Dotdotdot – CONNECTION – Design Futuring
CONNECTION advanced training
Masterclass in Design Futuring with Benedikt Gross and Eileen Mandir

13 March 2024 - Politecnico di Milano
Open Talk “Design Futuring: Crafting Participatory Future Scenarios”

14 – 15 March 2024 - Dotdotdot
Masterclass “Design Futuring: Crafting Participatory Future Scenarios for Strategy, Transformation and Imagination”
Design Futuring with Benedikt Groß and Eileen Mandir
Objectives of the training
Participants will learn to develop the ability to discern trends and signals in a constantly evolving world, exploring their relevance and interconnectedness for your own organization; create tangible future scenarios and uncover (un)desirable futures; refine assumptions about potential future needs through experiential prototypes, fostering meaningful discussions and derive concrete action options and strategies from envisioned goals.
Bio
Benedikt Groß is a speculative and computational designer who works antidisciplinarily. He is a professor of Strategic and Interaction Design at the HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd.
His work deals with the fascination of relationships between people, their data, technology and environments. He is particularly interested to speculate about these relationships in the near future. He uses design as a vehicle to visualize potential implications and scenarios.

Eileen Mandir combines her experiences in design, engineering and coaching to create discourse and change – for people, systems and organizations.
She is Professor for Systemic Design at the Faculty of Design at the University of Applied Sciences Munich.
Format: Masterclass
Two full days, one as an instructed tutorial workshop, the other as self-guided project work.
Program breakdown
The workshop will focus on the topic of “Futures of Work Post AI”
Day 1
  • Welcome
  • Warm up: Polak game
  • Talk: What is Design Futuring?
Coffee break
  • Theory: Signals and Horizon Scanning
  • Teamwork: STEEP (Socio-cultural, economic, environmental, political) Future Wheel
Lunch break
  • Theory: Scenarios and Uncertainties
  • Teamwork: 2 x 2 Scenarios
  • Show & tell and wrap ups
Day 2
  • Theory: Narrative and Artefacts
Coffee break
  • Theory: Strategy and Value Negotiation
  • Teamwork: Prototyping staging
Lunch break
  • Teamwork: Staging
  • Theory: Backcasting and Three Horizons
  • FAQs and Transfer
  • Wrap up
Participant’s requirements
Do I need to be a designer to participate? No. This workshop is made for strategists, innovators, designers, artists, decision-makers, thought leaders, organizational developers, and anyone interested in methods to actively thinker around future scenarios.