themes Next Gen Design

Anyone born after 1996 has never lived in a world that wasn’t interconnected — and this has shaped their sense of identity, belonging, and even their relationships. The way they communicate and use digital products today gives us a glimpse of the digital world as it will be in the near future. Beyond basic concerns about screen time or attention span, what can we learn from this post-internet generation?

Looking even further ahead, we will examine how speculative design lets us steal ideas from the far future and bring them into the present. If we embrace design fiction, can we find new, more sustainable ways to live, work, and connect with each other?. Can we lean on many imagined, possible futures to help us affect the direction of technology and society today?

At Design Matters 20 we’ll zoom into the post-internet generation, to learn how they think, communicate, and view the world as digital natives. We’ll look at design through the lens of the future both near and far, including 16-year-old designers, science fiction prototyping, and life on Mars.