Futures Forecasting: Process & Purpose
I’m a design futurist and trend forecaster with more than 13 years’ experience in innovation consulting and futures research. I believe that the skill and art of futures thinking should be accessible and available to everyone, because the more futures thinkers there are in the world, the better our collective futures will be.
This is the first in a series of articles that aim to explain some key ideas and learnings from my work. I particularly hope it will be useful to trend forecasting students and early-career researchers. If you have comments or suggestions, please get in touch!
Every futures forecaster has a different route to their work, and a different driving motivation as to why they do it. I came to forecasting after studying design, and I see design as an act of hope in the future: designers are creating objects and experiences that didn’t exist before, and they want them to be successful and pleasurable. They are usually looking to improve on what already exists. In this way, designers are futurists, bringing the futures they imagine into being.
Here are some of the main ways I think about process, practice and methodology, and how each of these always relates back to purpose.
- Define your purpose: for me, the power and appeal of trend forecasting is that it gives me the opportunity to shape ethical and inclusive design futures. This purpose keeps me on track. The clearer your guiding purpose, the easier it will be to notice if you drift away from it, and to find a path back to it.
- Cultivate a global viewpoint: assemble your research sources and information feeds to provide an intentionally global and diverse range of topics, viewpoints and ideas. Keep track of the regions and demographics you are hearing from more, and rebalance this by looking for writing and work from under-represented people and communities. Self-enforced quotas and audits can be useful and necessary ways to force yourself to globalise and diversify your research, which will make it stronger. Participating in knowledge sharing and gathering, by joining groups on platforms like Discord or LinkedIn or by subscribing to newsletters, is a good way to more organically widen your orbit.
- Commit to accreditation: keep track of your sources and scrupulously credit each one, linking back to the original source in your writing. This is intellectually honest, and also gives readers a chance to research further into ideas that inspire them. Use direct quotes, with attribution (and permission, where needed). Ideas are intellectual property, and the task of a trend forecaster is to synthesise ideas. We have a fundamental responsibility to credit and respect the originators of each idea. Failure to do this results in intellectual theft, and cultural appropriation — two problems that the trend forecasting industry has contributed to time and again in its history, and must address.
- Seek out multiple viewpoints: look for the critiques and challenges that are being made about the topic you’re researching, and the shortcomings of the idea, as well as what’s exciting about it. If you’re tracking a big topic for the long-term — such as web3 or the metaverse — be sure to balance the information you read from ‘boosters’ (proponents of the idea, who usually stand to make money off its success) with viewpoints from critics and detractors (who may have their own motivations for wanting an idea to fail). Always take note of the media organisations, academic institutes and thinktanks people are affiliated with; over time you’ll see the biases and worldviews of each institute emerge. Keep tracking ideas and concepts when they fall to the trough of a hype cycle, as this can be when the most interesting shifts and evolutions occur.
- Look for the implications on culture: it can be easy to focus on the immediate commercial opportunities of an idea or product. We live and work in a consumerist and capitalist system, and trend forecasting can serve to propel and intensify consumerism. But the more interesting and wide-ranging implications of a trend or idea come from what it will do to culture — not just how people will immediately use it or make money off it. Look for these wider and deeper impacts, and your research will quickly become more original and more insightful.
- Be inspired by other futures thinkers and doers: look for energising writers, makers and facilitators who are working across disciplines and in a wide range of industries and sectors. Read and listen to them avidly. Some of the mind-expanding thinkers I follow include Anab Jain, Neri Oxman, Bruce Sterling, Matt Webb, adrienne maree brown, Rebecca Solnit, Aric Chen and Ian Bogost.
If you enjoyed this article, you can find more of my work at www.sarahhousley.com and sign up to my free newsletter here.
