Foresight Assisted Design (FAD)
FAD is a flexible, future-focused framework that fuses Design Thinking with Strategic Foresight. It helps individuals and organizations explore emerging possibilities, challenge assumptions, and co-create solutions that are both innovative and resilient. By continuously looping between future visions and present action, FAD ensures that what we design today holds up tomorrow.
Design with tomorrow in mind. Build what matters today.
Foresight Assisted Design (FAD) is a transformative framework that integrates the power of Futures Thinking with the practicality of Design Thinking to help individuals, teams, and organizations design better products, policies, services, and strategies—ones that are resilient, human-centered, and future-fit.
At its core, FAD is a response to a simple but urgent question: What are we going to do with all these futures?
Why FAD?
Traditional design tools help you solve today’s problems. Foresight tools help you imagine tomorrow. FAD bridges the two, guiding people through a cyclical, hands-on process that transforms abstract future visions into tangible, testable solutions.
Unlike conventional approaches that treat foresight as a one-time visioning activity, FAD keeps the future alive throughout the design process. By enabling double-loop learning, it helps teams interrogate their assumptions, adapt to new insights, and update their strategies in real-time.
How it Works
The FAD framework unfolds in four iterative, spiraling phases:
Understand – Begin with empathy and deep research, exploring both user needs and historic trends to uncover how the past continues to shape the present—and the futures ahead.
Explore – Use tools like scenarios and emerging issue analysis to uncover a range of plausible futures. Then, return to your ideas and re-iterate your designs.
Anticipate & Tweak – Stress-test prototypes using foresight tools such as Futures Wheels and immersive roleplays. Challenge assumptions, refine your solutions, and gain deeper community insight.
Reflect, Strategize & Implement – Build actionable strategies from your insights. Craft roadmaps, change plans, and engagement tactics that bring preferred futures to life.
Each cycle is an opportunity to pause, reflect, learn—and design again, more deliberately.
What You Can Expect
FAD can support you to:
Design innovative policies grounded in real community needs and future scenarios.
Build products and services that are resilient to emerging disruptions.
Create organizational strategies that remain adaptive in fast-changing contexts.
Develop vision-led teams who are more equipped to navigate complexity and change.
Let’s Co-Create What’s Next
Whether you're a city official, educator, product team, or social innovator, FAD gives you a powerful method to navigate the unknown and design with intention.
Because the future isn’t something we predict—it’s something we design.
