About SDS
Strategic Design Scenarios (SDS) is a consultancy specialised in strategic design, scenario building, co-design with users and visualisation techniques. SDS is active in various fields such as design for social innovation and sustainability, interaction design and cognitive ergonomics. SDS is consulting for industry and is involved in several national, European and international research projects. Offices are based in Brussels and offer facilities for co-design / interaction with users. The studio is equipped for video-sketching, rapid prototyping and product-service systems simulation.
Website: www.solutioning-design.net and www.sustainable-everyday.net
SDS is specialised in user-centred and community centred approaches based on projective techniques such as story-telling, story-boarding, scenarios scripting of new and more sustainable ways of living. In particular SDS co-develops visual forms of scenarios based on short video clips or sequences of still images to facilitate the engagement and the strategic conversation with citizens and local stakeholders.
This approach is generally used at the early stages of the research project to stimulate the discussion of sustainable best practices with stakeholders involved, to articulate a synthetic vision of current emerging sustainable lifestyles and to visualise their possible materialisation in a coming future context. More sophisticated and finalised visualisations can be also elaborated to present the results of the research project and illustrate sustainable lifestyles in a highly visual and communicative form. In particular ‘photo-stories’ showing various ways of living in a more sustainable ways for different users profiles provide material for dissemination and communication on the Internet and in the media.
François Jégou, director of SDS, has 20 years of experience in strategic design, participative scenario building and new product-services system definition. He is active in various fields and research projects such as investigating Creatives Communities for Sustainable Lifestyles in China, India, Brazil and Africa for UNEP; exploring immersive service design approach in public institutions for the 27e Région or building a deliberative platform on nanotechnologies.
François teaches as a visiting professor in the Faculty of Design of the Politecnico in Milan and La Cambre school of design, Brussels.
Along with Ezio Manzini, he co-produced the Sustainable Everyday Project. This collection of scenarios and case of social innovations asked: what might everyday life be like in a sustainable society? How would we work, move, and take care of each other? The picture that emerged, says Jegou, was that of a ‘multi-local city…based on participative connected citizens”. Last book on the subject: Collaborative services, Social innovations and design for sustainability.