Three heuristic approaches for predicting future lifestyles

For innovation, sometimes it is necessary to imagine future lifestyles in order to design corresponding products, services, or systems. However, it is very difficult for design students to characterize the future and there is no such simple method to help them to do so reasonably. This paper hypothesizes that future is predictable based on historical contexts and any future lifestyle is the extension or the contrary of the current one. For easily predicting future lifestyles, this paper proposes three heuristic ways. They are Analogical Reasoning (AR), Timeframe Reasoning (TR), and Causal Relationship Reasoning (CRR). Each of the reasoning approaches provides a simple way of imagining a specific future lifestyle. The formula of AR is "A1 : B1 :: A2 : B2". The formula of TR is "Now > Next > Future > Ideal". In addition, the formula of CRR is "Cause 1 > Effect 1 = Cause 2 > Effect 2". Obviously, they help to infer future lifestyles in different ways of thinking. There are four items in each of the three approaches. The designer who applies any of the three approaches must define the first three items and then infer the last one as a particular future lifestyle. These three heuristic approaches are taught in several courses including Sensational Product Engineering, Form Design, and Color Design. This research finds that both graduate and undergraduate students in Industrial Design can apply AR, TR and CRR to efficiently generate uncommon but reasonable ideas of vivid future lifestyles.