Taking a Future Generation’s Perspective as a Facilitator of Insight Problem-Solving: Sustainable Water Supply Management

Abstract

Human societies face various unsustainability problems, often characterized as “wicked” in the sense that they have no single definitive formulation. Thus, the role of creativity or insight in solving such problems has attracted a lot of attention from scholars. Therefore, this study investigated how an emerging methodology, Future Design (and its unique intervention of asking problem solvers to take a future generation’s perspective), can facilitate insight problem solving (IPS) and the generation of sustainable solutions. In a municipality in Japan, nine officers from a bureau responsible for water supply management participated in a series of seven Future Design workshops. In two groups, these officers created visions of water supply management 30 years into the future, taking the perspective of a future generation working in the same municipality. On the basis of in-depth transcription analyses of these workshops, we obtained a hypothetical framework demonstrating that four factors mediate the influence of perspective taking on IPS: (a) Discounting the present generation’s cost, (b) contrasting the future with the present, (c) deconstructing hierarchy, and (d) intellectual joy. While the first three mediators (a, b, and c) were considered to be contributors to the problem reframing and IPS via constraint relaxation, the fourth (d) was considered to do so via positive interpretation. Further, the reason why taking a future generation’s perspective is likely to lead to sustainable solutions, useful for the future—rather than the present—generation, is also discussed.

Impact of Future Design on Workshop Participants’ Time Preferences

“…Instead, the F group participants began to question what the function of the local government should be in the future, and determined that the city hall should be equipped with the tools and capacities to cope with the expected social issues and problems. This type of qualitative difference exactly corresponds to that reported in the other FD attempts [12,13,23,24].…”

“…Hara [12], Hara et al [13], and Nakagawa et al [23] identified such differences via transcription analyses of textual data from the first FD workshop performed in Yahaba. Based on the transcription data from the recent Yahaba FD attempt, Nakagawa [24] proposed a conceptual framework where he extracted four factors to free participants from their present constraints. This paper takes a completely different approach from these previous FD studies.…”

Future Design as a Metacognitive Intervention for Presentism

“…Thus, while the framework of the imaginary future generation can be narrowly understood as a technique for operating workshops at organizations in order to create visions for the future, it should also be seen as a concept relevant to stakeholders who make various decisions in market-oriented democratic societies. A growing number of municipalities are utilizing this framework to hold workshops to generate visions for the future by inviting citizens to participate in workshops or organizing them in the municipalities' administrations (e.g., references [12,13]).…”

Integrated Detection of a Complex Underground Water Supply Pipeline System in an Old Urban Community in China

“…What is more, the acoustic sounding method and high-precision acoustic amplifier can judge the water flow in the pipeline [51][52][53][54], which is worth further exploration. As the water supply system standard and the measures of water saving and the development stages vary between countries, the water consume estimation method should be adjusted according local conditions, and its accuracy needs to be further explored [38,40].…”

“…The water consumption [38][39][40] needs to be known to estimate the diameter of the buried inlet pipe that supplies water to building A. The main consumers in building A include some shops in the front rooms and a school canteen, with water primarily supplying bathrooms and kitchens.…”