Design – matt finch / mechanical dolphin

“Imagination Infrastructure”: Interview with Oskar Stokholm Østergaard, Danish Design Center

January 12, 2022Mechanical Dolphin

As part of the IMAJINE project using scenarios for the year 2048 to explore European regional inequality, I interviewed the Danish Design Center’s Oskar Stokholm Østergaard to find out what the scenarios might imply for the future of design.

Our conversation covered “design as diplomacy”, digital transition, moving from human-centred design to a planetary-level focus, and the notion of “imagination infrastructure” — among other topics.

You can read our full conversation at the IMAJINE website and find the complete scenario set as a PDF download here.

An empathy for the future: Interview with Sara Gry Striegler and Oskar Stokholm Østergaard, Danish Design Centre

November 13, 2020Mechanical Dolphin

Today I’m joined by Sara Gry Striegler and Oskar Stokholm Østergaard of the Danish Design Centre to talk about their work developing design approaches which allow people, communities, companies, and organisations to better understand the futures which may await them.

Sara is Programme Director at the Centre, leading their Future Welfare work, and Oskar is Project Manager for a range of ventures including the new Living Futures scenario toolkit.

Matt: The Design Centre has had an evolving role and remit since it was founded in 1978. What’s it been like, coming to the point where the Centre is using design as a futures-oriented tool?

Oskar: We’re currently in the process of finalising our own new strategy, with a focus on being mission-oriented and finding ways to not only create growth through design practices, methods, and mindsets, but also help in solving systemic issues at a wider level. We are becoming more systems-oriented in that sense, and the futures work helps us to tackle those big issues, pulling back from a narrow focus on using design to solve particular issues in isolation, one at a time.

Futures thinking flips that focus on its head; we try to take in the broader lines first, and then consider where we want to go – or where we want to avoid going! – in the future.

“Where Do We Go From Here?”: Fundamentals of Design for Uncertainty at MNYLC

November 5, 2020Mechanical Dolphin

Over the next two weeks, I’ll be presenting free lunchtime webinars for New York’s MNYLC, helping people through these turbulent times with a brief introduction to simple tools that help us address issues of uncertainty at an organizational and strategic level.

Sculpture of a question mark lying on its site, by Keith Edkins – CC BY-SA 2.0

Over the two hour-long sessions, we’ll look at mapping the uncertainties within a given operating environment, identifying areas of opportunity or concern, and using structured questions to prioritise and develop actions that address those uncertainties. The sessions take place 1-2pm EST on 10th & 17th November.

You can find out more about the webinars at the MNYLC website.

Masterclass for ASPAC Emerging Leaders

August 24, 2020Mechanical Dolphin

Early in August 2020, I ran two workshops as part of a three-day masterclass for emerging leaders at ASPAC, the Asia Pacific Network of Science and Technology Centres.

39 participants from across the Asia Pacific joined me for a day exploring the future environment for the region’s science and technology centres, and the use of design tools to create effective strategies.

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Working together across the timezones, we produced mini-scenarios to explore uncertainties which might prove challenging or opportune in the future, and explored ways to structure and test our thinking when it came to new initatives for ASPAC and its member institutions.

Maria Isabel Garcia, Executive Director, ASPAC:

“In August 2020, we asked Matt to conduct two workshops as part of a masterclass for 40 emerging leaders in our Asia-Pacific network of science centres. The two workshops were ‘reimagining the future of science engagement’ and ‘redesigning science centres’, respectively.

Matt laid out very clearly and very generously how the participants were going to reimagine and redesign. The workshop was supremely engaging and Matt’s approach strongly motivated the participants to follow the process. The breakouts which were prompted by Matt’s questions allowed for heightened collaboration!

The “tributes” from Masterclass participants showed that they overwhelmingly felt Matt’s workshop made them push boundaries that they had not even previously acknowledged, or were afraid to cross. This was especially relevant during this pandemic and will be for a long, long time, if not forever. We have more courage now among our emerging leaders.”

Perspectiva colaborativa en las bibliotecas: Challenges & opportunities for Spain

April 17, 2019Mechanical Dolphin

Poster for the "perspectiva colaborativa" event in Spain, showing scissors and a silhouette of a human head full of gears on a cutting board

Courtesy of the Spanish Ministry of Culture & Sport, plus the Ubik Tabakalera library in San Sebastian, I’ll be joining librarians, architects, culture professionals, and other stakeholders in the future of public libraries for a one-day workshop exploring challenges & opportunities in community collaboration.

What does it mean for these institutions to join forces with organisations, institutions, businesses, non-profit entities, users and potential users, when designing & delivering the services of the future?

How might libraries serve as spaces of collective creation & learning, and how would this service relate to their traditional mission and brand?

How could awareness of the wider transactional and contextual environment affect the way libraries define and negotiate their own future?

I’ll be joined by librarians from across southern Europe to explore these issues in an open, participatory, multidisciplinary format. In addition, our host venue is Ubik Tabakalera, one of the most fascinating public libraries in Europe, headed by the fiercely impressive Arantza Mariskal.

Spanish speakers who love their library and want to help shape its future should join us in the Basque Country on 30th May for a day of discussion and debate.

Workshop at the KB Atelier

April 6, 2019Mechanical Dolphin

This week I led a workshop at the Royal Library of the Netherlands in the Hague (it’s called the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, or KB, in Dutch).

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Just over thirty professionals from the library, archive, museum, and education sectors gathered to help the organisation develop its concept for the KB Atelier.

This will be a space for exploring, experimenting, and co-designing new formats for public engagement at the KB. The Atelier is in the business of finding fresh & valuable ways to celebrate and investigate the power of the written word for the 21st century, in collaboration with partners old and new.

I designed the workshop for Erik Boekesteijn and the brilliant team of KB staff assigned to this project, aiming to inspire debate, capture bright ideas, and build a community of interest and practice for further development of the Atelier concept.

The session combined design thinking tools and customised activities with elements designed to provoke debate about the future of our relationship to the written word.

The future is a difficult space for institutions – hard to predict or foresee, impossible to gather evidence from – and it was thrilling to challenge some of the Netherlands’ brightest cultural-sector minds as they contemplated possible futures for the written Dutch language.

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The session served to illuminate the landscape through which the Atelier might take KB’s visitors and staff on future journeys. Now the business begins of designing and building the roads and bridges which will traverse that landscape.

Watch this space for more developments at the KB.

Marvellous, Electrical: Distant Lands Are Not So Far Away

December 23, 2017Mechanical Dolphin

Pop stars at the fall of Communism. A man who builds imaginary tools to solve problems that never were. A mining engineer who made a ten-tonne truck disappear through a metre-wide tunnel.

Approaching the end of the year and the final instalments of Marvellous, Electrical, we’re joined by two humble figures with secret artistic careers.

Andy MacDonald, factory supervisor at Queensland’s Cobb + Co Museum, recounts a life spanning mining, sculpture, stage design, and jet fighter maintenance in Part 1 of The Fitter And The Handyman.

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Then Alf Klimek, doing odd jobs and broadband installation in Melbourne, reveals an unexpected career as a Berlin-based Cold War pop star.

You can also see two years’ back catalogue of Marvellous, Electrical over at the newsletter’s Google Maps page. Distant lands are not so far away…

#NotEnoughScifi: John M. Ford & the Funny Business / Part 1

September 7, 2017Mechanical Dolphin

I’ve been thinking about where we go next.

It’s a big part of my job, which essentially has two sides.

One of them is connecting and coaching people to bring their own bright ideas to fruition: finding resources, partners, and opportunities for them to realise marvellous initiatives.

Another part is scouting out the unmarked territory, the unknown spaces beyond service models and strategic visions, the opportunities we hadn’t even considered yet.

That includes using speculative fiction, sci-fi, and fantasy as a way of thinking about how things could be different…and what comes next.

Mess and Macrohistory: Design Thinking and Beyond feat. @tegalex / Part 3

September 4, 2017Mechanical Dolphin

We’ve been talking about how to address the messy reality of library services over the last few weeks: not just the artists’ impression, the managerial vision, or the designer’s response to a brief.

With Dr. Kate Davis, my colleague at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ), we looked at using information experience to address community needs; before that, Auckland’s Jerome Rivera gave a wry take on the demands of frontline library service under the tagline “Code Brown“.

It goes beyond cleaning up after users in a public library setting, though. Code Brown – understood more broadly as an attempt to address overlooked aspects of library information work – takes many forms and exists in many spaces.

IX: Design Thinking and Beyond feat. @katiedavis / Part 2

August 30, 2017September 2, 2017Mechanical Dolphin

Last time in this series we talked with Jerome Rivera of New Zealand about the messy realities confronted by frontline staff in libraries around the world. You can see some of that ongoing discussion via the #CodeBrown hashtag on Twitter.

What does an appreciation for messiness and uncertainty mean for the design of future experiences in libraries and their sister institutions? How can we best meet the information needs of the communities we serve?

Joining me this time is Dr. Kate Davis, my colleague at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). Kate is a social scientist based in USQ’s Digital Life Lab, carrying out research into social media and the qualitative analysis of information experiences.

Kate, I’ve heard of UX – user experience – but never IX. What is “information experience” all about?

IX is about understanding how people engage with information. It’s relational – focussed on the contexts in which people need, seek, manage, give, and use information. Read more →