Design as a foresight tool

Companies can use foresight-oriented design to:

• Create dialogue between internal stakeholders (design, marketing, engineering and executive decision-makers);
• Synthesise ideas about new technology and people behaviours;
• Visualise ideas (abstract complicated ideas and communicate them to the public);
• Create alternative models;
• Spark internal/external communication;
• Create openness to multiple alternatives;
• Affect strategic decision-making;
• Communicate internally and externally to get buy-in;
• Develop a vision of its own future.

Design offers the possibility for enhancing future scenarios with the visual, the spatial and the experiential. Design research methods can support the process of getting more meaningful information about people’s thoughts, desires and behaviours. Design embodiments can invite a rich response from audiences.

In addition, strategic design can be used to get buy-in and understanding from various stakeholders, thus becoming a living way of doing business and a dynamic cultural force.
Foresight-oriented design projects can play an important role not only in stimulating innovation but also in helping to rearrange and express a company’s resources, competencies and activities more effectively.

Methods learned from the design professions—such as strategic design, visualisation, prototyping, user experience assessment and feedback—cannot predict the future. However, they can help reveal opportunities, motivate action and improve the basis on which to make decisions.

Design methods and activities can offer a qualitative enhancement to current ways of planning for the future.