This article was originally published in Touchpoint Magazine, Vol. 10, No. 2, “Designing the Future” (October 2018). Touchpoint, the Journal of Service Design is published by Service Design Network.

Designing for the future provides a chance to question the status quo and build a path towards equity. However, when we focus on solving problems within existing systems, it is difficult to challenge the system itself. Instead, what if we designed services for a future in which we believe differently?

Ferguson, Missouri, is the site of internationally recognised protests that erupted after a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, in 2014. Since then, Ferguson has committed to changing its policing and court practices. In January 2017, I joined a group of Ferguson residents who are involved in this participatory policy reform in order to learn about their process. This open, public group is called the Neighbourhood Policing Steering Committee (NPSC). The NPSC works with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Ferguson Police Department to develop revised plans and policies – for example, on officer recruiting and community policing. This is a service design project, reconsidering what the service of policing should look like and how it should work.

Throughout this process, when we talk about how policing could be different, people often bring up policy changes that respond to the problems they see and experience today: Maybe police could ask nicely before they stop and frisk someone on the street. Or maybe the police could stop killing people of colour. Beyond minimising harm, it is hard to imagine holistically different ways of keeping people safe that challenge the foundational beliefs of policing. As Alain Badiou says, “The power in place doesn’t ask us to be convinced that it does everything very well […] but to be convinced that it’s the only thing possible.” [1]

In response to the difficulty of imagining alternatives, I worked with NPSC members to challenge Ferguson residents to imagine new institutions that could keep people safe without policing. Through this ‘Futures of Public Safety’ project, as well as through developing a ‘Radical Design’ class at Washington University in St. Louis and leading experimental workshops, I’ve learned some lessons about how to support the imagination of alternatives.

Uncovering ideology and exploring alternative beliefs

Comparison is a powerful tool for opening our minds to alternatives. When we look at a practice that we are accustomed to, it is easy to take it for granted. But when we place it in contrast to something else, we can start to uncover our own beliefs. For example, most police departments today use a punitive justice mind-set. This has become second nature to us. It is obvious that laws must be enforced in order to be effective. If someone breaks the law, there should be consequences. It is difficult to imagine another way until we look at our own model as compared to another mind-set, such as restorative justice. Defined by Howard Zehr, restorative justice suggests that people should be held accountable to each other instead of to written laws. [2] Instead of using punishment to deter wrongdoing, restorative justice holds people responsible for healing the harm they’ve caused.

Neither of these mind-sets is universally right or wrong, but by placing them in contrast to each other, we can begin to understand some of our subconscious beliefs. We could also contrast ‘guardian’ versus ‘warrior’ mindsets in policing, a government-led versus communityled approach, or reacting to harmful behaviour versus preventing it. These are all spectrums from one prioritisation of values to another.

In Ferguson, members of the NPSC and I started by asking residents to describe how an ideal society would respond to a range of scenarios, from witnessing domestic violence to the theft of a car. Rather than focusing on peoples’ concrete suggestions, we paid attention to the values and desires behind them. By sorting these responses along various spectra, a framework emerged, outlining different visions about how to keep people safe without policing. Later, three possible futures were selected. The first, ‘The Future of Social Service’, is led by an involved government that provides public services to prevent harmful behaviour before it happens. In the ‘Future of Grassroots Cooperation’, neighbours keep each other safe without government intervention. And ‘The Future of Hearts and Minds’ is based on developing morality through local religious leadership.

Striving for provocation rather than problem solving

Once we have defined an alternative belief that challenges our current system, we can begin to explore how it might play out in terms of public services. Often, it is at this point that we confront the ‘impossibility’ of alternatives. For example, someone might say it is impossible, dangerous or utopian to imagine neighbours keeping each other safe without professional intervention. This initial reaction often blocks the development of alternative visions, stopping them before they can even take form. By instead naming and including the flaws that are pointed out, we can respond to critique in a more productive way. No future will be without flaws, but by visualising multiple alternatives, we can work together to prioritise which challenges we want to confront. This builds on Dunne and Raby’s definition of a speculative design practice that produces critical provocations rather than earnest proposals. [3]

After defining multiple visions in the Futures of Public Safety project, I created three tangible scenes within these futures that were displayed at exhibits and workshops across the cities of St. Louis and Ferguson. In the Future of Social Service, viewers encounter a case manager’s desk in a bureaucratic cubicle. Participants are invited to occupy the scene, either as the case manager or the client. They may try on the check-in glove and look at the citizen Risk Profile on the computer screen.

At first glance, the Risk Profile seems to achieve the utopian dream of ensuring that everyone has the care and resources they need. We see a treatment plan and service history, all headed by the ‘Metropolitan Department of Social Services’. But then, a viewer might think twice about the bars showing the client’s risk for anti-social behaviour, drug abuse and violence. Underneath, there is a list of factors used to calculate the risk, including ‘few living relatives’ and ‘adverse childhood experiences’. We might begin to wonder whether the goal is really to serve and heal the person, or to tame their potentially threatening characteristics. Who determines what services people need? If we rely on services to prevent harmful behaviour, are people required to comply with the services they are offered? And how would a governing body obtain this personal information? These questions begin to build a more complex vision that incorporates both positive and negative results of an alternative system. By comparing the scenes from the three future visions, community members were able to have a conversation about which aspects they want, and which ones they want to avoid.

Incorporating radical change into everyday progress

This kind of speculative practice can be used in parallel with more everyday problem solving, as a way to expand imagination and approach incremental change with more developed, long-term visions that lead towards fundamental shifts in values and beliefs. It can be controversial because it requires us to look honestly at the beliefs underlying current services, which can be painful and frustrating to confront. This practice can also be confused for a desire to completely tear down current structures, even when it is used only as a thought exercise in the midst of more gradual work. However, for a few participants in Ferguson, the Futures of Public Safety project has been an important complement to our policy revision and community engagement work. As one participant said, participating in a workshop involving these scenes helped him to open his mind to alternatives and look more critically at the policies we are reviewing, here and now.

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Alix Gerber is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, teaching courses such as “Radical Design” and “Design & Research”. She uses participatory and speculative design practices to visualise alternative futures that challenge the status quo. Alix has an MFA in Transdisciplinary Design from Parsons School of Design in New York. designradicalfutures@gmail.com

Gerber, A. (2018, October). Radical Futures: Designing for Fundamental Change. Touchpoint Magazine, 10(2), 47-49.

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1. Badiou, A. (2009). Philosophy and the Event. Cambridge: Polity Press.
2. Zehr, H. (2002). The Little Book of Restorative Justice. Brattleboro, VT: Good Books.
3. Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.