[Why] Immerse people in positive futures for healthcare

We are inspired by sunflowers because they are are heliotropes — they turn toward the source of light.

We (the Helios Initiative) are experimenting with what design futures can contribute to conversations around dignified nursing. The nursing crisis is close to our hearts, as healthcare innovators. We are not nurses but have worked closely alongside them for many years. Bedside nursing, in particular, is where our incentive structures, technology, and policy come together to create tensions for those who are trying to provide care. And the COVID pandemic exacerbated so many of the stresses nurses were already experiencing. Today there is a shortage of nurses, society continues to undervalue care work, doctors are prioritized over nurses, and patients are sicker than ever.

Design futures practices help organizations get more concrete and tangible about our shared ideas for what the future could be. We emphasize positive possibilities for long-term futures because it creates energy and joy in the face of complex, ongoing challenges. We spent a few months re-imagining nursing to be central to healthy communities and irresistible to youth.

Collectively, with a large, diverse group of people, we defined and built two irresistible futures: two worlds where people highly value caring for others:

• Youth Care Corps: It is 2074 and young people have embraced the idea that care is central to humanity. Like the Space Race in the 1950s, the idea of care as a core practice for all people has captured our imaginations. Walk into a ceremony to induct a recent high school graduate into this revered and life-changing service role of a CareCorps volunteer. Nurses and family members will mentor this young person as they spend two years in different places around the globe, learning to provide health and healing care.
• Nursing Neighborhoods: Welcome to this exciting day in 2074. Boston is holding a community workshop to gather the public’s feedback on a new neighborhood. To re-center health in communities, Mass General Hospital is the first in the country to tear down the old buildings and re-build from the ground up a neighborhood focused on healing everywhere. Nurses will be up-and-down the streets of every community — empowered to be with families from birth to death and coordinated health production. We are gathering a community together to dream of ideal ways to deliver that care to people — wherever they are, throughout their lives.​

We invited people into full-scale, realistic enactments of these futures at the Design for Dignity conference in Boston in June 2024. And it was a beautiful success! The conference organizers observed it to be one of the most talked about events, for those who were there and those who missed it. “This format was a way of waking people up… there was remorse for not attending this one.” This format is an energizing and provocative way to look at complex problems.

Participants provided very positive feedback. They said,

“It felt amazing. I’ve never experienced something similar.”

“Interesting to think about a public vision rather than an organizational vision.”

“It made my imagination more material. It also felt like a natural extension of the work that happens in my brain daily.”

“I loved that I didn’t have to do the mental gymnastics — future was already here.”

“The setting was established, making it easier to get into it.”

“The focus on a specific day grounded the future, as opposed to the typical discussion of ideals.”

“We were being or witnessing rather than just thinking.”

“Pivoting away from screens to concrete was great.”

This was a very different experience than a typical conference presentation, so it felt joyful and prompted a lot of conversation. And for those of us who built the future scenarios, we had an even deeper connection to the visions. They are ideas we talk about with enthusiasm. The specificity that we had to wrestle with to build these into immersive experiences gives us a lot of fodder to share with friends and family, to pose these future visions as possibilities.

Comment below with your visions for a better future.

Get in touch with us to learn more about doing this type of future visioning and participatory immersion work for your organization.

Mike Lin, Strategy & Innovation, Mike [at] aspenlabsnetwork.com

Suzanne Hamill, Founder at Cloth, FutureSuzi [at] gmail.com

Hillary Carey, Social Design Dreaming, Hillary [at] JustVisions.co