Future orientation in design, participation and learning Dagny Stuedahl Department of Science Education - Norwegian University of Life Sciences dagny.stuedahl@nmbu.no Abstract. How do we create futures in collaboration? Is future orientation in design anthropology a tool solid enough for scaffolding transformations? This paper explores the content of future orientation in design anthropology, participatory design and educational anthropology. The aim is to discuss how the three fields in different ways conceptualize processes of future making, what the central concepts are and how, in concert, they may deepen our understanding of how we work with the future. Keywords: design anthropology, participatory design, educational anthopology, future orientation. 1 Introduction Changes in society require that we think differently about knowing, making and learning, and new spaces emerge where design anthropology (DA) and participatory design (PD) may exchange a deep understanding of the acts of making with the educational field. The exchange between these fields is not new. In participatory design there has long been a close relation to anthropological theories of situated learning and communities of practice [1]. Also Dewey’s theories of experience, inquiry and reflection have been central for understanding participatory processes in design as well as in learning [2],[3],[4]. This paper focuses on the specific topic of future orientation which is shared in current discussions within educational anthropology, participatory design and design anthropology. This future orientation is however differently conceptualized, and thus plays a different role in the three research- and practice fields. The aim of the paper is to discuss how this difference is handled, and to identify how the three fields may contribute to each other. For example, future orientation in PD is connected to utopia and imaginaries as the ethical and political dimensions of democratic participation in industrial development, while future orientation in DA is connected to a re-thinking of knowledge and human reality relevant for interventionist ethnographic methods. This is reminiscent of current attention in educational anthropology, where future orientations include the social imaginations or figures that become important knowledge resources for social agents’ practices in the present. It seems that the new visions and initiatives in design anthropology, participatory design and education share the inspiration of Dewey`s pragmatic understanding of relations between experience and practice. Dewey`s theories provide a grounded theoretical and methodological approach to interventionist actions to question, Interaction Design and Architecture(s) Journal - IxD&A, N.26, 2015, pp. 149-161