Thread by @RohanIrvine

Bill DeRouchey — Design careers in the science fiction future

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Bill has been reflecting on careers. What he's done, what he wants to do.

Thinking about being 25 and fumbling through a design career.

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How may technology evolutions affect our future design Careers?

Let's look at the past to take a reasonable guess at what's coming up

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At some point we start our careers around 20 (an average)

We're trying to figure out what we do and where we want to go.

It usually lasts about until 70.

Roughly there are 50 years of career

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So when you're about 45 you'll hit your mid career.

The years in which you'll be a design leader in the future will be around 2028-2038

The world will be a little different then, and it's half your career away.

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New technologies lead to new design questions

New design questions lead to new design disciplines

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Around 1996 the first complex websites were created

This created the question

How do people understand them?

This lead to the discipline of Information Architecture

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When the first touch screen Mobile phones were created

It lead to the question

How do people interact with this screen?

It led to mobile design

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Ownership of multiple devices led to the question how to we deisgn an experience across devices

This lead to responsive design

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So what's going on now?

AI & automation

Almost every industry is going to be affected by this. There's a gold rush on trying to capitalise on this.

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14% of jobs globally will shift by 2030.

Anything that can be automated.

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When you offload extra teams to algorithms, how do we trust the outputs?

It could create a new discipline called Trust Design

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Algorithms are being trained by data sets.

How do we make sure we understand those biases?

It could be Algorithm Design

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There will be a huge push in people collaborating with robots.

It's not fully automated, it complimentary.

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How do people and robots collaborate?
How do they communicate?

We might have collaboration designers.

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Mixed reality is changing the way we interact with the world.

The ability to manufacture reality leads to how do people discern what is real.

It could create Perception Design

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Overlaying guidance on physical things, how do you design Instructions for that?

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There is a temptation to flood the environment in mixed reality.

How do we moderate the use of it in the real world?

We may have Ethics Design

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Material science is going to have huge impact on the way we design.

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If the material have glow, contour, conduct or movement means we suddenly have complex and interactive materials to think about when we're designing

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How does material move and interact?

We could have Kinetic Design

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As new technology appears they will change how we perceive the world around us.

The previous examples are only a small subset of the ever expanding new design mediums and disciplines.

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When trains were invented our relationship with distance was different.

When radio rocked up the world was live.

The internet made knowledge instantly accessible

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Work can be malleable, bodies are malleable.

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When language ceases to be a barrier will cultures become malleable?

When crytpocurrencies transcend regulation, is money malleable?

Suddenly everything we look at becomes malleable

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The emerging of technologies will affect our behaviour.

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From a culture stand point we're on a knife edge with climate change. When we become design leaders we'll be entering at a very interesting time.

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Our skills as designs are going to be in demand. We'll be spending our career thinking about people. Their needs. Be nimble and agile.

We make things for people, and that's not going to go away.

Making & things will likely change

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People are adapting to rapid change, it's likely we'll be responsible for helping large masses of people deal with this constant change

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Hypothetical Design Challenge
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Pick one from each column, and hypothesise the problems that might arise that we could be responsible for.

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Now what?
Can you actually plan for 20 years away?

No.

Kinda.

Here's a metaphor.

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Be prepared for anything.
Take the disaster predation kit. You might not need all of them, you might not encounter every situation, but some of the things you pack will help you with the most likely scenarios.

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Bill has homework for everyone.

Learn one new topic every month.

Be your own topic of the month club

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If you explored one thing every month (with 2 months off a year)

In 4 years you will learn 40 new things

In 20 years you will learn 200 new things.

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Read something
Watch something
Share something
Join a group

When science fiction become fact, you'll be prepared for it.

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