Story Writing as An Additional Phase of
Future Mining to Elaborate on a Future
Language
Konomi Munakataa, Shuichiro Andob, Takashi IbabaFaculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University, Japanb

Faculty of Policy and Management, Keio University, Japan

1. Introduction
In order to adapt to this fast-changing society, it has beennecessary to come up with new, creative and innovative ideas ina quite short period of time. We, Iba Lab, have been trying toaddress such need of the society by developing a Future Language method (Iba, 2015).
Future Language is a method proposed by Iba Lab, which enables
people to talk about their own visions of a desired future, by
creating new vocabularies. Future Language therefore consistsof different Future Words, which are the smallest unit of ideas
about how organizations and communities should behave to realize their goal. Through the process of creating future words,
which is called as Future Mining, three important aspects ofevery single idea are made clear to be shared; what is ideal,
why it is important, and how it can be achieved.
In our projects, such as renovating a workplace and designing a
new café restraint in Japan, future mining was conducted in aworkshop style (Future Mining Workshops) (Iba et al. 2016). For
instance, in the case of renovating a workplace, 50 executives
and employees of the client company participated in a fourhour-workshop, and made their individual future visions into
170 future words through the dialogues (Iba et al. 2016). In
the café project, out of 211 future words created during theworkshop, 15 words were actually applied to the final design ofthe café (Iba et al. 2016). Because of its high productivity
and its scale of collaboration, in which the users of the de-2sign participate in the design process, this workshop-style of
Future Mining has proved to be effective in our practices, andhas become our standard method for creating a future language.
On the other hand, however, little attention has been given to
the quality of future words created through the workshops.
Quality here means how precisely each future word describes thenature of the proposer’s future vision. It is very important,especially when the created future words are actually used in areal designing process by people outside of the workshop. If
the future word had not captured its essence well, it would
lead a future which is different from what the author actuallydesired to happen. In the process of creating a Future Language,
therefore, it would be worth to mention the quality of future
words in order to deliberate upon the individual future visions
and elaborate on the ideas once created, before they are actually shared and put into practice.
To explore effective ways to elaborate on the future words, we,
Iba Lab, have conducted a new design project called “Creative
Residence Project”-designing a creative life in a student residence at Shonandai in Japan. This project was performed in a
non-workshop style, spending a month to brush-up the original
set of future words created. Based on the analysis on thechange in future words during the project, this paper presentsa Story Writing as an effective way to elaborate on the future
words, and discusses the significance of this revising process
as an additional phase of creating a Future Language.

2. Story Writing as a way to elaborate on the ideas
generated

Pattern Language and its Revising Process
In the field of Pattern Language (1977), invented by Christopher Alexander to describe good practices for designing buildings, quality of patterns is always a very important subject
for pattern writers. Future Language is very similar to this3

method in the sense that they both try to enable a good collaboration by creating new vocabularies to share a clear vision of
the design. According to “A Pattern Language (1977)” written
by Alexander, a quality of patterns refers to how successfully
they describe the nature of things in the environment (Grabow,1983). He also describes clearly about how patterns should be
improved after they are once created by a pattern writer;“We hope, of course, that many of the people who read, and use thislanguage, will try to improve these patterns -will put their energy towork, in this task of finding more true, more profound invariants –and
we hope that gradually these more true patterns, which are slowly
discovered, as time goes on, will enter a common language, which all of
us can share.” (Alexander, 1977)

So, the process of improving patterns written by the individual
authors is very simple and collaborative. PLoP (Pattern Language of Programs) Conference, for example, provides opportunities for pattern writers to have their pattern languages critically reviewed by fellow authors (Manns, Rising 2005). In theworkshop, known as “writers’ workshop”, they improve theirpatterns by sharing their own experiences related to the patterns to bring the deeper insights and recapture the essence ofthe practices.
On the other hand, however, because Future Language is amethod to generate new ideas based on the individual future visions, it would be difficult in essence to open up the discussion and ask others for the collaborative revision of the ideas.
In other words, the authors of future words have to ask themselves what they truly desire for the future.

2.2 Role of Story Writing
In order to promote this introspection of the authors, themethod of Story Writing would be effective. The concept ofwriting a story has been brought to attention in the field of
Design Thinking (Rowe, 1987) as a method to predict the uncertain future, prototype the vision and evaluate the value ofeach idea generated. For instance, “The Design Fiction (Ster-4ling, 2005)” 1 is an approach to explore and critique future
possibilities by writing a story in which there are some futuristic ideas that do not exist today (Sterling, 2009; Bosch,2012). “Scenario Planning (Schwartz, 1996)” is a method todevelop the skills of organizations to solve any problems in
the future, to adapt to this fast-changing society (Heijden etal. 2002). In other words, writing a story has been recognized
as an effective process to prototype, evaluate and elaborate on
the new ideas generated, by embodying the whole picture of thevision and ensuring its consistency with the ideas. Hence, itwould be successfully applied to the revision of future words,
and its experiment will be described in the next section.

3. Overview of Creative Residence Project
Creative Residence Project is a new design project conducted byfour members of Iba Lab in 2016. Our goal in this project was
to make a student life there creative,by making future words and sharing them with the designers,
owners and all the potential residents in this dorm. Thisbuilding is now under construction and will be completed by anurban design company in Japan, UDS Ltd, in the spring of 2018.
This project went through two main phases; idea generation
and brush-up. The process of creating future words was based on
the original Future Language Workshop method (Iba et al. 2016).
First of all, each of us independently brainstormed and roughly
drew a future vision of a “creative life” in the student residence as a potential user of this design. Then we brainstormed
about current problems or obstructions which avoid us to becreative, came up with ideas to solve these problems, and named
them as Seeds of Future Words. In this stage, as a result, 40
seeds of future words were generated (Fig. 1). Each seed wasthen briefly described in a specific format of Future Language
to be easily shared with others; what it is, why it is im-1

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/03/02/bruce_sterling_on_desi
gn_fictions_.html

5

portant, and how it can be achieved (Fig. 2).
The next phase was about improving these seeds of the future
words, by writing a story about the desired future with thecreated words embedded. Based on what was perceived while writing a story and discussing with others about it, future words
were revised by the authors. 37 future words remained in theend of this project will be introduced to the new community inthe residence in the next spring.

Fig. 1 List of
40 seeds of future
words
translated into
EnglishfromJapanese

Fig. 2 An Example of Future Word – “Self-design of Welcome Party “

6

4. Writing a Future Story in Creative Residence
Project
In order to polish up the seeds of Future Words once created,each of our team members worked independently to write a story,
based on the seeds of future words we created and shared it in
the team. This is what we call a Future Story. Future words embedded in the story is emphasized with the bold letters andbrackets.
“(~) When I woke up on Saturday morning, it was already half pastnine. I had to be at my part time job by 10 am. As I run though thefirst floor, someone called out to me. It was the <Big Brother>. "Thereyou are!" he said with a smile and tossed me the <Morning Bag>.
"Overslept? Good luck at work!". On the way to the station, I opened the<Morning Bag>, and found a message beside the warm sandwich. "Good luckat work, sleepy head!” It seemed like the rest of the day would be niceas always. “(“Saturday Morning in the Residence” by Shuichiro Ando)“This residence is a place to grow new creative leaders who can leadthe creative society coming in the future, from different perspectives.
Here is not the place to get lectured by someone else, but the place todevelop yourself. (~) People who are known as creative know well about
their own strengths, abilities and roles. Students in this residence
therefore get many opportunities to know about themselves through the

7<Dialogue by Extremes>, <Mixed with different colors> and <Seatreserved Cafe>. (~) In a nutshell, this residence is a prototype of an
educational system in future, which supports students to become activelifelong-learners who can develop their abilities by themselves and haveconfidence in their qualitative works. (~) “(“Student Residence from the perspective of education in future” by
Konomi Munakata)

Although its process is very complex which involves both theinductive and deductive ways of thinking, here is a simplified
method to write a Future Story.
1. Set the point of view of story
2. Choose some future words from the list
3. Start writing a story in an inductive way, by plotting what
you chose in (2)4. See the whole picture of story
5. Choose some more relative future words from the list
6. Place (5) into the most suitable position in the current
framework of (4) and develop a story in a deductive way
7. Review the whole story, and make sure it describes your ideal Future as a whole
Because no restriction about the characters, situation nor
length of the story was set, characteristics of our stories totally differed from each other. For example, one has created astory about how the life in this Student Residence could be
like from his point of view, whereas one did it from the perspective of the possible future society. Such variety of characteristics of stories implies how people draw their own future
visions in different ways. That would be the reason why it isdifficult to give feedbacks on the seeds of future words created by other members of the team.

5. Change in Future Words in Creative Residence
Project
Figure 3 shows a change in the seeds of future words created in
the beginning of this project. Future words have dynamicallychanged during and after writing future stories by integrating

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a few words together and introducing some new words. For example, “Rhythm record” and “To be list” were integrated, because they both have a similar function in the whole picture of
the future story. Although “Rhythm record” had a higher levelof abstractness, these two words are both about suggesting people to list up what makes them themselves in the most comfortable way, and designing the daily life in accordance with thelist. Moreover, some new ideas such as “Extreme dialogues”
and “Small window” were also found and generated as new seedsof future words while writing a future story. What it means
here is that writing a story enabled us to prototype the ideas
in the whole picture of the desired future by embedding the independent future words created, while elaborating on the future
vision at the same time, by looking at the “whole” and “individual ideas” alternately. Therefore, we could recognize theexistence of overlapped ideas and the necessity of new ideas
lacking, based on the top-down view.
In addition, future story writing also allowed us to work
collaboratively to revise the future words written by other authors. As mentioned already, authors of future words have to
ask themselves what they truly desire in future, and it is infact very difficult to give feedbacks or comments on the seedsof future words written by others, which are based on their own
future visions. “Even though we were in the same team, working
on the same project, I was sort of feeling that it is not on mybusiness to polish up someone’s ideas”. This is an actual reflection from one of the project members about the first stageof revising process. However, as shown in figure 4, the numberof comments and feedbacks from the other members significantly
increased after sharing the future story. Hence, the dynamicchange in the future words in the last stage on figure 3 implies that the individual authors of future words perceived
many hints to improve them, through the dialogue with others.
Therefore, although it is difficult to elaborate on the future
words in the same way as Pattern Language which is very open to
be improved by other people as a team work, showing the clear
connection between the whole picture of author’s future visionand each future word by writing a future story, enables an indirect participation of other people in the individual revising

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process of ideas.
Fig. 3 Change in the set of Future Words before and after writing Future Stories

Fig. 4. Number of comments and feedbacks on each Future Word before and after
writing Future Stories

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Conclusion
This paper proposed a Future Story Writing as an additional
phase of Future Mining to elaborate on future words once created. It has proved to be effective in the way that it promotes
the authors to deliberate their own future vision, recapture
the nature of what they truly want and ensure its consistency
with each idea generated. Although it has not yet studied that
how this revision of future words would actually affect the final design of the student residence, it is still very important
to inquire into the nature of a desired vision through the revising process. This paper, therefore, is an introduction todevelop the future language method to elaborate on the future
words for a realization of a desired future. Even though we arein a sort of pressure to come up with new ideas in a very shortperiod of time, it is necessary to keep in mind that it is notthat easy to describe the whole picture of what we truly desire
and capture the nature of it, without gaining a deep insight
into yourself.

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