You know that thing you look through during your eye exam? The one in which different lenses can be layered on top of one another to create different ways to help us see the world more clearly?

Yeah, that thing…

Think of the Lenses for a Maximum Potential Future like that tool, called a phroropter - a system of lenses that can be layered in different combinations to help our eyes and minds adapt, look at things a little bit differently, and take steps forward with clarity, assurance, and ingenuity.

Lenses change how we perceive the world. The Lenses for a Maximum Potential Future are a critical tool that help guide how we perceive what exists and the possibilities for what could exist. They allow us to see at a near, medium, and far distance. We created the Lenses as both a product of our experiences creating policies and prototypes and to help inform future work. Our work is predicated on this cyclic relationship between pedagogy and practice; it guides our design and inquiry process.

Each edition of our newsletter we’ll be featuring one of our 12 Lenses for a Maximum Potential Future. We’ll explain the Lens, describe how it’s used, and provide some examples of projects for which we’ve used it. We’ll also post these features here, on our website News page.

We share these lenses in hopes that the state of “maximum potential” can reach ever higher plateaus and we look forward to discussing them with you. You can always ask us questions about the Lenses via our social media; just use the hashtag #LensesforMax. Let’s keep looking at the world differently and seeing all the possibilities!