fighting institutional bureaucracy and the constant pressure to measure everything is a lonely battle. That's why we have built the Circle. It's a community of in house services and professionals who are past the, uh, best practice talk and are dealing with a messy day to day reality of trying to do good work. It's a space to trade real stories and build the kind of resilience you actually need to survive in this industry. If you're ready to stop fighting that battle by yourself, come join us. Head over to servicedesignshow.com circle to see how you can apply. The link is also in the show notes.
Speaker C: Finally.
Speaker B: Thanks for hanging out with me today. I know you have a million things you could be doing, so I appreciate you spending your time here. My name is Mark Fontein and I'll see you in the next one. Take care.
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