The future is a collective political space that impacts every individual. To design for the greater good, designers must be accustomed to thinking, playing, and designing in futures. But what is the future, and how should we think about it? In my research, I propose the future is at the intersection of design, storytelling, and system thinking. Each discipline offers a unique perspective on the future, and unveils an underlying philosophy of how we can design for it.

Speculative design shows that the future is non-anthropocentric. We are bound by human conditions and our own temporality, and fail to grasp the interconnectedness from a human only perspective. Phenomenology in storytelling tells us that reality is not always a logical place, our emotions and dreams also play a part in colouring the vision of the future. System thinking shows us that the future can be anticipated and molded by understanding complexities exist in tension and unison with each other, in a unity of opposites.

So the truth about of future is: the future is selfless, to design for the future is to design for non-humans as much as us. The future is not bloodless, we tell stories so we can build empathy and make sense of the future through the colours of our hopes and emotions. The future is rooted, it not an abstract concept that is detached from our realities, rather it is rooted in our experience of time and the systems around us. But most importantly, the future is political. It is political in the sense that it affects every one of us, in various aspects of our lives. As designers, we have the knowledge and skills of translating the public's voice into insights, and their hopes and dreams into realities. This is why to design for good, we need to think about the future, and in this process we learn how to build optimism for the future. Optimism is a skill, it can be increased by learning, playing, and designing for the future. It is through these actions that we increase our future literacy, and it helps us to democratize the future, making the future a playground for all.