Projects

sLab research projects investigate innovation options and alternative futures across a range of interrelated domains. The research program is demand-driven, needs-based, and underwritten by research contracts, grants, participation by faculty, students and our community, and base institutional support. sLab's methodogical approach reflects the values and priorities of our learning community:

  • Design thinking — Human-centred problem finding, problem framing and problem solving
  • Creative insight — Leading to innovative strategies, platforms, policies, systems
  • Horizon scanning — Social, technological, economic, ecological, political & values signals
  • Foresight scenarios — Thinking about, debating, planning, shaping the future
  • Strategic planning — Understanding impacts is key to our guiding philosophy

Selected projects

Futures workshop for IISD Green Conflict Minerals

How might the mining industry play a key role in the transition toward a low-carbon future? sLab worked with IISD to investigate pathways to possible futures.

Synthesis Maps | Gigamaps
Synthesis Maps and Gigamaps from sLab design research projects and publications and from SFI Systemic Design courses are presented, with examples and references.

What is Foresight? Video Series
Co-created with Policy Horizons Canada to introduce their work anticipating challenges & opportunities in federal government. Produced in English & French versions, and fully captioned for inclusive accessibility.

DesignJam
Design thinking & creative business skills for young startups & social innovators.

Digital Governance
Transforming government practice in the digital era. Through research & engagement, Digital Governance develops a network equipped to understand these dynamics & to guide innovation. The project operates as a foresight commission with grant support from SSHRC.

sLab Events
sLab organizes public events to foster understanding and dialogue about design, innovation, foresight, strategy, and social change. Presenters and workshop facilitators range from international authors and leading practitioners to emerging voices.

Strategic Foresight for OCAD University, 2012-2017
sLab contributed foresight scenarios development and strategic perspectives to the OCAD strategic plan, Advancing Excellence at OCAD University in the Age of Imagination, 2012-2017.

SafeFont
The SafeFont Project focuses on diversity -- of technology use, displays, information needs, and human capabilities. The aim is to design and test a set of new approaches to typeface and display technology -- a "Safe Font" -- that are flexible enough to be used across healthcare settings and legible enough to be used by anyone. Additional details: http://www.ocadu.ca/research/health-research/safe-font.htm

Economic Futures for Ontario 2032
Economic Futures for Ontario 2032 is an Ontarian-centred foresight project, a rich investigation of potential future economic conditions as seen through the diverse needs and wants, behaviours, cultures and expectations of Ontarians, now through 2032.

Visualizing Emergence
Understanding innovation through data visualization of emergence (bottom-up self organization) in complex systems

2020 Media Futures
An ambitious, multi-industry strategic foresight project designed to understand and envision what media may look like in the year 2020; what kind of cross-platform Internet environment may shape our media and entertainment in the coming decade; and how our firms and organizations can take action today toward capturing and maintaining positions of national and international leadership.

SSHRC Imagining Canada's Future: DD Co-Lab
Expert panel on future challenges for Southern Ontario in the context of global urbanization. sLab led this research partnership with UOIT, Ryerson, Windsor & York U to ask: “In the face of intensified urbanization worldwide, what do we see as the highest impact social & human challenges for Southern Ontario, now through 2030?”

sBook: Futures of the Book
The sBook project proposes a unifying framework for readers, writers and publishers that ties together emerging features and standards and supports new forms of functionality and interoperability that achieve our design vision.