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Educating Future-ready Designers

Marita Canina, Tatiana Efremenko

Educating Future-ready Designers

A framework for teaching design futures

Tomorrow’s designers must do more than create products, services, and experiences. They must anticipate change, navigate uncertainty, imagine alternative futures, and make responsible decisions in a world transformed by artificial intelligence, climate change, and accelerating technological and social transitions. This book introduces Design Futures, an original educational approach that brings together Design Thinking, Futures Thinking, creativity, immersive storytelling, experiential learning, and AI as a creative collaborator.

Pagine: 268

ISBN: 9788835195856

Edizione:1a ediz 2026

Codice editore: 10319.49

Informazioni sugli open access

The future will not be designed by those who only know how to solve today’s problems. Tomorrow’s designers must do more than create products, services, and experiences. They must anticipate change, navigate uncertainty, imagine alternative futures, and make responsible decisions in a world transformed by artificial intelligence, climate change, and accelerating technological and social transitions. But how do we teach these capabilities? Educating Future-Ready Designers offers an exciting answer. Developed through years of research and experimentation at Politecnico di Milano, it introduces Design Futures an original educational approach that brings together Design Thinking, Futures Thinking, creativity, immersive storytelling, experiential learning, and AI as a creative collaborator.
More than a teaching method, it is a complete learning ecosystem. Students do not simply study the future – they step inside it. Through the Ministry for the Future educational framework, they become ministers, researchers, policymakers, and futuremakers, exploring emerging signals, constructing alternative futures, building speculative worlds, and transforming those visions into tangible concepts, artefacts, and strategic actions. Richly illustrated with classroom-tested activities, practical tools, facilitation techniques, templates, student projects, and applications developed in European innovation and research programmes, this book demonstrates how futures thinking can become a transformative educational practice. For educators, researchers, curriculum designers, and innovation leaders, this is more than a guide to teaching Design Futures. It is an invitation to redesign education itself – so that the next generation is prepared not simply to face the future, but to imagine it, shape it, and take responsibility for it.

Introduction

Part I. Foundation for teaching the future

Challenges in the Current Design Educational Landscape

  • The Limits of Contemporary Design Education
  • Bridging the Gap: Towards a New Educational Approach for Design

Design Futures: Bridging Anticipation, Design, Futures Thinking, and AI Potential

  • Anticipation as an Approach: from Prediction to Exploring Possibility
  • Futures Thinking as a Multidisciplinary Approach to Long-term Change
  • From Design Thinking to Design Futures: Expanding the Temporal and Methodological Scope
  • Integrating Generative AI in Futures-Oriented Creativity

The Ministry for the Future: an Experiential Framework for Futures-oriented Design eEucation

  • Why a Ministry? The Power of Institutional Fiction
  • Pedagogical Foundations
  • The Core Pillars of the Ministry for the Future Educational Framework
  • Toward a Pedagogy of Future-making
  • A Replicable Model for Educators

Future Creativity Loop Pillar

  • The Creativity Loop and its Evolution into the Future Creativity Loop
  • Creative Futures Mindset
  • Creative Futures Confidence
  • Creative Futures Teamworking
  • Creative Futures Atmosphere
  • Futures-Oriented Creative Process

Ministry Storyworld Pillar

  • Theatrical Intro: Experiential Storyworld Entry
  • Interdepartmental Peer Learning Sessions
  • Manifesto of the Future: Translating Future Visions into Commitments

Design Futures Process Pillar

  • Horizon Scanning
  • Visioning phase
  • Ideating phase
  • Prototyping phase

Part II. Educational Framework: From theory to practice

The Design Futures Learning Journey: from Theory to the Classroom

  • Activating the Futures Atelier
  • Horizon Scanning Phase: Understanding the Present to Sense the Future
  • Visioning Phase: from Insights to Future Scenario
  • Festival of Memories: an Example of a Future Scenario

Part III. Applying Design Futures Process in Different Contexts

Adapting the Design Futures Process across Educational and Innovation Contexts

Design Futures for Developing Digital Maturity Future Skills: the DC4DM Project

  • The DC4DM Educational Model of Competencies
  • The Educational Ecosystem for Digital Creativity and Futures Thinking
  • The Learning Lab Format
  • Applying Design Futures Across Scales: Three Pathways from a Shared Challenge
  • Adapting Design Futures Across Educational Configurations
  • Conclusion

Design Futures Art-driven Method: Art-tech Innovation in Food as Medicine

  • Design Futures Art-driven (DFA) Method
  • MUSAE Art-Tech Residencies
  • Three Examples of Transitioning from the Future Scenarios to Functional Prototypes
  • Adapting Design Futures Through Art-Driven Innovation
  • Conclusion

Conclusions

References

Authors

Acknowledgements

Collana: Design International - Open Access

Argomenti: Architettura, design, territorio

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