Module 1: Seeing the world

Focuses on introducing design futures methodology through interactive exercises. Participants learn different techniques to scan the world around them for signals of change. Key activities include street scanning, understanding information as a material, and exploring Three Future Frames (Scenarios, Situations, Stuff). The day culminates in teams building a collective signals database around a common theme.

Module 2: Situating Futures

Emphasises translating signals into concrete scenarios and situations. Participants develop scenarios describing a potential world seven to en years ahead, then use imaginative exercises to embody these scenarios physically. They employ service design methods to explore future environments, create short performances representing their scenarios, and analyse key objects and props as windows into potential futures.

Module 3: All Futures Are About the Present

Centres on synthesising learning and understanding the practical applications of design futures. Participants prepare and deliver presentations of their developed projects to a panel. The day includes a guest speaker, a seminar on the purpose of design futures, and a structured reflection on how these methodologies can be applied in participants' own organisational contexts.

The course concludes with RCA certificate presentation and networking.

This course reveals how design futures methodologies can help you move swiftly between seeing, sensing, and making modes – essential capabilities for leading organisations through uncertainty. By the end of the course, the global mix of participants attending will have gained an end-to-end toolkit for navigating uncertainty and translating insights into actionable organisational strategies.

Situated in London at the RCA Battersea Campus, the course combines theoretical frameworks with hands-on practical techniques. Participants will engage in immersive exercises using tools like:

• Society, Technology, Environment, Economics, Politics, and Values (STEEPV) analysis
• Scenario planning
• Design fiction to build capabilities in speculative thinking and strategic imagination.

Offering examples of real-life case studies and interaction with RCA academics, John V Willshire and Dr Robert Phillips, who teach on the Design Futures MDes postgraduate degree programme. Joined by guest speaker, Gem Barton, Senior Tutor, superFUTURES platform and Reader in Design Pedagogy.

The course is particularly valuable for leaders in rapidly changing sectors seeking to develop resilience, innovation capacity, and strategic foresight. It is also open to graduates and designers who want to learn or update their knowledge about design futures work and its impact.

We encourage participants from all backgrounds but this course could be particularly valuable for people from the following professions:

• Innovation and Strategy Directors
• Business Development and Transformation Leaders
• Design and Creative Directors
• Policy and Planning Directors
• Senior Management Consultants
• R&D and Foresight Managers

The capacity to imagine the future is crucial to any society; it is not about looking forward, but understanding ourselves and our place in history. Events over the last few years have dramatically shown us how volatile our present is — an increasingly unstable world makes the ability to imagine the future even more relevant. 

Futures through design is about imagining, envisioning, building and critiquing possible futures, encouraging wild speculation balanced by rigorous research. We deconstruct the past, break down the present, and shape the objects and entities waiting in the wings of the worlds to come, all to inform our decisions in the present.

The Royal College of Art has been the platform upon which generations of leading academics, industry experts and ground-breaking students have continually created new ways to unseat the present, rather than makes claims about predicting the future. For over a decade, the RCA has been a leader in design futures research and practice, and today offers a one year MDes in Design Futures.

Participants must:

• have an undergraduate degree
• have a good level of English language
• be 21 years old or over.