Look, Think, Act: The Futures-Smart Design Organization
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."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"If you ask our partners what we do, they might say I’m not totally sure, but I know that we need it."
Rebecca GimenezWork in Progress: Service Design at Airbnb
December 3, 2024
"The pandemic track was the I told you so moment for those of us designing remote tools since 2006."
Lada GorlenkoTheme 2 Intro
June 9, 2022
"There’s a tension in repositories having to serve immediate product decisions and more durable, strategic knowledge."
Brigette Metzler Dana ChrisfieldResearch Repositories: A global project by the ResearchOps Community
August 27, 2020
"We used standard metrics like task success, time to complete, number of errors, confidence, and delight."
Discussion
June 9, 2017
"I was largely wrong about how we thought technology and design would just implement policy."
Sarah Brooks Jennifer PahlkaFireside chat with Sarah Brooks and Jen Pahlka
October 21, 2021
"Every single thing that we would plan to say to the participant is spelled out in this interview guide to build transparency and trust."
Lisa Spitz Nikki BrandBuilding Trust Through Equitable Research Practices
November 18, 2022
"Designers almost always partner with clinicians who are the domain experts in healthcare projects."
Theresa NeilDesigning for Wellness: Specializing in Healthcare
May 22, 2024
"This process isn’t about replacing designers, it’s about augmenting and amplifying what we can do."
Maverick Chan Claire LinFrom Doodle to Demo: AI as Our Storytelling Partner
October 23, 2025
"Safety is a state of our nervous system, not simply a feeling or relationship."
Alla WeinbergDesign Teams Need Psychological Safety: Here’s How to Create It
September 8, 2022
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
What strategies help speed up the procurement and legal review of UX research platforms in organizations like LinkedIn?
How does Rally’s research infrastructure facilitate participant management and integration with enterprise data systems?
How can companies avoid or reduce survey fatigue among respondents?