IFTF Foresight Essentials
IFTF Design Futures
Institute for the Future (IFTF) is pleased to offer a training with our team of award-winning
design futurists to learn to imagine and prototype informed alternatives to the future, and design
new offerings and policies for the next decade.
Creating artifacts from the futures
is one way IFTF uses design to
start the futures thinking process.
They are the first prototypes
of a world to come.
The artifact from the future, at left,
creates a plausible vision of what direct-action
climate activism might look like in 10 years.
Learn to:
Expand your design practice with foresight:
Combine professional design practices with foresight methods and tools to identify forces of change,
signals, and alternative futures.
Recognize biases and assumptions about the future:
Identify the visions embedded in products, strategies, and media, and learn how to redesign them.
Build future worlds:
Describe future contexts with evidence-based world building and user journeys to anticipate problems,
dilemmas and opportunities of the next decade.
Prototype experiences of a future world:
Design experiential scenarios to feel life in the next decade, and engage audiences in tangible ways.
Design a new offering for the future:
Use a future values canvas to create innovative revenue and impact models for people and systems
from the future.
Apply insights to current action:
Extract insights from the future and identify opportunities to develop new products, services, and
offerings today.
NEW COURSE!
Designing Sustainable Futures is an 8-week live-online program in partnership with POLI.design of the top-ranked Politecnico di Milano.
In this course, you’ll learn how to envision future scenarios that are more sustainable, and speculatively design the experiences of stakeholders. Just as important, you will learn how to make stories that mobilize people in transitioning to new more sustainable practices. Using the UNDP’s Sustainable Development Goals, you’ll apply key concepts and tools that can jumpstart the sustainable transformation journey including speculative design, participatory foresight, systemic design, and prototyping Artifacts from the Future. You’ll walk away with the insights of a strategic designer and a customized project action plan to empower your futures leadership. (Oct 7-Dec 12, 2022, live-online) Learn more »
This course includes:
- Live, multi-session instruction conducted by IFTF researchers and award-winning design futurists, Jake Dunagan, Ilana Lipsett, and Jacques Barcia
- Immersion in design futures, thinking skills, methodologies, and processes
- IFTF Design Futures Toolkit
- Full set of proprietary PowerPoint presentations
- Personalized strategic Foresight-Insight-Action plan for post-training application
- Networking with a diverse cohort of foresight practitioners and designers
- Official certificate of completion of IFTF Design Futures Training
To make new futures thinkable and actionable, we must consciously create, design, and unleash, a wide range of possible futures into the present, and make those possible futures full-bodied experiences."
—Jake Dunagan
Jake Dunagan + Tamie Glass on Design-Futures for Speculative
Futures Austin from Design Futures Initiative on Vimeo.
Agenda
IFTF Design Futures is an interactive, five-session intensive that combines core concepts of futures thinking with design and narrative theory. Participants will learn innovative approaches to designing and communicating foresight for immediate application and impact.
Meet & Greet
Meet your fellow course-mates and faculty to get a preview of the course and an introduction to the tech platform we’ll be using.
Prepare & Explore
What is Design Futures? We will begin by situating participants in the practice of design futures, including foundational theories and methods for understanding and communicating dynamics of change. Participants will look inside to learn to think like a design futurist and outside to learn how to conduct research and make sense of trends and emerging issues.
Experience
Next we'll dig deeper into the practice of design futures. We will use world-building and storytelling tools to identify and express problems, dilemmas, and opportunities from the next decade. Participants work with custom tools for building a future world, and how to create meaningful experiences from it.
Execute
The purpose of strategic foresight is to take effective action in the present to move towards preferred and equitable futures. Participants will learn about participatory design and collaborative forecasting in action, and will have time to work on the capstone activity: integrating Design Futures methodologies into a novel practice or project You will share your plans, challenges, and questions, with the opportunity for thoughtful commentary from peers and from IFTF instructors.
"The future exists first in the imagination, then in will, then in reality."
—Barbara Marx Hubbard
Dates
MAY 2-16, 2023 | 5 sessions | Live-Online
Session 1: Tue, May 2 | 8am-9:30am PDT | 11am-12:30pm EDT | 5-6:30pm CEST
Session 2: Thu, May 4 | 8am-12pm PDT | 11am-3pm EDT | 5-9pm CEST
Session 3: Tue, May 9 | 8am-12pm PDT | 11am-3pm EDT | 5-9pm CEST
Session 4: Thu, May 11 | 8am-12pm PDT | 11am-3pm EDT | 5-9pm CEST
Session 5: Tue, May 16 | 8am-12pm PDT | 11am-3pm EDT | 5-9pm CEST
Registration
- $3,500 Standard
- $3,000 Nonprofit/education/government/IFTF alumni*
* Email register@iftf.org to verify your eligibility.
SCHOLARSHIPS NOW AVAILABLE! Do you need financial assistance to attend a training? IFTF offers a limited
number of scholarships for individuals who are underrepresented in the field of foresight or using foresight for social good/change to attend our trainings. Apply here »
Meet the Instructors
Jake Dunagan
As an originator of experiential and design futures, Jake Dunagan has been at the forefront of the practice and pedagogy of the field for the last 15 years. Jake brings both theoretical rigor and hands-on practical knowledge to his work. He has taught and mentored design futures students for over 10 years at leading institutions around the world such as the University of Texas' Center for Integrated Design, California College of the Arts' Design Strategy MBA program, and CENTRO in Mexico City. Some of his career highlights as a design futurist include ground-breaking projects including immersive scenarios for for the State of Hawaii in 2050, a pandemic-based alternate reality game for the CDC, visions of future cities with the US Conference of Mayors, exhibitions for the Dubai Museum of the Future, and with many other civic organizations, foundations, and businesses.
Ilana Lipsett
Ilana Lipsett specializes in participatory design and inclusive futures. She is an experienced workshop facilitator, having led design, foresight, planning, and engagement workshops across the globe for governments, corporations, community groups, and has been a guest lecturer at numerous universities and graduate degree programs, from business to planning to design. She has an MBA in sustainable management, and has worked with companies to implement social impact and sustainability strategies through a futures-focused lens.
Jacques Barcia
Jacques Barcia is a published science fiction author, journalist and designer. He has experience leading innovation processes and facilitating design sprints. He’s worked at technology parks and innovation institutes in Brazil, helping established companies and startups develop new offerings for the futures. Jacques specializes in helping organizations prototype the next decades using storytelling and product design. Jacques holds a masters in design. His fiction has appeared in professional markets and anthologies in the US, UK, and Brazil.
Testimonials
— Ahmed Best
Afro-Rithms Futures Group, BISN Media
Live-Online | Spring 2021
A thoughtfully designed and dynamic training that included diverse voices, inspiring presentations, interactive simulations, and provocative activities. It was broad and deep. Expert facilitators ensured that we walked away with the ability to immediately apply learning in our own unique contexts."
— Tamara Christensen
Consultant, Idea Farm
Live-Online | Spring 2021
our current initiatives."
— Tyler Lauretti
Technology Leadership Development Program, Travelers
Live-Online | Spring 2021
Contact
For questions, please contact:
register@iftf.org | 650.233.9538
You may also be interested in
IFTF Design Futures Toolkit + Templates Usage
As a research and educational organization, Institute for the Future’s mission is to build more foresight capacity in the world by providing tools and resources to help people better anticipate the future to make decisions in the present. To this end the IFTF Design Futures Toolkit and Templates are held under an IFTF copyright and licensed under the Creative Commons 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). If you are a certified IFTF Design Futures Practitioner, we encourage the reproduction and use of these tools within your organization(s) and in your own practice of foresight education for any non-commercial, attribution-only, non-derivative use.