Sketchnote1: Designing The Future Course

It’s that time of the year again when I subscribe to too many courses on FutureLearn. This year, I’m finally doing a design course — Designing For The Future run by RMIT.

As part of the first week’s task, we had to take a problem from our environment which we’d like to find solutions to and, using sketchnotes, define the problem and brainstorm solutions.

So here’s my first ever sketchnote. It’s not pretty, but I was amazed at some of the solutions I think would work.
The ‘build taller’ (we’ve lost the sea views anyway) is nothing new, but after remembered discussions with my students while in China, I know there’s lots of wonderful and do-able ways to make tall buildings green from the word go. Even better, they’d work out much cheaper in the long run 😀
And the best bonus would be our local birdlife (we have gorgeous hawks and other birds around most natural green areas left) and other wildlife (including mongeese and the odd duiker) will see in the next century with us instead of as exhibits in the natural history museum.

The idea that excited me the most was the ferry idea. I love taking ferries and short local ferries (like the one that used to run from The Point to The Bluff) needn’t be expensive, and could provide more jobs too, as well as help tourists see Durban from a different view.

Overall, I realised that when it comes to traffic congestion, the ocean is a resource Durban totally ignores. I hope this gets someone thinking somewhere 😀

What do you think:

You can find out more about the MOOC from Futurelearn.