Rosenverse
Look, Think, Act: The Futures-Smart Design Organization

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Look, Think, Act: The Futures-Smart Design Organization

Gold
Friday, October 1, 2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Share the love for this talk
Look, Think, Act: The Futures-Smart Design Organization
Speakers: April Reagan
Link:

Summary

Feel like foresight is best left to economists and business strategists? Think again. Fight your imposter syndrome to harness the power of futures-thinking in your design organization to imagine and pursue preferable futures in how you work, what you produce and even in your personal life. You do not have to stop the world to look, think and act – make the futures mindset a natural habit and make small actions today turn into a better world tomorrow.

Key Insights

  • The COVID-19 pandemic exposed global unpreparedness and severely impacted small businesses, with 30% closing in 2020.

  • Despite crises, remarkable global progress exists in areas like vaccination coverage, literacy, and environmental protection.

  • Futures thinking requires observation, synthesis, scenario creation, estimating potential outcomes, and planning for preferable futures.

  • Design organizations naturally possess many skills transferable to futurism, such as risk management and capacity planning.

  • AI applications can save lives but must be carefully trained with equitable data to avoid reinforcing biases.

  • Collaboration across teams and involving citizens broadly in design and innovation increases the quality of futures outcomes.

  • Technology is a powerful enabler of positive futures but often carries unintended consequences that must be anticipated.

  • Futures literacy and a change-friendly mindset within organizations foster adaptability and strategic foresight.

  • Climate change and extreme weather events disproportionately affect the poorest populations, highlighting global equity challenges.

  • Design leaders are uniquely positioned to advocate for human-centered, inclusive futures at organizational and societal levels.

Notable Quotes

"We can't just focus on the next deadline; we have to think about how the products and services we build impact the world."

"In 1800, 44% of children died before their fifth birthday. We've made dramatic progress since then."

"AI can be a great partner to humans if trained with fair and complete data, but we must be careful not to ship biased systems."

"Foresight is a team sport—the more perspectives you have, the better your future scenarios become."

"Design ops professionals are already futurists in disguise because they constantly manage risks and plan capacity."

"We need honest, transparent conversations about futures because the impacts can be huge and wide-ranging."

"It's not enough to imagine the future; we have to make plans that influence and build those preferable futures."

"The pandemic and climate change have shown how tightly interwoven and global our challenges truly are."

"The division between haves and have-nots is real, but history shows periods of immense innovation and progress can follow."

"We're building bridges not only for ourselves but for the generations who will come after us."

Ask the Rosenbot
Kristen Guth, Ph.D.
Out of the FOG: A Non-traditional Research Approach to Alignment
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Ben Reason
Making the system visible: The fastest path to better decisions
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Gold
Catherine Courage
The Enterprise UX Journey: Lessons From the Voyage & The Opportunity Ahead
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Maria Skaaden
Continuous Design: One eye on the horizon and the other on the next wave
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Amy Paris
Delivering Equity: Government Services for All Ages, Languages, Sexual Orientations, and Gender Identities
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Rachael Dietkus, LCSW
Everything You Need to Know about the Civic Design 2022 Call for Presentations
2022 • Civic Design Community
Robin Beers
Navigating organizational systems: Rethinking researcher’s role in driving change
2025 • Advancing Research 2025
Gold
Alla Weinberg
People Are Sick of Change: Psychological Safety is the Cure
2023 • DesignOps Community
Ryan Matthew
Bridging Design and Code: AI-Powered Design System Integration
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Uday Gajendar
Day 1 Welcome
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
George Zhang
UX Research Excellence Framework
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Jessamyn Edwards
Surviving Your UX Career in Enterprise Design
2021 • Enterprise Community
Carl Turner
You Can Do This: Understand and Solve Organizational Problems to Jumpstart a Dead Project
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Sam Proulx
Understanding Screen Readers on Mobile: How And Why to Learn from Native Users
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Sofía Delsordo
Public Policy for Jalisco's Designers to Make Design Matter
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Dan Willis
Filling the Void
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold

More Videos

Alexandra Schmidt

"Users have no choice but to use the software we build, so adoption metrics are often not useful."

Alexandra Schmidt

Enterprise UX Playbook

December 1, 2022

Jen Crim

"Half-day Fridays is a way for us to give back to ourselves and promote work-life balance."

Jen Crim Jess Quittner Saritha Kattekola Alex Karr Gurbani Pahwa

Culture, DIBS & Recruiting

June 11, 2021

Christian Crumlish

"Critique sessions work best when the topic is shaped so answers are relevant and help the process, especially by including business goals."

Christian Crumlish

AMA with Christian Crumlish, author of Product Management for UX People

March 24, 2022

Libby Maurer

"Performance reviews at HubSpot are ongoing conversations, not one big yearly event."

Libby Maurer

Treating Diversity & Inclusion in Hiring as a Design Problem

December 5, 2019

Ali Jeffery

"Technology is a tool, not a solution in itself; it needs human input."

Ali Jeffery Sheri Chudow

How DesignOps Helped Enable Wall Street to Work Remotely

October 22, 2020

Daniel Gloyd

"Design research often acts like scientists with clipboards rather than humans in conversation."

Daniel Gloyd

Designing From the Inside Out: How Method Acting Can Inspire Design Research

February 12, 2026

Kristin Skinner

"Equipped with the right tools, we can truly meet students where they are."

Kristin Skinner

Five Years of DesignOps

September 29, 2021

Johanna Kollmann

"A simple quadrant diagram helped our product manager tell the story to leadership and made him look good."

Johanna Kollmann

Insights-Driven Product Strategy: Get your Research to Count

December 6, 2022

David Sternberg

"You don’t design interfaces anymore—you choreograph intentions."

David Sternberg

Uncovering the hidden forces shaping user behavior

July 17, 2025