If the idea of design as a bigger concept appeals to you, you may be interested in the resources on the design for future needs site. As is not untypical of one of these global design initiatives, there is an emphasis on environmental/industrial/product design that may not seem too useful to your average information or document designer. But in my brief skim (when is the semester over?) of the overview, I found the following interesting:

A plethora of Foresight-based design visualizations of the future is better than one. This encourages all to treat the visions casually, to add to them, reject some, pick and mix and so on, because not too much is riding on any one future concept.

This is equivalent to the idea that paper prototypes are deemed more subject to criticism and change than are mocks done in HTML or Visual Basic or other realistic tool. But maybe if your environment is like mine, it is so much easier to present one design concept, even if you have all the intention in the world to get useful feedback. There are difficult deadlines and not-so-savvy clients and so on. And maybe there's not really a need to be redefining anyways.

I just wish I was always sure that the decision to present one design was from a good place rather than a convenient place.

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