4 Countries, 4 Futures:
Tom Klinkowstein's Horizon Projects Workshops




Introduction
For the past year and half, Tom Klinkowstein has conducted workshops, called Horizon Projects, with design students in four countries using a methodology adapted from John Anderson, a NASA scientist. The workshops lasted from 1/2 a day in New York, to two days in Istanbul, Turkey, three days In Shanghai, China and five days in Mumbai, India.

The workshops are a labor of love, funded on a break-even basis by a patchwork of sources, including travel money from Hofstra University (where Tom teaches) and staying expenses paid for by the school where the workshops are given. They come into being through incessant networking (Istanbul via a former student, Shanghai through a Chinese contact via one of Core 77's founders, and New York and Mumbai by way of friends of friends of Media A's (Tom Klinkowstein's design studio) client list.

Conventional thinking about the future is linear; what-if projects are therefore often narrow, limited to tunneled "flashlight" visions (see diagram above). Horizon Projects try to see outside of these narrow beams.

Horizon Projects workshop participants visualize new services and products arising from a future hypothetical, "impossible" cultural or technological condition. Participants propose graphic, media and marketing initiatives to accompany their proposed services and products. Horizon Project workshops encourage presentation of breakthrough thinking via quick turnaround text, image and motion graphic presentations, rather than highly worked out proposals.

The workshop starts with the premise that design leaps come from external circumstances, rather than pure formal considerations. In Mumbai and Istanbul, participants were encouraged to propose their own future condition. These ranged from radical biological/medical developments like male pregnancy, to very high-speed (1/100 light speed) travel capabilities. In New York and Shanghai, the premise was provided at the start of workshop: availability of nearly unlimited telecommunications bandwidth and nano-manufacturing (manufacturing from the atomic level upwards), encouraging new pairings of unlikely international brands like Calvin Klein and Apple, or MTV and International Paper.

Horizon Projects create a new frame of reference for designing services, products and associated media. They first pose a challenging future frame beyond current capabilities, place participants in that "fixed" future and then stimulate imagination to generate breakthrough-based alternatives. Finally, they encourage a fresh examination of present-world design challenges through the new filter of the future-frame.

Next up for the future: Seoul, Cologne, Berlin and Vancouver.

Core77 asked participants from each of the four workshops to reflect on their experiences:



Shanghai, China
Tongi University
Three half-days, March 28, 30, 31, 2005
30 Participants
Reflections by Connie Xin Ying, Communication Design Tutor



At the start, the students were confused, shy and a little embarrassed—perhaps about the awkwardness of working in a second language, their first experience working this way. Failing a predilection to ask direct questions, they happily "retreated" to the Internet to plot a the solution to the brief: Imagine a future where unlimited telecommunication bandwidth and nano—manufacturing encouraged international brands to form alliances and produce new products and services. Tom called it, "living in the future frame of reference".

The first day's presentations of the three-day workshop were a bit crude and, to tell the truth, evidenced the students' confusion about the workshop's purpose. But then Tom delivered a presentation entitled, "You Cannot Not Communicate," covering everything from the formal thinking of the Bauhaus to contemporary notions of the vernacular. From this point on, the student were energized.

On the second day, ideas began to emerge—awkwardly at first, then with more confidence: a foldable car from BMW and Lego; virtual reality eyewear from IBM and Bausch & Lomb; personalized movies for an audience of one at soft drink bars from DreamWorks and Coca-Cola.

The class started to get into "an American groove" that is a lot more casual than the students were used to. Ideas were flying, sketches, images and Flash movies were produced; they began to see that that the idea was uppermost, trumping execution and finish.

The third and final day saw things really take off with two standout presentations. "Teleteller," the brand-child of International Paper and MTV, spawned a product called "IM" or "I'M" (from the first Letters of the two parent brands), possessing the attributes of both paper and electronic media. IM was disposable, recyclable paper—its contents could be updated at any moment via telecommunications—but it had the reassuring heft of paper.

At the very end (literally, the last minutes of the workshop), one project stole the show, with nearly everyone applauding the results. "Living Divani," the brand-child of the furniture maker Divani and the animal rights group, the World Wildlife Fund. Living Divani is one-of-a-kind furniture, produced just for you, designed to become as intimate a companion as your favorite pet.

What did we learn? Don't hesitate, do! The idea is king—details can come later. Ask questions, make presentations, get feedback, then make more presentations. And, don't be afraid of the future.



New York, USA
Rubin Museum of Art
1/2 day, March 4, 2005
7 Participants
Reflections by Nicole Barth, Graphic and New Media Design student, Hofstra University



In a typical four-hour time slot at school, I might have spent two hours learning about Louis Sullivan's use of cladding and two hours eating lunch. But in four hours at the Horizon Projects Workshop, Deborah and I created a new product for the year 2050, named it, came up with an advertising campaign and assembled all these pieces into a PowerPoint presentation which we delivered to the other six members of the workshop.

And what did we see as the problems of today? They ranged from the nuisance and unpredictability of transport—of both our packages and of ourselves—to the annoyance of technology's constant watchful eye upon us. In one group's scenario, Siemens and FedEx joined to create a service called "Destinations" that would ensure expeditious and hassle-free conveyance from one place to another, whether it be at five week's or five minute's notice, to the bank or to Bali. The group postulated that "the service would take the logistical and transportation issues off of the user's shoulders and transfer that burden to a global and local logistics corporation, redefining the transportation process as a good of service with immediate product gratification to the user."

Another group explored the idea that though often helpful, technology often permeates our lives to an irritating, almost invasive, degree, resulting in the demand for more privacy. In essence, they were looking for an "off switch." "If we can see it, it can see us," they argued, and so shouldn't we have the ability to retreat from this invisible web of technology that constantly envelops us? Their solution was "Bugoff," a product/service that provides the user with the option to literally turn off, in all senses, their various technological connections. More than merely turning off mobile phones and taking other phones off the hook, Bugoff creates a state where the user suddenly becomes invisible to all forms of technology—computers would not have access to personal information; the mobile phone would be unreachable.

Tom paired me with Deborah, a graduate Communications Design student at Pratt. Deborah and I decided to address the notion of alienation, exploring technology's growing effect of isolation, leaving people cold and separated rather than close and connected. Unlike Bugoff, the product we created embraced technology. We envisioned Calvin Klein and Apple coming together to form "StyleSense," a line of technologically-aware clothing designed to bring people closer together through stimulation of the senses. We predicted that by 2050, people would feel so isolated and disconnected by an increasingly technology-driven world, that they would be in need of a way to identify themselves with others, a way to feel closer to others in a genuine, human way. Instead of networking through technology alone, StyleSense clothing would enable people to network through sensorial means. Wearers would be alerted, via stimulating sensations transmitted from their clothing, when in close proximity of other StyleSense wearers with similar interests and backgrounds.

Very quickly, Deborah and I realized we were thinking exactly alike, finishing each other's sentences and complementing each other's ideas. It was the most exciting and invigorating collaboration I have experienced in my four years of college.

Back at school, everyday tasks seem banal. Who wants to calibrate a printer when I can envision the future? Three week deadlines? They always seemed long, but now seem like an eternity. I miss the rush, that viscerally satisfying moment when everything comes together. Have I been spoiled by the fast-forward frenzy that was Tom's Horizons workshop? I can't wait to do it again. But first, paper jam…



Mumbai, India
Industrial Design Centre, Indian Institute of Technology
Five days, March 8-12, 2004
40 Participants
Reflections by Mark Philip D'Souza and Saudha Kasim, students



For an everyday Indian, the name Tom Klinkowstein is in itself magical, almost taken straight out of a fairy tale. There we were, around 40 of us looking forward to meeting this person called Klinkowstein. We were all pretty excited, our first workshop lead by an international faculty, but the minute Tom walked through that door we went berserk. It's not like Tom jumped in with a bang or anything, but his hair did. He had this brown, puff swirl going through the centre of his hairdo. We soon realized that the guy had enough energy to compete with the hairdo and the surname.

The workshop was unique in that it was the first time that there was going to be an interaction between the Product Design class and Visual Communication class, all toward a common goal. For the majority of us engineers from product design, it was an opportunity to take a peak at the often illogical, entertaining world of an art's graduate, and a unique chance for everyone to break through our inhibitions.

The workshop began with us conceptualizing a future scenario. This scenario could be anything—the less probability of it ever being realized the better. The group I was in explored a world in which men could become pregnant. We called it "PreggyPop." We envisioned a brand to make it cool to be a pregnant guy—intriguing devices and fashion items like jeans for wider hips.

Okay, our mentor/teacher/advisor was not a mad scientist who had escaped the pages of a comic book, but an extremely energetic interaction designer. And by energetic, I mean energetic. All of us here at the Centre are more renowned for being owls than larks, but Mr. Klinkowstein seemed to be a hybrid of both. He had just stepped out of a plane, crossed a gazillion time zones, and there he stood, fresh as a daisy in the early spring. We were flummoxed. We had to go on more tea breaks than normal during that week of March.

We pride ourselves at being very practical here. Pragmatism is the guiding principle. We don't pursue scenarios in our course projects, and as the workshop protocol was laid out before us, many of the students experienced a sinking feeling in the pit of their stomachs. How were we to do this? How were we to predict the future? Most of us knew the future as put forth by the likes of Philip K. Dick or Alvin Toffler. But to think up a whole new world by ourselves?

Our group chewed on pens and pencils and after much head-scratching came the inevitable "nuclear wasteland" story—beaten to death in countless books and movies, but perhaps ripe for some design exploration. After chalking out various possibilities on paper (we went into space, came down and went into the earth's core. and came back right up again to live under the oceans), we hit on something unique. We would make men pregnant! It helped that my group was evenly split along gender lines. The two women were enthusiastic (why not let the men suffer for once!); the men cringed every time the word "contraction" was mentioned.

If we were fogged at the start of the workshop, the goals became clearer as time went on. Our second day asked us to isolate one definite area in these various future worlds that we had concocted, and to think up devices which would ease or add more value to the experience of living in that world. We had our target user group—Pregnant Papas. Other groups had estranged lovers, shopaholics with celebrity role models, and adventurous travelers.

What did we do for the Pregnant Papa that would make his nine-month gestation period extremely smooth? We came up with devices that would ensure that this leap in evolution would in no way endanger the life of the expecting father. A 3-D holographic tablet, when placed over his womb, would allow him to interact with his growing child. We also brainstormed further and decided that he needed a device that would give him reassurance in this time of his life when his body was undergoing such drastic changes. The result, a Prenatal Monitoring Device, would be wrapped around his wrist, allowing him to communicate information (hormone levels, body vitals) with a doctor.

Once we had traveled into the Future and solutions had been generated, we were asked to come back to the present and apply the technologies that we had dreamt up to what was happening in the here and now. The unfortunate thing about being an expectant mother in the world today is that you are being pressured from all sides of society. Despite the emancipation of the female sex in India, there was still a lot of traditional thinking that shackled mothers-to-be and held them back from really pursuing different roles in society. This kept a lot of women from persuing a career, and put severe limits on their professional ambitions. What ultimately had to be communicated, we felt, was that it's not un-cool to be an expectant mother. You could go ahead, live your life to the fullest, and devices like our Prenatal Monitoring system could actually help women go through this life change.

There were other extremely creative projects in the workshop: Bubble Isolation Units for creating peaceful, quiet and sustainable moments in a crowded country; ISON, a directed sound technology system to create multiple environments-within-environments, without adding walls; and ITcha, a shopping center completely composed of visualization technology to try-out purchases before buying.

These five days were intense. We worked like crazy, often giving presentations on like 15 minutes notice. Each presentation had to be entertaining; it had to be engaging. Never before did we feel that we could do just about anything during a presentation. Indeed, we are the designers of tomorrow.



Istanbul, Turkey
Sabanci University
August 5, 6, 2004
15 Participants
Reflections by Murat Germen, Professor of Multimedia



Tom blew into the university those hot summer days in August and took us for a ride.

Rules were ignored; the laws of physics were ignored! That's not to say that we didn't follow a rational development process; teams were formed, brainstorming sessions took place, sketching, sketching and more sketching (they LOVE to sketch), then initial projected presentation and a final charrette.

The bad-boy slacker savant of the group, Aksel Zeydan made an amazing Flash movie called "Screen as a Spittle Analyzer" (irreverence was a hallmark of many of the results). We weren't certain what it meant—perhaps an affectionate critique on the very idea of envisioning the future?—But it was well appreciated. Maybe a creative plea to just to stop with all this future-talk.

My absolute favorite was by the group of students who called themselves "Grup." Their project, Data vs. Blood, proposed that human touch—shaking hands—be a method of exchanging data. The human central nervous system, in concert with skin, would become a conduit. The data exchanged could be the usual business card stuff, or more adventuresome IM flirtations, insults or come-ons and the like. It had it all, a sexy aversion to sex? An exaggerated extension, a trust and mistrust of these now-nearly-ubiquitous technologies that extend (and threaten?) us. There was even a swipe at Bill Gates—suggesting that he would patent this Data-Blood technology and, by implication, insinuate the Windows operating system into the human body!

There was the Airo High Speed Transportation System—a vehicle that would get you anywhere on the planet within 30 seconds—taking the advantages of telecommuting and applying them to physical transportation. Another team had a morning-after pill to cure informatics-induced schizophrenia, and yet another, a pill (“Max Factor”) to put on a new personality.

We were anxious that week (two bombs in Istanbul!) and therefore all the more giddy to be teleported out of 2004. As McLuhan said, “It is the business of the future to be dangerous”.