To design tools that help shape a better future, we need to step outside of the constraints of the present—while staying grounded in the challenges we face now.

One of the most useful approaches I’ve found for balancing this tension is something I call near-future prototyping: designing tools for conditions that don’t yet exist, but could soon. These prototypes help to reveal how we can change current mindsets and practices to move towards the futures we want to see. A recent example is All About, a prototype app designed to help disability support workers manage information overload and provide enriching, personalised care to their clients.

The value of near-future prototypes is that they allow us to step outside current conventions while staying grounded in real world challenges. All About is a groundbreaking tool, but there is nothing particularly futuristic about the app itself—it could operate on today’s average phone and its interface is conventional and familiar. What is futuristic is the ecosystem required to support it.

For All About, this ecosystem exists in a future where disability support teams can curate and share rich, meaningful information about their clients. For the app to work, providers would need funding and resources to offer ongoing training and support and to ensure information is kept accurate, up to date and secure. There would need to be a shift in culture so that support workers feel empowered to use the app, not monitored or micromanaged. And providers would need to rethink the types of information they collect and implement new processes to record and translate the insights and expertise of workers and clients. 

Support workers initially responded to All About with a mix of excitement, concern and scepticism. They were excited by its potential to improve quality of care for their clients, but concerned about how it could fit into existing approaches and the implications for their workload and privacy if it were adopted now. This was an ideal response that informed a rich conversation about the ecosystem that would be required for All About to move from prototype to viable product.

Near-future prototyping differs from design fiction and futuring in that it focuses on practical possibilities grounded in current challenges and opportunties. Futuring and design fiction are often more oriented towards provocative storytelling and exploring speculative, sometimes fantastical scenarios that stretch the boundaries of what’s possible. Near-future prototyping, on the other hand, is more practical and pragmatic.

In an ideal future, tools like All About would not need to exist. We would recognise that giving and receiving care is a complex, dynamic and essential human experience. Care work would be highly valued and well funded, support workers and their clients would have the stability to build rich working relationships. This is a world away from the present reality, where workers are often given a huge binder of information about a client just minutes before their first shift together and clients receive care from workers who know little or nothing about them.

This shows why the near future is such an important horizon in time. The paths from here to there are shorter and clearer. Tools like All About show us what we can do now to create short-term change that moves us closer to the futures we want to live in.

All About was designed with an interdisciplinary team of designers and researchers from the University of Technology Sydney including Kate Sweetapple, Jacqueline Lorber Kasunic and A. Baki Kocaballi, with support and creative input from the team at Northcott Innovation including Georgina Hibberd, Nartarn Dhalimi, Madeleine Donkin, Evelyn Kyeremaah-Gyan and Alicia Melita.