Figure 1: My interpretation on my progress
Through design, we can lead the future by creating simulations and examples that help people feel encouraged and assured because they’re experiencing the future they preferred. I believe that wandering while walking toward your aim doesn’t mean you’re lost; it means you’re shaping a path—one that others may follow as they look for a beacon toward their own future. That is exactly how I feel as I work on this project.
As an Indonesian, being manic and perpetually anxious about the future has always been embodied in Indonesian culture. Consequently, we naturally tend to conform to societal norms for safety, as radical and daring actions were never feasible in our upbringing. Many Indonesians still live in middle-lower economic conditions, which provide physiological sustenance. As Prof. Sohail Inayatullah (2025) rightly points out, our ability to perceive the future is influenced by our financial and sociological circumstances. This is evident in the number of residents in Cipadu who are helpless and resigned to their current circumstances.
Yet during my third intervention in Cipadu, an unexpected moment shifted this narrative for me. After the workshop ended, a young boy and his mother approached us. The boy held a meticulously drawn graphite sketch depicting one of Cipadu’s narrow alleyways. With surprising confidence, he gave us a brief “elevator pitch” about his drawing and his love for art. His mother nodded, affirming his words: “He loves to draw every day. He’s a good artist, in my opinion. And I wonder how to help him grow this talent for the future.”
My jaws dropped. Never in my life had a Southeast Asian parent—especially in a context of urban kampung like Cipadu—asked me how to support their child in becoming an artist. She even added, almost shyly, “Maybe he can pursue an international career or education… like you, miss. In London.”
This was an outcome I never anticipated. The workshop was never designed to steer or impose anyone toward a particular profession. Yet here was a mother daring to imagine a different future for her child; one that felt radical, creative, and global. It made me realise that even in places where futures feel constrained, imagination can quietly unlock possibilities people didn’t know they were allowed to consider.
From this experience, my imagination has been refined. It allows me to visualize the future as a path that is yet to be discovered, inspiring and motivating others to follow and aware.
This moment also changed how I understood the workshop and its deeper purpose. Rather than producing a fixed or predetermined outcome, the workshop revealed emerging issues, new perspectives, and unexpected insights. These learning edges became valuable signals or guiding lights that can shape the blueprint of the social futures we aimed to co-create.
Paving The Path and Acknowledging Privilege
Although I grew up in an urban kampung, I recognise the privilege of having an academic background and more stable housing conditions than many residents in Cipadu. This does not make me feel superior; instead, it makes me more aware that systemic socioecological problems touch all of us, directly or indirectly. I genuinely want to use this privilege to contribute more meaningfully, starting from my own community.
In trying to “create a path” toward the future, I realised that we must first build a secure foundation so that people can remain comfortable enough to keep moving. Futures work cannot bypass this step: imagination only becomes plausible when people feel safe, emotionally and materially, enough to look beyond today. This insight is shifting my project from being purely speculative toward one that designs sense-making steps, realistic “ladders” that connect the present to preferred futures.
This reflection also resonates with Kang Qodir’s upbringing and his influence in Karasa BDG in Gempolsari. He has become a path-maker for his village, turning it into a creative kampung through his passion for both creative and academic pursuits, transforming wicked urban kampung problems into opportunities.
His passion and leadership qualities make his actions relevant to emergent strategy (Brown, 2017). His attentiveness and empathy, combined with his ability to analyze emerging issues, have enabled Karasa BDG to become sustainable and adaptable to changing circumstances.
Kang Qodir inspired me to take proactive steps in addressing the emerging issues in Cipadu and actively participating in the community. Instead of finding solution
Integrating Maslow’s Theory in Path-Making
In reflecting on this path, I integrated Maslow’s hierarchy of needs because my conversations with both residents and experts consistently highlighted one truth: people can only imagine the future when their foundational needs are secure. Imagination requires a ladder, not a leap. Without stability, physical, emotional, and social, futures thinking becomes a privilege that many cannot access.
In my visual, the small figure standing higher on the slope represents this idea. It is a metaphor for a beacon, someone who, through their own journey, becomes a visible source of encouragement for others. Returning to my earlier reflection, although I come from an urban kampung, I now occupy a different layer of Maslow’s pyramid than many residents of Cipadu. My education, mobility, and access to opportunities position me on a higher ledge. Yet I remain on the same hill as everyone else; our lives are shaped by the same socioecological landscape.
This realisation became a crucial learning edge for me. From this broader vantage point, I am able to notice emerging possibilities, hidden connections, and alternative futures that may not yet be visible from where others are standing. Instead of treating this as something that separates me, I’m learning to see it as a responsibility: an opportunity to contribute, not an excuse to detach.
From that height, I can channel the “people, ideas, and guiding light” that have shaped who I am today, and bring them back into the kampung rather than keeping them for myself. My role is to hold the light steady so that others can see their own paths forward. In this way, the climb becomes collective, and the future becomes something we shape together rather than alone.
How I Shaped My Research Journey
As my research journey going further, I realised that designing socioecological futures in urban area is not a linear process but a continuous movement between reflection, interpretation, and imagination. The diagram above visualises this journey: a flow that begins with Exploring the Past, moves into Making Sense of the Present, and expands outward into Building the Future. The tangled line on the left represents the messy, emotional, and non-linear realities of lived experience; memories, sensations, and histories that people carry within them. It reflects the uncertainty and entanglement that many residents feel daily. Yet by slowing down and honouring these experiences, the first stage allowed me to gather embodied knowledge through the five senses, community stories, and cultural memory. This grounded the work in human truth rather than abstract assumptions.
The middle stage, Making Sense of the Present, reflects the prism-like moment where everything becomes refracted: STEEP analysis, narrative insights, and lived experiences are brought together to identify core pressures and precious values that matter most to the community. This is where patterns began to surface, where gotong royong emerged as a central social philosophy and ecological vulnerability surfaced as a key challenge. These insights then branched into multiple pathways, represented by the lines extending outward.
This marks the third stage, Building the Future, where collective imagination transforms these refracted insights into plausible and preferred futures. Here is where speculative scenarios are born; where residents’ dreams, fears, and hopes begin to take shape as tangible possibilities. In this way, the diagram becomes more than a process map; it becomes a visual reminder that futures are not predetermined but continuously shaped by how we listen, interpret, and imagine together.
My Learning Edges
- Research is not a linear journey. It is a messy, iterative and complicated journey.
- Researching complexity with complex journey makes the journey feels like a torture. But once you got the essence, epiphany, or guiding light, it feels fantastic.
- Once you stepped in into the social design journey, it is an endless research. New insight, new tools, new methods and many other novelties will keep emerging. Stay grounded in my social data and research design is needed.
- There are so many social design framework out there that can be implemented. But not many of them are easy to use, especially for the marginalized community.
- Capturing conversations can be challenging, but using reflective drawing as a tool can make the process easier. Drawing can serve as a valuable social data source that can be interpreted concretely using data visualization, speculative narratives, and emerging GenAI technology.
- It’s okay not to be perfect, what matters is to keep exploring and open to opportunities.
- The end of MA does not signify the conclusion of research. This realisation has inspired me to develop a timeline to explore this research further and to return it to the Cipadu community.
- People, researcher, and designer have their own needs and motivations. We can not teach or impose them what to do or what’s better for them. But we need to find a middle ground that everyone agrees and make sense.
- As Hannah Arendt points out, the middle ground between the past and the future lies in thinking. However, thinking requires the ability to make sense of things. To alter the future, it demands an iterative process of comprehending and understanding. Unfortunately, not everyone possesses this capacity or possesses the necessary skills. Therefore, it is important for all expertises to collaborate in order to untie complexity in sense-making process.
- Finally, this research not only change the community, but myself personally. My role shifted from designer to facilitator/mediator, bridging citizens with supportive experts/designers. I also now able to give more understanding in people’s behaviour and my own behaviour. This is a bittersweet journey, the change is, but it refracting the lights that I never knew I had.
Thank you, MA Applied Imagination.
Bibliography:
Brown, A.M. (2017) Emergent strategy: shaping change, changing worlds. Chico: AK Press.
Cherry, K. (2023) Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Verywell Mind.Available at: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-4136760 (Accessed: 28 November 2025).