Visualizing Future Stories: A Day in the Life of a Designer, 2030

For some reason lately, I've had a number of intersections with incredibly interesting designers who seem to think I have something interesting to say. Aside from being flattered, I've also learned a whole lot.

The most recent experience was at the opening of Tom Klinkowstein and Irene Pereyra's exhibit of their wall-sized diagram called "A Day in the Life of a Networked Designer's Smart Things or A Day in a Designer's Networked Smart Things, 2030" at Pratt Institute's Graduate Communication Design department." Other contributors to the map included
Amarides Montgomery, Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino and Carolyn Lloyd

At IFTF, we've been experimenting with both visual maps and stories about people living in the future for several years now, but we've never done anything that captures the complexity of a resident of the future like this. You could stand in front of this diagram all day long and work your way through the many objects, technologies, experiences and other people and places with which this person interacts. It's like reading the log file of a sensor-laden person. It seems also to be a potential inspiration for user interfaces to the vast amounts of personal data and media we'll throw off in the future - Microsoft ought to steal these two to design a good front end for MyLifeBits. Finally, there is a fractal quality to this map that's really useful - big themes and events pop out at you, but you can zoom into the excruciating detail at will.

The full image is available as a PDF - it's absolutely worth taking to Kinko's and having blown up to poster size. Tom will be showing another similar project soon in Singapore and I'll post that when he makes it available.

Comments

[Irene Pereyra]

Hi Anthony,

Thanks for the flattering review, it's nice to see people enjoy our project after months of hard work.

I'd also like to thank you for your presentation at Pratt, I think it opened up a lot of minds in the audience, and there's been a lot of excitement at Pratt buzzing around the topics presented that night.

irene

[Tom Klinkowstein]

Anthony-

Yes, fabulous presentation at Pratt on the occasion of the previewing the 2030 diagram (I am taking it to Singapore next week for the Design Festival there where it will be exhibited 3-7 December).

Tom Klinkowstein

[Nik]

Hi all,

For those of you interested, an interview with Tom & Irene has just been put online at 'a thousand tomorrows'.