97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know

Chapter 15. Thinking About the Future Is Important for Any Design Process

Liz Possee Corthell

The future is something that’s always on our minds, yet it’s impossible to predict where the world is headed. This is one of the core challenges of strategy work: we can’t predict the future, but we still have to act. Instead of predicting, we have to anticipate where the world is headed and ensure we create the future we want to live in.

Futures thinking is a method in which we use visions of the future to change the present. Most look to the past to measure success, not the future, but the world around us is getting more complex, so the past isn’t useful anymore. As designers, we can apply futures thinking as a mindset to ensure we look beyond the horizon to consider our impact 10–15+ years into the future.

Futures thinking is a world rich with content and knowledge, and the complexities cannot adequately be summarized in one chapter. But there are methods we can use to begin designing the futures of tomorrow. Jim Dator, a professor and director of the University of Hawaii’s Futures Studies Department, holds that there is no singular future:

Futures studies is not about correctly predicting The Future. It is about understanding the varieties and sources of different images of the future, and of coming to see that futures studies does not study “the future,” but rather, among other ...