Designing Myths: Building the Framework for the Future

By visualizing things, we share our imagination. Filmmakers create entirely new worlds—myths—and provide designers with powerful frameworks for weaving stories.

Ever since we first saw a lightsaber, filled with the Force, slice through the air in Star Wars, we've been able to imagine even ordinary sticks or plastic swords making that "whoosh" sound. Similarly, after seeing Joaquin Phoenix's character fall in love with an AI in Her, many began to view their relationship with virtual assistants like Siri (Apple) or Alexa (Amazon) in a slightly different light.

Great writers, especially those of science fiction and fantasy, build new worlds and give fresh meaning to the reality we know. The myths created for these fictional realms experimentally weave new rules of cutting-edge science, physics, politics, anatomy, and religion onto the fabric of our known reality. These myths aren't just entertaining; they become powerful design tools. They provide a new framework for imagining and designing the future.

Real Rules for Fantasy Worlds

Director George Lucas spoke about creating the vast world of Star Wars: "We had to design the culture itself. What people believed, how they behaved, how the economy worked. Most of it never appears in the films, but if you don't think it through meticulously, down to the smallest detail, you'll inevitably end up with elements that feel unnatural or fake." Therefore, to create a myth, you must place the story within a meticulously constructed, comprehensively thought-out world built on a scenario based on rules. Director Lucas recalled when he established the rules for what materials lightsabers could and couldn't cut. "The goal was perfect realism within an unreal fantasy world. You can make the rules yourself, but once you make them, you must stick to them."

Working closely with the director, the production designer constructs landscapes and overall atmospheres that fit the story. Through locations, costumes, sets, and props, they also establish the rules that govern the story's world. Production designers ensure that everything—from the Batmobile and Harry Potter's wand to the aliens in Men in Black, the artificial intelligence robot "TARS" in Interstellar, and the earbuds in Her—remains consistent with the mythology of its respective world.

Fantasy worlds aren't just entertaining; they help us understand the real future, respond to it, and design more responsibly. For example, watching the animated series The Jetsons allows us to envision flying cars. But to truly design one, we'd need to establish the entire world surrounding flying cars. We'd have to consider future driver's tests, road signs, laws, ethical standards, and countless other issues to make flying cars seem realistically achievable. This requires looking into the future and seriously considering the desires and struggles of key figures in that world—from the taxi driver whose flying car breaks down during a shift to the politician pushing for deregulation of flying car operations. In other words, you must create a myth that unites the thing being designed with the world it inhabits.

Designing Myths for Business Success

Like film production designers, frog designers collaborate with clients through a process called "future casting" to design products and services for new worlds. The foundation of future casting is scenario creation. By meticulously and artfully crafting scenarios of possible future worlds, we gain insight into what lies ahead for companies. This work yields valuable insights for decision-making, such as where to invest in necessary technologies or what skills to acquire. Exploring the future also sparks collaborations and actions toward a desired future.

For several years, frog has partnered with semiconductor company Rambus to develop new IoT strategies and prototypes using emerging technologies. We use design and visual-based future casting to help Rambus build a new vision. The team held multiple joint workshops to explore the myth of a future where everything on Earth is connected to the internet. Through these sessions, numerous product and service concepts emerged, along with many business opportunities for Rambus to gain a competitive edge in the industry within this possible future. This work led to the development of an entirely new sensor technology that fundamentally shifted Rambus's company direction.

Just as ancient mythmakers used stories to convey unknown concepts, designers must communicate humanity's future experiences and foster shared understanding. Our goal as designers is to responsibly incorporate the societal impact into the design process. This allows us to weave a vast cultural tapestry within the human narrative of technological progress that leads to future products and experiences.

Why Designers Should Be Mythmakers

We already know that understanding who we design for leads to better new products. Beyond that, I propose a new role for designers: mythmakers. This involves creating narratives, customs, laws, and traditions. It means designing the framework of the future world where new products and experiences exist. Just as Director Lucas did when creating the Star Wars mythology, we must define even seemingly unnecessary details beyond merely communicating a product's functionality. Much design research stops at flat prototyping and setting typical user personas, but let's push further to define the rules and nature of the world people actually live in alongside the design.

Designers create the myths that underpin products and experiences, clearly articulating the broader world in which users live. These myths are expressions of psychological, cultural, and social truths. Harnessing the power of these truths, designers can create sophisticated, powerful influences that reflect not just specific functional or emotional needs, but the comprehensive way of life customers inhabit.

As designers, we contribute daily to creating a new world filled with global social networks, voice-activated virtual personal assistants (VPAs) using AI, and self-driving vehicles. What we need is not the long history shared by technological culture, but new narratives and myths that address the social impact brought by such transformations. In the coming years, the global society we inhabit is expected to undergo unprecedented transformation in the management of information, communication, and the distribution of goods. We will continue to witness the breakdown of institutions that have characterized this civilization for centuries across fields like education, administration, and healthcare. As creators of myths, we can contemplate what these systemic changes bring, what they signify, and how they influence individuals' and groups' perceptions of the world's current state or its desired form.

The role of the designer is constantly evolving, yet clients consistently demand that designers realistically envision the future.

Read the rest of this article in the web magazine "AXIS".

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