From “What’s the Proportion of Users Who…” to “What-If…”: Futuring in a Cautious Manufacturing Organisation

Introduction

“In dealing with the future, it is far more important to be imaginative than to be right.”
― Alvin Toffler, futurologist and author of “Future Shock” (1987)

Being imaginative rather than right was, in essence, my contribution: introducing a creative and strategic approach of futuring that works with, not against, uncertainty and complexity. My objective was to open conversations about how possible futures could play out, taking into account their numerous and interwoven dimensions (social, technological, environmental, etc.). In this paper, I introduce a methodology for exploring possible futures, in the context of a cautious manufacturing company. The word “cautious” is used here to describe an organisation that tends to be process-oriented, risk-averse, and uncomfortable with the ambiguity typical of exploratory phases. This can be explained by several factors. First, this is an extremely regulated industry, mainly to protect people using these solutions for healthcare purposes. Second, this is an engineering company, which means employees are extremely thorough and most likely driven by objective information. In this culture, multiplicity of truths, nuances and contradictions can be synonymous with risk, making them more difficult to accept. This can lead to friction, especially when suggesting methodologies that consider ambiguity and fluidity to be core values, such as futuring approaches.

I am a User Experience Researcher working in a large, international company with a mission to improve lives of people living with intimate healthcare needs. More specifically, my work focuses on getting a better understanding of people living with an ostomy and people who use intermittent self-catheterisation, to then inform product and service innovation teams. Living with an ostomy means that one’s faeces are collected in a bag attached to the abdomen, after the bowel had been surgically linked to the abdominal wall. Using intermittent self-catheterisation means one inserts a catheter multiple times a day, through the urethra, to empty one’s bladder.

My motivation for exploring the future(s) originates in the organisation being cautious, risk-averse, competitor-focused and looking for certainty rather than ambiguity, thus limiting its innovation abilities. One example of that is the tendency to be extremely knowledgeable about direct competitors, with less interest for what I consider nurturing sources of inspiration: other sectors (i.e., looking for signals in education or food instead of mainly healthcare), non-business inspiration (i.e., looking for behavioural trends) and other cultures (i.e., from the cultural potential and not only the business potential they may offer). Regarding the preference of certainty over ambiguity, while user research is established and has gained strong recognition throughout the organisation, the ambiguous nature of its insights can cause people to feel uncomfortable and look for reassurance in rational outcomes. This means that insights might be overly simplified down the line, in order to better adjust to processes required by the industry (for instance, being grouped or re-written in Excel documents without context, which sometimes – not always – compromises their complexity and richness). In addition, project teams were lacking the ability to envision radically different futures that would enable teams to question the way they think about and design solutions. Indeed, in the highly regulated, highly complex healthcare industry, timelines are long, sometimes up to a decade, until a new solution is launched. This also means that solutions are used for many years before people can benefit from latest innovations. Long timelines require special attention to ensure relevance from the start of a project, all along solution lifecycle. This is one of the reasons that motivated me to introduce futuring approaches, as I believed we were not sufficiently equipped to deal with such a challenge. In summary, the conversative nature of the organisation combined with the necessity to create innovative solutions that needed to prove relevant to our users for many years were the key drivers for implementing futuring approaches. I intended to hopefully augment innovation abilities to ultimately offer relevant solutions to our users from the future(s) through radical innovation, going beyond incremental improvements to solutions (Attari, Scull, and Harandi 2021). In addition, I believed it was an industry leader’s responsibility to shape various versions of the future(s) and steer the wheel towards preferred direction(s).

Considering culture, in my organisation, teams are large and made up of many specialised experts. It is not unusual for a researcher to be working in a project team of around fifty people, core and extended teams combined. Moreover, being a Danish organisation, the culture at the headquarters is shaped around consensus-building, which both underlines time dedicated to decision-making and can hinder facing or even provoking tensions or heated debates in the creative process – tensions and debates being core ingredients of Speculative Design.

The methodology I describe comprises of three specific interventions within company projects, described in the “Three Interventions” section of this paper, aiming to address the problems discussed above and to raise futuring capabilities of project teams. The methodological approach was a balance between following structure, informed by literature, and being flexible to match the changing nature of the projects. The reader will also learn about the challenges and benefits of integrating futuring approaches at grassroot project level, alongside user ethnography. I am hoping that the account of this experience will foster conversation within the research, creation and innovation community, both as an opportunity to learn from and inspire each other.

Theoretical Framework

This research draws on a theoretical framework based on Speculative Design, Design Fiction and Strategic Foresight, concepts that were key to informing futuring approaches. I combined and mixed three frameworks, namely Speculative Design, Design Fiction and Strategic Foresight, the result of this breeding being nested under the term “futuring approaches” in this paper.

Futuring Approaches

In this paper, “futuring approaches” integrates theoretical perspectives of Speculative Design, Design Fiction and Strategic Foresight altogether, with the intention of informing product and service-innovation project work. By using the term “approaches” in the plural form, I intend to encapsulate the plurality and diversity of mindsets (as well as methodologies and tools) that complement each other and form inspiration.

Speculative Design

Speculative Design (Dunne and Raby 2013; Auger 2013) can be understood as an approach, a mindset, to creatively envision multiple potential futures. It is about making the consequences of our current action’s tangible, triggering reactions and fostering debate with an audience. This approach is not about predicting the future(s) but rather offers a way of envisioning the future(s) as multiple instead of singular. It also considers the transformative power of these conversations as a central thought.

Design Fiction

Building upon contributors such as Blythe (2006), Kirby (2010), Markussen and Knutz (2013), Lindley, Sharma, and Potts (2014), Stead, Coulton, and Lindley (2018), Bleecker et al. (2023), Design Fiction can be understood as a more tangible expression of the mindset of Speculative Design. It implies using fiction (narratives, speculative artifacts, etc.) to kickstart reflections about the future(s). In this paper, Design Fiction prototypes (or provocatypes – provocative prototypes) have been created by project teams, with the initial intention that an updated version of them could be taken to the field with the goal of receiving feedback from end-users. Numerous Design Fiction examples fed my reflections, including those gathered by Phil Balagtas in his brilliant overview “Design Is [Speculative] Futures Design Thinking – a new toolkit for pre-emptive design” (2019). The exhibition “The Future is Present” (June 2022 – December 2024) by the Design Museum in Copenhagen provided another valuable source of inspiration. Finally, available evidence suggest that Cennydd Bowles might have coined the term “provocatype”, but it was difficult to identify a clear attribution.

Strategic Foresight

The Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies (CIFS) provides a definition in the handbook “CIFS Toolkit for Applied Strategic Foresight” (2025):

“Strategic foresight [is] a discipline that involves systematically anticipating and preparing for future challenges and opportunities in ways that expand conventional strategic thinking in the face of change. It typically deals with the medium to long-term future (beyond the current strategic planning horizon) with the overarching goal of enhancing awareness of change and considering alternative futures in ways that generate valuable insights for better strategic anticipation”

Spending time ideating about phenomena that could happen, with various degrees of intensity and at different points in time and overall acknowledging the importance of change to inform decision-making can be achieved with Strategic Foresight (CIFS 2020).

“The Generic Foresight Process Framework” by Joseph Voros (2003) is a cornerstone in the work I have conducted. I also acknowledge the future-oriented work done by strategic design consultancy Manyone (2025), Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra (2025) and CIFS in feeding my reflections about Strategic Foresight.

Three Interventions

In this section, I describe three futuring interventions within various project teams across the organisation. What unites these initiatives is that they were intentionally conducted with the idea of implementing a practice of futuring at a larger scale. As a researcher, I used the tools I had at my disposal to disrupt the current ways of working and offered a view that, if not new, was very new to the teams.

These initiatives are presented in chronological order. For each intervention, I first describe the project context, followed by the outcomes once the futuring approach has been applied, and finally my learnings.

Intervention 01: Eliciting Stories

Project Context

The objective of this project was to create a new ostomy solution eco-system, strongly focusing on creating a positive emotional impact for users. As part of this project, this specific research round aimed at exploring end-users’ attitude towards potential possibilities offered by their appliances. Could an ostomy appliance do more for people than collecting faeces? I felt there was an opportunity of using futuring approaches because I needed the interviewees (ostomy end-users in that case) to take some distance from what they already knew (i.e., how they had been living with their ostomy solution so far) and hopefully form comments around what their ostomy solution could do for them in the future(s). I believed this could be achieved through providing visual aids, real to the look and feel. Visuals varying in relatability (i.e., with different balances between fiction and realism) were derived from key themes of anticipated lifestyles.

This led to the creation of over 20 speculative visual stimuli, using free and paid AI-generation tools. These stimuli were later shown during online fieldwork, where 12 people living with an ostomy were interviewed (exploratory, qualitative, semi-conducted 90-min interviews). One visual I created showed a vending machine displaying ostomy products to buy – a concept that, to my knowledge, does not exist today. This visual elicited very different reactions depending on the person. One person felt very enthusiastic and shared about the ease of access of ostomy solutions when travelling abroad. Another person felt very uncomfortable about having ostomy appliances displayed in public spaces for everyone to see. Another visual showed someone watering plants with a device attached to their abdomen. This led to, for instance, one person relating to a blockage they had, that sent them to the emergency room. For another participant, this visual elicited the feeling of “liberation” they would have if they could interact less with their ostomy appliance.

Outcomes

The main challenge was to find the right balance between a realistic and a futuristic vision. This is a well-known challenge of Design Fiction. Indeed, stimuli or artifacts need to look realistic enough so that people can believe they could exist, or already exist, while looking futuristic enough to allow one’s imagination to expand.

From a design or ethnographic research perspective, I found that, paradoxically, anticipatory-oriented research stimuli helped ground people’s narratives in the present even more. Indeed, people interpreted the visual prompts subjectively, seeing elements of personal stories they would share with me. Instead of turning their mind and creating fantasised futuristic experiences or brainstorming, rendering findings too hypothetical and potentially irrelevant, users turned inwards to their memories, sharing invaluable stories.

Learnings

Despite the futuristic look-and-feel of the stimuli, I was surprised to notice how easily people related them to their own experience and shared personal stories, instead of demonstrating some form of expectancy bias (for instance, trying to imagine situations in which these prompts could be true and work for them, irrespective of their personal story or lifestyle), which I was both prepared for and partly expected. This is in line with a speculative design approach: through travelling through the future(s), we end up getting closer to the present, the one moment in time we can shape. Oftentimes, there is a misconception about what futuristic, or future-looking stimuli are for, with an expectation that users will point us towards the right direction. This intervention reminded me of the validity of present or past stories shared by users, future-related statements being hypothetical by nature and much more elusive. We are not directly asking people to tell us what the future(s) could look like, rather, we are reminded of our mission to create desirable futures, or, as researchers, to inspire the innovation journey.

Intervention 02: Multiplying Futures

Project Context

This intervention was part of the same project as the previous one, aiming to create a new ostomy solution eco-system, with a strong focus on creating a positive emotional impact for users. This time, instead of going for a more traditional design ethnographic approach with a dozen end-user interviews, I recommended the project team spend time developing various visions of how the future(s) could play out. In the context of extremely long innovation project timelines, and operating in an increasingly VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) world, there was an opportunity to first explore potential future contexts and then start ideating about innovation that could emerge from these contexts. My assumption was that, by boosting the emergence of various contexts, various “answers” (prototypes, solution) could emerge. This, I believe, was key to product and service innovation.

In this initiative, I used Voros’s foresight framework (2003) as a guiding star, taking the liberty of combining and adjusting methodologies as the project was moving forward, and as I developed trust with my co-workers. Through individual and collective phases, I guided the team through trend and signal collection, future scenario writing and fictional user journey visualisation. In one scenario entitled “The future is citizens’ duty”, we proposed a possible future in which social accountability would be strong; circular economy would dominate; and on-demand services would be fully developed. How would this possible future influence the experience of the users? This would require, for instance, a strong focus on desirability and engagement, through gamification for instance. Finally, this intervention was summed up in a deck of “What-if?” cards. It encapsulates the key thought-provoking questions which were raised over the course of the futuring phase. It helped make the outcome more tangible for the team and celebrate progress. Precious resources, such as trend reports from the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies, the Future Radar tool by strategic design consultancy Manyone, publications from Finnish Innovation Fund SITRA, and the excellent project “Remotes Futures” by Lunia D’Ambrosio and Elena Bauer displayed at Design Museum of Copenhagen were crucial in helping me build a tailored methodology. I warmly recommend them.

Outcomes

This intervention helped shift from a single vision of the future to multiple, richer possibilities. This was mainly achieved by broadening the team’s imaginaries and ability to think clearer, "opening up for more radical thinking", as phrased by a designer colleague. Although the future scenarios we created were rooted in healthcare (they needed to be specific and industry-focused enough to effectively feed the innovation project journey), many other dimensions helped enrich them and helped develop a multi-faceted approach of potential futures. This was seen as a benefit, as highlighted by the same colleague:

“This explorative approach enabled us to re-invent ourselves, preventing us to fall into the trap of relying on blindly re-iterating based on familiar technologies and past market knowledge.”

It took me several months to convince the project team that focusing on developing our imaginaries about potential futures was the way to go, as opposed to a more traditional design ethnographic approach. After meeting some initial resistance, this intervention allowed for meaningful and powerful conversations to emerge. This was also the signal of an increasing ability to tolerate ambiguity within the project team, and to think clearer, using uncertainty and fiction to fuel ideas.

I expected these meaningful and necessary conversations to be the major, yet intangible, outcome of futuring approaches, in that it would allow us to integrate more perspectives beyond our sole industry (i.e., beyond healthcare, opening up to topics such as automotive, fashion, architecture, etc.), beyond user-centricity (i.e., by taking the interests of other-than-human actants into account) and beyond technology (i.e., by integrating other dimensions of the PESTLE framework). One key challenge was that intangible outcomes such as conversations and mindset shifts, yet powerful and highly valuable, would not be deemed sufficient to show progress to the team, let alone higher management.

Learnings

Considering interpersonal dynamics and mindset change, finding support from my colleagues was critical in the successful implementation of these futuring approaches. Building strong ties with some “allies” early on, as well as gaining their trust through numerous sparring sessions and patient explanation was crucial. I can only credit my colleagues for their trust and courage to engage in such a journey, dealing with a fair amount of uncertainty and ambiguity. Kick-starting the project with a few allies who already see the value of futuring approaches, and keeping the dialogue open was key to gaining traction. However, the project team being highly cross-functional, I also admit I could not gain everyone’s approval. One person ended up leaving a workshop because the discussions we were having, and the work we were doing, was deemed “too fluffy”. Overall, and despite some resistance, I found that futuring approaches in practice created numerous opportunities for collaborative and cross-functional activities, which is a positive. These activities created favourable circumstances that brought people closer together, through participatory design, as opposed to a more traditional ethnographic approach whose activities would have been more separated from the project. I found that futuring approaches hold great potential, not only benefiting project work, but also strengthening interpersonal relationships within the team.

Regarding project quality, and the broadening of our imaginaries, significant progress was made. As mentioned in the introduction, a common approach in our organisation is to focus on the industry (ostomy care), and direct competitors. By opening up to other industries (especially through bringing trends and signals from diverse industries and cultures), we activated a strong potential to increase relevance towards our end-users “of the future(s)”, alongside with non-human actants such as the environment.

Let us now consider impact. Due to the highly tangible nature of our working style in general, and the markers of productivity and progress (producing prototypes, ordering material samples, creating presentations, etc.), I am not sure yet whether conversations and mindset shift could fully be acknowledged as “outcomes” by the project team, let alone higher management. However, the value of it was recognised by precious allies. Moreover, the project team was able to broaden their views and think more creatively about the future(s), which was a key objective in experimenting with the future(s). In addition, it is still unclear how futuring approaches had impact on prototype creation later down the line. Reflecting upon timing, it might have been suitable to introduce the methodology earlier in the project life to increase the chances of having a direct influence on prototype creation. As discussed with a colleague with expertise in design, this might have enabled broader exploration before the convergent phase. Indeed, by introducing futuring approaches at a later point in time, the team is more likely to “lock in” on specific solutions, making it more challenging to get back to divergence. Nevertheless, I believe, especially in such large organisations, that it takes more than one intervention to produce noticeable change.

This intervention had some positive repercussions internally, leading to a third intervention a few months later, described in the following section. This indicates that the effect of futuring initiatives seem to compound, as curiosity develops, as increasing numbers of people experience them internally, and as trust grows from different parts of the organisation.

Intervention 03: Provocatyping

Project Context

In this intervention, I acted as an “internal consultant” within a project team, meaning that there was already a User Experience Researcher allocated to the project, and I was not directly part of the project. My intervention was targeted and limited in time. I worked in close collaboration with an internal colleague, both designer and facilitator, and a facilitating external consultant. The futuring activities were a part of a broader program, thus integrated in longer-term strategic activities for the project. The project’s objective was to create a solution eco-system for people who use self-catheterisation, with a strong focus on making a better emotional impact for them. The project was in its exploratory phase, and my researcher colleague was preparing a fieldwork-based research round. The objectives of my intervention were twofold: to inspire the project team with visions “from the futures” that they would create; and to create provocatypes (provocative prototypes). These tangible outcomes could potentially, if iterated upon, be used as research stimuli and be taken “to the field” with end-users. A series of two participatory design workshops made up the intervention. Resources by Irene Kamp as of August 23, 2025, proved very useful in synthesising the value of provocatypes and creating these workshops. First, we built an understanding of the critical themes the project needed to address, using, amongst other, trend and signal sensemaking. Then, an active prototyping session led to the creation of several provocatypes. For example, one provocatype looked like a football trophy and embodied dynamics of gamification in self-catheterisation, suggesting this might be motivating for end-users. In the same session, two colleagues designed an absurd experience in which role-played self-catheterisation users were asked, through a test format, to complete a series of missions doomed to fail. This user empathy experience, rooted in the provocatype, offered a broader reflection about how much expectations weigh on the users, and enabled debates about how to truly make their lives easier.

Outcomes

The main challenge here was methodological. It was about clearly communicating the difference between prototyping (which is an expert craft in the organisation) and provocatyping, in order to make the hoped-for impact in the project, which was to envision the multiplicity and the complexity of various potential future(s). Some interesting concepts emerged, most of them extremely different from the current solutions.

Overall, this intervention contributed to developing and enhancing great dynamics between people, in that they ended up thinking more creatively, having necessary discussions that might have emerged much later but were critical to hold early on (for instance, the importance of sustainability was discussed), and co-designing, in ways that might have been more confrontative and powerful than with more traditional approaches. This ended up benefiting both the project work and team dynamics.

When it comes to the project work, this intervention helped the team enrich their vision of what an eco-system of solutions could be, increasing the relevance for the future users.

This is confirmed by the project manager’s perspective:

“[This intervention] really helped us see [the project] as more of an eco-system, not just as standalone products. It made us realise we needed a mix of [solutions].”

This intervention brought reassurance and a sense of confirmation before discussing the actual prototypes with end-users.

As the project manager notes:

"It didn’t directly change our prototypes, but it definitely influenced how we approached building our [research approach and research stimuli]. It made us feel confident that the prototypes we had were the right ones for fieldwork."

In addition, the team acknowledged the value of intangible outcomes. It was seen as a powerful tool to enhance relationships and quality collaboration between people, which is of paramount importance in an organisation with a highly relational culture.

The same colleague shares:

"Also, I think the provocatype sessions were a fun activity for the team. They got everyone thinking outside the box and stepping away from their usual ways of working. Activities like these in the early stages of a project add a lot of value because they open up the team’s minds and encourage innovative thinking."

As far as I am concerned, the richest benefits of experimenting with the futures lie in, first, the gained, collective ability to accept the possibility, and ideate upon the multiplicity of futures, and second the concrete, “learning by doing” experience resulting in closer connections between people within the team. Moreover, from an engagement perspective, the project team displayed more initial openness and excitement that I had experienced with the team in the previous intervention (see Intervention 02: Multiplying futures).

To this day, it is not clear how futuring approaches influenced the solutions that will ultimately be launched on the market. I can only sense that the project team has become even more empathetic with the users; that these approaches brought people closer; have had the potential to help people tolerate more ambiguity and therefore change the vision of future users.

Learnings

The main learning is about the crucial difference between provocatyping and (traditional) prototyping. Most experts in the project team were very comfortable with the prototyping language, due to their design or engineering background. It turned out that using prototyping, a craft people already knew and valued, was effective. The team turned out to be highly engaged (after some moments of wandering), truly leaning on the craft of provocatyping and engaging in “making” activities willingly. However, traditional prototyping of solutions (high-fidelity prototyping, visualization of products that are meant to be developed) is very different from provocatyping. There was a risk that the team would avoid the discomfort of materialising the intangible, falling back into what they already mastered. Most productions were indeed provocatypes, with one being closer to a traditional prototype. In that situation, asking questions and focusing on the narrative supporting the production was critical to letting new ideas and debate emerge. Overall, this intervention showed participants’ ability to distance themselves from the way of addressing current end-users’ needs. I believed that having the option to bring tangible outcomes of the workshop – the provocatypes – to the field was reassuring to the project team, before they engaged in the intervention. This might have contributed to improving initial acceptance and excitement about such interventions. After experiencing it, and seeing both tangible and intangible benefits of it, that became less important.

Moreover, introducing futuring activities relatively early in the project timeline might have helped create a stronger impact on the project’s outcome (meaning, concrete solutions released on the market), but we lack the necessary perspective for drawing further conclusions.

The second learning is a reflection about what was helpful in increasing acceptance and interest in the project team for futuring approaches. As noted by a colleague with expertise in design who also took part in Intervention 02, this intervention took place in a context of intentionally building team dynamics:

“In this project, a strong effort was made to do a proper team building. Therefore, a foundation of trust was already in place in this project group.”

In addition, some team members had also been participants, and sometimes strong advocates of futuring approaches thanks to their participation in the Intervention 02. I believe this helped gaining traction and engagement with such new approaches. Finding allies in colleagues and external facilitator also helped promote futuring approaches and reassure the team.

When it comes to evaluating impact, it is still undefined (by definition!) how these futuring approaches will affect projects in the longer term. Initially, I had a strong focus on how these futuring approaches would influence solution prototypes specifically. However, I realised that the metrics or signals to track (which are more likely to be qualitative than quantitative) are still undefined. This should not undermine the energising effects of these approaches on creativity, innovation, and cross-functional collaboration.

Discussion

In this section, I discuss the types of Intelligences at stake, from both the cross-functional dynamics and futuring perspective.

First, futuring approaches are a powerful tool to enable cross-functional collaboration, in creating empathy with the users of the future(s). With a more traditional approach, researchers in an innovation project team would undergo one or two weeks of fieldwork, followed by a couple of weeks dedicated to analysis and synthesis, creating some distance between research activities and the rest of the project, before they could be re-integrated with some form of insight sharing. Due to its participatory nature, futuring approaches allow experts with various backgrounds and personalities to come together and ideate, with an opportunity to create something tangible when provocatyping is at stake. However, this is not an easy journey. I found myself regularly explaining and justifying the approach I chose to take, mostly to provide reassurance to the project teams. I was frustrated at times that I had to explain the approach so extensively, but at the same time I knew gaining trust was key to the success of embarking others in the futuring journey. As opposed to traditional approaches, I felt that with futuring approaches, the (ethnographic) craft was more exposed and up for discussion. These approaches are also more collaborative, so they require more buy-in and active participation than fieldwork interviews for instance. In addition, the challenges I faced were mostly due to the discomfort inherent to futuring approaches. They require a high degree of abstraction and divergence, which can create uncertainty and ambiguity. Paradoxically, uncertainty and ambiguity are precisely what fuels futuring approaches, and we need that to be more creative. Being in such an exploratory space can be scary to some. However, a shift in dynamics arose, showing the increased acknowledgement of intangible outcomes, such as meaningful conversations and change in mindset, at least at a team level.

Secondly, the main change within project work and the organisation was enhancing a creative approach based on emotions, images and narratives instead of overly simplified insights stripped from context in Excel columns (this is an extreme, and slightly caricatural example). By creating empathy experiences with users from the future(s), enriching them with vivid details of how the world(s) could be, and feeling the emotions deriving from these experiences, we are broadening our imaginaries and multiplying future contexts and solution spaces. By asking “what-if” questions, we unlock different types of conversations that could not take place otherwise. “What-if” questions help us perceive the world and its inhabitants more intelligently, through richer patterns and colours. We cannot provide a comprehensive list of options when imagining the future(s). It would be foolish to hope that we could map out all the possibilities. It would also be a shame to take a probabilistic approach to things and try to calculate which future is most likely to happen (another pitfall that I had to avoid working within projects). Instead, we can choose to be more creative and more integrative. This means, we can work at enriching our visions with numerous dimensions that take us a step closer to the complexity and the plurality of the future(s).

Thirdly, I would like to address the notion of responsibility related to actively creating futures. As I often mentioned in workshops, future(s) is not something that happens to us, it is the result of what we have created in the past. Finding ways to steer the wheel in preferred directions is critical, especially for an industry leader. This was an opportunity to choose an alternative path to conventional practices of scrutinising mostly in-sector, direct competitors. In diverting from a conventional, reactive approach to innovation, the organisation becomes more proactive, drawing and claiming unique visions for various futures. This is not only inspiration work. It is about setting ambitions higher and fostering radical innovation. Demonstrating agency at the project level will hopefully fuel dynamics of daring, experimenting and taking innovation one step further.

Finally, my experience suggests that futuring approaches can be beneficial to projects and eventually end-users, even if they are not coming from higher management or a strategic orientation. Indeed, I did not get “the mandate” to implement such approaches; I took it, and it turned out into a colourful journey, full of learnings and with a tangible impact on innovation. I used theory and the tools in my toolbox, a good dose of perseverance, and support from colleagues, to create impact at the project level. I noticed signs of growing interest for futuring approaches, such as colleagues suggesting that they should be part of the standardised toolbox of project scoping. Even though I do not believe that having a deep reflection about how the future(s) could look like is relevant to all projects within the company, this was a sign of recognition which I am deeply grateful for. Within the following months and years, I made additional presentations and interventions in different project teams that I would normally not have interacted with, including teams working with packaging, strategy deployment and group development and strategy. Thanks to these additional interventions, there is a potential for futuring approaches to gain more recognition and traction within the organisation going forward. However, my experience suggests that it is possible to create strong impact at an employee and project team level. This will hopefully inspire researchers, creators and innovators working with ethnography and design to try and implement such approaches in organisations that did not ask for it, initially did not think it was possible, and did not expect a User Experience Researcher to know how to do it. Therefore, I believe such bottom-up approaches are worth the effort, producing powerful mindset shifts and transformative dynamics.

Conclusion

By combining Strategic Foresight (i.e., in the signal scanning phase, in formulating scenarios about the future(s)), Speculative Design (the ability to creatively think about multiple possible futures and fostering conversations about these) and Design Fiction (with provocatype creation), I was able to gain the required agility of adapting academic concepts to project innovation in the industry world.

Looking back, I wish I had taken a chance to dare to implement futuring approaches earlier on, having sensed the need for such approaches way before I took the opportunity to introduce them. I think I was waiting for the right opportunity, meaning a project that would truly benefit from these approaches. The right opportunities came in the form of ambitious eco-system projects initiated in both ostomy care and self-catheterisation. With the five to ten years required for development, and even longer anticipated solution lifespan, it was critical to pause for a moment and question the status-quo. In addition, I might have been held back by the traditional approach of user research within the organisation and questioned my role and utility as a User Experience Researcher if not offering traditional ethnographic user research. Offering instead self-reflexivity within the project teams, using futuring approaches meant that I had to take the leap, daring to take the mandate instead of asking for it or waiting to get it, in a highly relational and political organisation. Furthermore, I wish I had dared to amplify the provocative dimension of the method, creating an even sharper contrast with our current ways of doing – and hopefully a stronger impact on solution creation. However, I assumed that creating overly intense controversy and debate would create too much discomfort in a corporate, Danish culture, where consensus is valued, communication is polished, and egos are not strong. This would probably have been detrimental to both project work and team dynamics.

Moving forward, I plan to slowly integrate more elements of dissonance and provocation, as I develop my internal network and gain increasing trust from my co-workers. I also believe in enhancing the practical aspects of the interventions, in order to guide project teams in even more concrete ways, with a trackable impact on solution design. In the future, I would also like to involve more colleagues from different countries where the organisation is present, and possibly professionals outside of the organisation to increase diversity of views and inspirations. I would also love to explore forms of even more immersive interventions, such as theatre plays, as part of a broader initiative to use co-design workshops to help bridge user insights and solution innovation. To end on a more personal note, I believe such approaches are so important to our creative energy and not only bring people together, but also make our daily work much more driven by emotions. I am immensely grateful for my co-workers’ trust and hope to continue making a positive impact through fiction and friction for the years to come.

About the Author

Camille Ronceray is a French User Experience Researcher specializing in healthcare, currently living and working in Denmark. At Coloplast headquarters, she applies design, ethnography, and system-thinking frameworks to better understand and improve people’s healthcare experiences.