The term futurist can conjure up images of sci-fi or psychics. While there are some overlapping traits, that isn’t exactly what a futurist is. The crux of futurist work lies at the intersection where vision meets strategy. This is the practice of creating and facilitating the possible future, rather than predicting it. Foresight is the action of a futurist. It is a collection of frameworks to understand the current state of something, envision several possible outcomes, and work from those insights to strategize and facilitate change. Speculative Designers like Dunne and Raby are futurists in the way that they use design as a medium to stimulate discussion and debate amongst designers, industry, and the public about the social, cultural and ethical implications of current and emerging technologies. Systems Thinking is a practice where you can dissect the elements of a new system and analyze the outcome based on speculative feedback loops and deeper analysis of agents of change. These two approaches lend a unique perspective in creating a desirable outcome with frameworks.
Visioning
The simplest version of foresight is visioning. This can be done solo, or with groups of various sizes. It is a way to tap into your imagination, closing your eyes helps. Start thinking about the challenge or the desired outcome. Start thinking about the senses around that environment. Who are the people, smells, colors, origins of obstacles? How does it feel to be in that space? Bring the full picture into your vision, build up the scenario so you can see it from a big picture perspective and zoom into all the fine details. This will help you comprehend elements of the system you are working with. If done in a group, this exercise can be done in 5–20-minute sessions of deep thought followed by a facilitated discussion.
Signals
Training yourself to recognize patterns and discern meaning is a craft that supports the navigation of a challenge. When you are engaged with research or in a visioning exercise, make note of themes that start to emerge. Maybe they’re physical, signals can also evoke feelings as well. For example, we will see new industries and customer segments emerge over time. We might see signals that a commodity is creating a viable market, these signals can be used to identify the support the market and customers need. Signals are an exercise that can be facilitated by asking people to do research beforehand and track what they notice. Each person takes a turn presenting their findings.
Future’s Cone
This framework is a different look at time and desired outcomes based on potential, preposterous, possible, plausible, probable, preferable, projected, and predicted scenarios. It is a tool to visually represent where the outcomes live in relation to your objectives. This is a good way to disseminate the work of visioning and signals into actionable segments for exploration.