Dan Saffer
How To Design The Future
Synopsis
Alan Kay famously said that the best way to predict the future is to invent it. And while this is mostly true, how do you know what to invent and why you’re inventing it? If, like me, you work at a company with finite resources (no moon shots here!), how do you find the best possible opportunities for your organization? At Twitter, we tried a new technique that’s a combination of Trend Spotting, Jobs To Be Done, and Design Fiction to plot out a set of possible futures for ourselves, looking a few years into the future for product opportunities. This talk will explain our methodology and process so that you can use it in your organization to design the future.
About Dan
Dan Saffer is a designer and the author of four books: Designing Devices (2011), Designing Gestural Interfaces (2008), Designing for Interaction (2006, 2009) and Microinteractions (2013). Since 1995, he’s designed devices, apps, websites, wearables, appliances, automotive interiors, services, social networks, and robots. He currently works at Twitter on the Stay Informed team, helping people (and especially new users) connect to what interests them.
