Week 6 Progress Update: 2035 – Futures of Civic Life and Institutional Trust

This page documents Week 6 progress for the Design Futures final project, with a focus on emerging narratives and lived experiences within future civic communication systems. All materials are exploratory and in progress.

Narratives Emerging (Week 6 Focus)

Week 6 focuses on how future civic systems may be experienced in everyday life. Rather than expanding scope, this phase emphasizes narrative clarity—how residents and municipal staff interact with communication tools and what those interactions feel like.

Speculative Image (Generated with Adobe Firefly)

This speculative image explores a future civic transparency notice from 2035. The artifact emphasizes visibility of process, corrections, and resident feedback as core components of institutional trust.

Three Horizons Framework (Updated)

The Three Horizons framework is used to map present-day communication challenges, transitional experiments, and plausible civic futures. This version prioritizes human experience and narrative flow rather than system complexity.

Horizon 1: Present Conditions
2025–2027

        Fragmented, inconsistent civic communication
Unclear authority increases mistrust of messages
Automation feels unreliable and impersonal
Civic participation declines due to fatigue and confusion
Staff burnout increases under public pressure

      
Horizon 2: Transitional Phase
2028–2032

        Experiments with transparency tools and public timelines
Hybrid analog/digital touchpoints expand access
Public expectations shift toward visible corrections
Informal participation grows alongside formal processes
Trust becomes a design target, not an assumption

      
Horizon 3: Civic Futures
2032–2035

        Communication is designed for clarity and continuity
Public process timelines become standard practice
Corrections and updates are visible and normalized
Residents engage through predictable touchpoints
Trust is treated as civic infrastructure, not messaging

      

    Time horizon moves left → right (present to futures). Updated to emphasize lived experience and narrative emergence.
  

Narrative Snapshot: Day in the Life (2035)

A resident checks a city transparency notice before leaving for work. The notice shows where a service request is in the process, when it was last updated, and what corrections have been made. The information is brief, calm, and time-stamped. There is no need to search multiple platforms or interpret conflicting statements. Civic communication feels predictable rather than reactive, allowing residents to focus on daily life instead of deciphering government systems.

Making Tools (In Use)

This week, I am experimenting with Adobe Firefly for speculative image generation, Adobe Creative Cloud for layout exploration, and simple narrative writing to test future civic experiences.

Audience / Users

The primary audiences for this project are residents and municipal staff navigating public communication systems, with particular attention to caregivers, younger digital-native residents, and public employees.