Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future from the Stanford D.School

A powerful guide to why even the most well-intentioned innovations go haywire, and the surprising ways we can change course to create a more positive future, by two celebrated experts working at the intersection of design, technology, and learning at Stanford University’s acclaimed d.school.

“This brilliant book offers a new approach to all creative work that will expand your understanding of what it means to make and open up possibilities you didn’t know existed—it did for me.”—Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Orphan Master’s Son

In Assembling Tomorrow, authors Scott Doorley and Carissa Carter explore the intangible forces that prevent us from anticipating just how fantastically technology can get out of control, and what might be in store for us if we don’t start using new tools and tactics. Despite our best intentions, our most transformative innovations tend to have consequences we can’t always predict. From the effects of social media to the uncertainty of AI and the consequences of climate change, the outcomes of our creations ripple across our lives. Time and again, our seemingly ceaseless capacity to create rubs up against our limited capacity to understand our impact. 

Assembling Tomorrow explores how to use readily accessible tools to both mend the mistakes of our past and shape our future for the better. We live in an era of “runaway design,” where innovations tangle with our lives in unpredictable ways. This book explores the off-­­kilter feelings of today and follows up with actionables to alter your perspective and help you find opportunities in these turbulent times. 

Mixed throughout are histories of the future, short pieces of speculative fiction that imagine the future as if it has already happened and consider the past with a critical yet hopeful eye so that all of us—as designers of our own futures—can create a better world for generations to come.

Scott Doorley is a writer, designer, and the creative director at the Stanford d.school. He has overseen everything from books to workspaces to digital products and initiatives focused on the future of learning and design. He co-wrote the book Make Space: How to Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration and teaches courses in design communication. His work has been featured in museums from San Jose to Helsinki and in publications such as Architecture + Urbanism and the New York Times.

Carissa Carter is a designer, geoscientist, and the academic director at the Stanford d.school. She's the author of The Secret Language of Maps: How to Tell Visual Stories with Data, and teaches design courses on emerging technologies, climate change, and data visualization. Her work on designing with machine learning and blockchain has earned multiple design awards, including Fast Company Innovation and Core 77 awards.

The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, known as the d.school, was founded at Stanford University in 2005. Each year, more than a thousand students from all disciplines attend classes, workshops, and programs to learn how the thinking behind design can enrich their own work and unlock their creative potential.

Armando Veve is an award-winning illustrator whose drawings have appeared in publications including The New Yorker, National Geographic, Scientific American, MIT Technology Review, and Wired, among others. He studied illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design and currently resides in Philadelphia.