Future Design - Future is not a matter of chance
China has a 100 year plan. What do you have?
Future is not a matter of chance. Having more than a sketchy idea of where your organisation should be in 10 years' time is anything but a luxury. With Future Design, you boost the likelihood of actually arriving at that very future.
While traditional vision work often formulates abstract ideals (‘Where do we want to go?’), future design starts much earlier: by mentally exploring alternative futures, consciously expanding the scope of possibilities, and playing through the real consequences of today's decisions.
Advantages of future design over traditional visioning
1. From a desired future to the landscape of possibilities
Traditional visions tend to paint linear, often idealised pictures of the future. Future design, on the other hand, considers multiple, sometimes contradictory future scenarios. This creates a broader understanding of what could happen – not just what should happen.
2. Less illusion, more hole punching
Vision processes run the risk of reproducing internal assumptions and existing thought patterns. Future Design uses methodical counter-impulses and disruptive roles to reveal blind spots. This enables more robust strategies and prevents wishful thinking.
3. It takes a village to raise the future
Shaping your future is a social process. Different perspectives – employees, customers, experts, sometimes even citizens – are systematically incorporated. Visions are not end products here, but intermediate steps in an open development process.
4. Next stop: decision making
Instead of just painting a picture of the future, Future Design helps organisations align their current strategies and innovation programmes with it. Scenarios are actively ‘played out’ to identify courses of action and evaluate their impact.
Methods from futurology used in Future Design
Future Design utilises a wide range of established foresight techniques, including:
1. Scenarios
Exploratory scenarios – What could happen?
Normative scenarios – What future do we want to actively shape?
Contrast and extreme scenarios – What happens if things turn out completely differently?
2. Trend and environment analysis
Identification of megatrends, weak signals, emerging issues
PESTEL analyses (political, economic, social, technological, environmental, legal)
3. Backcasting
Starting from a desirable future, a backward analysis is carried out to determine which steps are realistic and necessary to achieve it.
4. Wild Cards / „Black Swans“
Unlikely but consequential events are simulated to increase resilience.
5. Visions of the future and prototyping
Visual futures (artworks, renderings, future stories)
Design fiction: artefacts from possible futures are designed (e.g. products, services, news reports).
Rapid prototyping for future solutions to make them testable and discussable
6. Time series and trend extrapolation
Analysis of historical data to reveal patterns, breaks and possible paths for the future.
Future Design - in a nutshell
Future Design shifts the focus from dreaming to designing. It combines systematic future analysis with creative and participatory design. In this way, organisations create visions of the future that employees and managers can understand, discuss and internalise. This ensures that Future Designs are not only inspiring, but also guides action.