Envisioning Futures
An interactive digital card deck to prompt climate conversations.
Role: Designer / Developer
Methodologies: Design Fiction, Interface Design, Front End Developing
Context: Employee
Date: Mar 2021 - 4 Weeks
The ask
Climate conversations are often daunting, full of jargon, and constrained by what is "practical”. As a designer at Youth Climate Lab, I spearheaded the design and execution of a card deck that uses Design Fiction as a way to foster more inclusive and imaginative conversations about the climate crisis. Working alongside a diverse team of volunteers and a project manager, in four weeks we created “Envisioning Futures”.
Design process
To kick start the project I presented the methodology of Design Fiction to the rest of the team. We explored the power of “What if?” questions: how they can take people out of the confines of practical thinking and provide them with a sandbox to explore futures and critique the reality of the present moment. As a group, we tested the mechanics of the card deck by using some prompts to start our own conversations. The team decided that “What if?” questions would pair well with a more probing “how?” question. We settled on using a digital medium for the card deck as this would be the most cost effective and accessible way of releasing the deck. As the rest of the team started to develop the prompts, I began drafting the design of the digital deck.
I used custom html, css and javascript within a pre-existing SquareSpace website to code the card deck. The cards are randomized and can be refreshed on the click of a button. Each “What if?” prompt can be paired with any “How?” prompt. The instructions button can be found in the top right corner and, when toggled, will appear as an overlay.
Future iterations
As we completed this on a very tight timeline we were unable to implement many of the features we would have liked to seen in the card deck. In future iterations we would hope to build a collaborative deck with prompts coming from community members. We would also like to develop more resources for how this deck can be used in different settings, especially education.
