Alternative Design
We want to help designers of space think like futurists so we can become makers of a better future.
Alternative Design
Designing Tomorrow: A 2026 Forecast
Welcome to the Season 3 premiere of the Alternative Design podcast. Mark Bryan, Senior Foresight Manager at the Future Today Institute, unveils his scenario of the future set in 2026. He envisions a world where decentralized organizations, gratitude silos, and AI clients shape the design profession. He also helps us discover how foresight is the key to designing spaces that not only stand the test of time, but responsibly shape a more sustainable and inclusive future for all.
Read the blog, The Power of Foresight.
What I found invariably is that when I would use it with clients, when it was in a design working scenario or a session, it helped them want to be more innovative because they were less fearful about what that future could look like.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Alternative Design podcast, where we explore the power of foresight and design to create future-ready spaces. In each episode, we talk to diverse voices to discover the ways our world is changing and uncover insights that will influence the built environment of tomorrow. I'm your host, kailin Reed, an interior designer and certified futurist, and I want to help designers think like futurists so we can take actionable steps today to become makers of a better future. If you're a designer and are curious about what your professional life could look like in three years, keep listening to hear how gratitude silos, wearable drafting devices and virtual work pods could be a part of your future.
Speaker 2:In this season three premiere episode, we invited Mark Bryan, a senior foresight manager at the Future Today Institute and IADA's futurist and residence, to share a narrative about the future of the design industry. Now our title speaks to a forecast, because that's what a lot of people think of when referring to a prediction about the future, but Mark is actually going to share a scenario which folds in multiple forecasts and alternative futures. Mark is also helping us roll out a big change to the Alternative Design podcast, and that change is foresight. We're going to break down what foresight is and why it's a missing piece in the design process that could help us to proactively design better spaces that will meet the demands of our fast-paced world. This is episode 17, designing Tomorrow a 2026 forecast. Before we dive in to Mark's scenario, I want to give some context on how we went from a licensed interior designer to a certified futurist, because I think for some people that might feel like a big jump, but I think you'll be surprised just how connected design and foresight can be.
Speaker 1:So my career, my background I started in design.
Speaker 1:I graduated from Virginia Tech back in 2004, so I'll let everybody do the math on how old I am right now and worked pretty much every commercial sector that there is, except for K through 12 and medical lab spaces, and started to run into an issue where clients would get stuck and they wouldn't know how to move forward. Really, I am a nerd at heart, and so I started to do research and try to bring in more evidence-based design principles into the practice and into the projects. But then, about six or seven years ago, started to just find that I was still having that same issue where clients would just get stuck. They would come in with some of their own data perhaps, or they would say I don't really know, you've presented me with a bunch of options, but I'm not quite sure which one is the right one, and so we would counsel them and give them our input. But again, they really wanted to be able to pre-experience their space in a way that renderings and visuals just sometimes can't. They really wanted to make an emotional connection to their futures.
Speaker 2:We are seeing this demand from clients all over the place, and while Mark was trying to solve this issue seven years ago, it's only become a bigger issue post-COVID. Every business, every organization, wants to be future-proof. If 2020 taught us anything, it's that you need to flex in a second and do your best to look around the curve in the road if you can. This is where Foresight comes in.
Speaker 1:And so I started looking into Foresight and what that means and then started to look at other things like a design research degree and a psychology degree and some other things, but really just landed back on Foresight because, again, it made it possible to be able to help those clients pre-experience that future space, be able to pre-experience a future in a different way. And so I went and was trained in Foresight and then brought it back to the company I was working for, MA Design in Ohio, and brought it into the design process, figured out how to make it tangible for clients, Started selling it as a service and started to actually do some cultural analization with it at the company.
Speaker 2:So, of the, let's say, three options you present to a client, you always have a favorite solution. But what if you could actually back that solution up with data and then allow the client to pre-experience their space and help people use it? Know VR goggles necessary.
Speaker 1:Our clients are wanting stories and they're wanting narratives that talk about their future employees in that space and how they're being successful and what that means, and so I think Foresight allows you to be able to do that, because you're bringing in data and information, so it's a secondary research practice. It's not just saying I've experienced this, so I think X. I spent eight weeks researching supply chain and logistics before I started coming up with trends and everything like that.
Speaker 2:So to define foresight. It's a methodology that allows us to anticipate and plan for future possibilities by analyzing current research data and trends. Part of the methodology involves looking for signals of change that could develop into trends, and these trends are what can shape the future. When you've identified multiple signals and trends, you can then begin to shape forecasts and scenarios about the future that are all grounded in evidence-based data. And once you can create multiple plausible predictions about the future, individuals and organizations can use them to prepare for change and take actionable steps to become more future-ready. If you're getting curious about how to use this practice of foresight as a tool for your organization or even your design process, stay tuned. But I want to share one more big value prop of foresight that you should consider.
Speaker 1:So some of the processes within design have been going on for a very long time, and I think what's happening right now is that our clients and the people that we're serving whether that's the community, whether that's the individual going into the place that they live they're needing ways to really rethink longevity with the spaces and the places that they're creating. I also think that design has become a little bit of an echo chamber. I forget who I was talking to, but it was a recent rep, and they were talking about how they joke that they get the same inspiration images over and over again, and so those inspiration images start to become an echo chamber where people are starting to see the same things and feed the same things. And so I think, when it comes to design, we need to be more responsible, and I think foresight allows us to be more responsible by taking in outside ideas and thoughts.
Speaker 2:Forcet gives us an incredible opportunity to look beyond the walls of our design world and look for alternative signals about how the world is changing. This is why moving forward alternative design is going to explore these signals and trends found outside the design industry and use them to create informed forecasts about the future of placemaking. We see so much value in this because who doesn't want to design a space that not only maintains its relevancy but better serves the humans who are experiencing it? It also gives us the ability to find new opportunities and solve challenges more quickly in the midst of change. Do you remember the Nokia flip phone In 2007,? They were the handset giant on the scene, unmatched by any other company, with 50% of the handset market share. And while Nokia banked on a forecast of continued profit growth, what they couldn't foresee was Steve Jobs walking out on stage at Macworld on June 29th and completely disrupting the handset industry with the unveiling of the iPhone. Now, if Nokia had taken the opportunity to consider all their alternative futures that flexed with new customer demands, like wanting to be more connected to the internet and having a decent camera in your hand to post on the hip new social media platform called Facebook, perhaps they could have pivoted the business and kept their market share from plummeting to just 5% in five years.
Speaker 2:This is why engaging with foresight practices is so important. It's not about getting the prediction 100% right. It's about using the data and trends we have today to better prepare for a multitude of predictions. This proactive approach is exactly what's needed in our design process to help us get out of our echo chamber, remove bias and ultimately design spaces that will better tomorrow's human experience. After the break mark scenario on the future of the design industry, this past spring, kimmel International held its first inaugural Future X event, where we invited a cohort of designers ranging in experience, discipline and location to join us in Detroit for a foresight workshop on the future of belonging in design. One of the questions we asked each designer was what are you most excited or concerned about regarding the future?
Speaker 3:So some things that I'm excited and concerned about. I would say excited is, of course, just very generically like the opportunities, the possibilities, the new unknowns. So as studio director, I'm more closely tied than ever to making sure my team belongs in the workplace. I guess that's part of how we'll look in the future. So you know it's strong. I see the strength and the unity and the togetherness and the belonging when we're all together as a group. So I'm really concerned, after you know this, the hybrid work environment just what it's going to look like, what it's going to feel like in the office. This is Amy Gilkey. I'm with HKS Architects in Dallas, texas, and I am the studio director for the Healthcare Interiors Group, and you are listening to the Alternative Design podcast.
Speaker 2:Let's hear what life could look like for a designer in the year 2026. Now, that's not very far away, but keep in mind how quickly the world can change, if these last three years is any indication. Mark shared this scenario with us at the 2023 industry roundtable earlier this year.
Speaker 1:So this first scenario I titled it the meta-DDAO, so that's a play on DAOs, which are decentralized, autonomous organizations, just so we have that level of expectation and understanding, and this scenario was an exploratory scenario using a day-in-the-life framework. I pitched it that it could be roughly in the year 2026, so just three years from now. The reason being is because of things like adoption rates and use cases for some of the technologies and some of the things that I have got in the scenario. So the main thrust of the scenarios and trends that are being explored are things like generative design, hybrid enhancements, decentralized organizations, rewilding, time dosing and async living.
Speaker 1:So the main themes in here are talking about futures with Metaverse and there could be a future Metaverse design program within a higher education institution or a school itself. New roles integrated into the design process, having AI mentors, new interfaces and platforms where we could have drawings, and even how wearables could start to evolve to become something that we could use, and maybe that's the next evolution of Revit. As well. As then, what does it mean for learning skills and how companies are offering that? We talk a lot about companies in the workplace wanting to figure out what can I do beyond paying individuals, and this was a signal that I saw. So all of this is built off of evidence too. So that's the underlying kind of themes for this scenario, and so here is the MetaDD AO.
Speaker 2:What you'll hear now is Mark sharing a scenario with the help of a voice actor playing the fictional future character Lilia. I'll also be popping in occasionally to point out some interesting observations for us.
Speaker 1:So picture it 2026 at N. We're in Seattle. In this future, we're going to follow Lilia, who was part of the first graduate class from the Design Institute of San Diego's Universal Interior Design Program, in the Metaverse of 2025.
Speaker 2:By this time, students are learning in the Metaverse, a VR-based social online platform.
Speaker 1:After graduating she moved to Seattle due to its work in creating decarbonized five-minute neighborhoods.
Speaker 4:The city has been piloting these neighborhoods that are focused on completely eliminating fossil fuel use, so my apartment was actually an old grain silo, but now it's one of Unileving's metropole residences that has a co-working space and this really awesome retail shop that turns into a living center for students at night. Everything in the neighborhood can be accessed in five minutes via bike, so it has way more of a local feel than I was used to back home. Work is a super short commute for me. I just step into a virtual work pod. I can basically log on and choose whatever work location I want to be in for the day virtually, of course, but it really helps me choose how and where I'm going to be most productive. It's Friday, so I chose to work in this remote coffee shop near Big Sur.
Speaker 1:Lily works for the DD AO or the D-Dial, the decentralized designer autonomous organization, which fused a glomerate of firms and gig workers. The DD AO includes designers, architects, landscape architects, engineers, gcs for all aspects of the design project, as well as community process liaisons, translation avatars, facilitators, change management experts, biohack material consultants and even caregivers. This has become the model for multi-disciplinary firms in the future, aggregating services based on the DDOs' values to offer unique expert experiences within their framework of holistic design.
Speaker 2:Let's take a moment and break down a decentralized, autonomous organization, because, while that may sound like a far-fetched reality, daos already exist. They're business structures that involve little to no hierarchy, aka no bosses. You typically buy your way into the digital community, formed around shared values and interests, via a token, and then token holders get an equitable voice in all business decisions. Some have called DAOs the cornerstone of Web 3, the creator economy and the potential future of work. Some of the really cool benefits of DAOs is greater employee autonomy on where, when and how work is done, and the ability to participate in more purpose-driven work by choosing projects that align to your values.
Speaker 4:When I start working, I check into the DD AO and then select a virtual co-working pod. As soon as I get my Oculus screens adjusted and get comfy, I'll typically spend the first 10-15 minutes responding to messages that pop up from my async coworkers. Then I'll check my project planner portal and connect with my AI mentor. Right now I'm working on the new FlexCenter project.
Speaker 1:So Seattle's first AI representative, along with their trusted developer-funded Lillia's project, the new co-designed FlexCenter, which is going to act as a cornerstone to the West Seattle's five-minute neighborhood.
Speaker 2:It's 2026, and your client may not be human. While we may not see AI operating as the sole client on a given project for a while, it's extremely plausible that we will see clients leveraging AI to drive project decisions. But notice what Mark's forecast said Seattle's first AI representative. It might be strange to consider an AI representative in an official government position that could influence local policy and infrastructure, but that's exactly what the synthetic party is pushing for in Denmark. They hope to secure a seat in parliament with its AI representative and policies derived from its chatbot. Leader Lars Mark shared this signal with us as one of the many that contributed to his scenario. Let's get back to it.
Speaker 4:So, of course, per standard design practice, the FlexCenter project needs to adapt to the community's changing needs at a moment's notice. It includes considerations for both climate change and pandemic preparedness needs. I'm really proud of the work we've done so far. It feels really good to contribute to my local community doing what I love.
Speaker 1:And yesterday Lillia finished coordinating with the furniture manufacturers at their Urban Infill Manufacturing Center. So today she's going to do some detail collaboration to keep the project on track as set forth by the client's timeline of values and according to the smart contracts that are in place. Lillia notices she has some comments from the community process liaison regarding diversity needs. There were fidgetle meeting sessions that span community hours yesterday and the recorded notes were rendered overnight by the community liaison for full virtual walkthroughs for Lillia to review. Watching the time lapse scream, lillia watches the three accessibility issues mentioned, using several potential solutions. Lillia uses her autogen wearable autodesk's next platform after Revit, to begin prompting generative design ideas. Once her prompts are accepted, lillia lets autogen spin away to draft potential drop-in changes to explore further. While she waits, lillia takes a minute to review the site's VR history to make sure she's not missing any historic parameters or creating potentials for the project's greenhouse gas emissions to rise beyond the regulated levels because of the new changes.
Speaker 4:I've only had my AutoGen wearable for a few weeks, so I'm still being trained on it, but this thing has saved me hours of time. I love that the AutoGen offers me multiple iterations of design schemes, so I can then take them to my team to work on.
Speaker 1:Once the optional drop-ins have been modeled, lillia calls up an immersive collab session with some of her team and the AI mentor where she brings in the options to review in the meta drafting space. They make some tweaks together and then Lillia takes a moment to ask for some input from other firms sharing her meta drafting space. Lillia then begins to implement these into the metaverse blueprints. Once that's done, she ports over to her original collab, being brought up to speed with ease by watching the time-lapse playback, where she and her team charrette a few potential bar sections for the Ghost Kitchen in the center.
Speaker 2:Imagine being able to pause a meeting to go implement what's being talked about and then come back and watch the playback of what else was discussed while you were away. It's like DVR for the TV, but in real life.
Speaker 1:After a while, lillia's time capacity timeometer built into her company Biosynth shirt, provided to her by her company as part of their ESG package notes that she seems a bit too tense, her preferred time ratio of work life is off and that she's close to metal ag. So Lillia takes a time dose break. Lillia walks down to the street, to the rewilding garden in her sector and on the way she signs up for her next design coding class, which was a gift to her by the DDL.
Speaker 2:I can only hope that by 2026, we've taken some giant leaps in the world regarding mental health and work life balance. Having a shirt that alerts you when you're approaching too much stress and too much time in the metaverse and that you're in danger of a metal lag feels like a step in the right direction. Of course, I'm looking forward to when you can sit in a task chair and have it do the same thing.
Speaker 1:Lillia sees some of her other local coworkers and they discuss some of the details they just worked on and send notes through the autogen. Before heading back to continue drafting, lillia visits the gratitude silo to refresh her sense of newness, something that all workplaces are now recommended to have from the latest World Health Organization Urban findings best practices report of 2024.
Speaker 2:Can we imagine a future for businesses prioritized values like wellness and gratitude as much as they did profit and productivity? Is there a way to have it all? I believe the first step is thinking like a futurist. So let's understand the how of foresight so that you can start to use this as a strategy for yourself or for your business. There's two terms that we use in foresight biz that are really helpful to understand. The first is a signal. A signal is basically a clue as to how the world is changing. It has to be concrete, as in something that actually happens, something newsworthy like someone using bioengineered chicken at a restaurant. This actually happened in DC recently. So where do you find signals?
Speaker 1:It can be a bit of a rabbit hole, and I mean I will just be honest and say that Google is sometimes your friend when you're trying to find connecting signals.
Speaker 1:So I'll start to look for things like white papers, I'll look for patents, I'll look for community forums, I'll look at experts and what they're saying, so I'm collecting data.
Speaker 1:There's a ton of research institutions that are out there, depending on what you're trying to cover, so that again could be Harvard Business Review. That could be coming from any publication that has sources that you can cite. Now what I would say is, when you're starting with, like a New York Times, try to find where they're getting their information from and then start to dig into that and find that original signal there, versus citing just the New York Times. And same with like white papers too, you'll often find, with white papers or other data, there's going to be other citations within there that can help give you more information. That's how we start to connect those links right. That's how we know if it's a weak signal or a strong signal, if we're seeing a lot more people talking about it, that if it's a lot more today, that's going to be a stronger signal that we might pay attention to, but we at FTI often try to find things that are on the fringe, things that are a little bit less researched, if you will.
Speaker 2:Mark and I are kindred spirits. In this way, our brains work by identifying something alternative that seemingly has nothing to do with design on the surface, but if you dig just a layer or two deeper, there's a ton of inspiration to be found for creatives. So you can start looking for signals on Google, like Mark said, or you can keep listening to our show, which will bring you a new signal every two weeks, to consider its influence on your design process and your projects. Okay, so the second term to wrap our brains around is a trend. Now we know what trends are. Biophilic design has been a trend since like 2005. And this context of a trend is a bit different.
Speaker 1:So we at FTI talk about how signals become trends and trends really paint the picture of what the narrative of the future could look like. So trends to us are constantly evolving. They are coming from multiple vector points, meaning that's just not one single source. So when I put together a trend, I've got at least three to four to five different signals that are feeding into it, that are coming from different areas of disruption, and that points to me of like what that trend wants to be and how we start to title those trends as well.
Speaker 2:Once you've identified several signals and trends, those are really the ingredients of an evidence-based forecast or scenario about the future. And here's where I'm going to blow your mind. It doesn't have to be accurate, that's right. The goal of creating a plausible forecast about the future is not that it actually comes to pass, but that you've taken the time to proactively consider what could be coming down the pike. And this, of course, is why we recommend creating multiple forecasts or multiple scenarios for your business or even for your clients to consider, because it's in this consideration of multiple futures that one of the best parts of foresight is realized.
Speaker 1:We talk about this a lot and I know you and I have talked about this, but your future self is a stranger. Like you, get very intimidated by thinking about the future. That's why people get very fearful when you talk about the future, because your brain is literally geared up to think about your future self as a stranger, and so what foresight allows you to do is to get over that hump and get over that glitch. And what I found invariably is that when I would use it with clients when it was in a design working scenario or session, it helped them want to be more innovative because they were less fearful about what that future could look like.
Speaker 2:What if taking the time to think through possible futures could result in more innovative and successful design projects? In an increasingly divided world, could imagining the future be a safe place where people can put down their current affiliations, their immediate interests and their present fears to explore new possibilities that are unthinkable today? According to research done by the Smithsonian on the futures exhibit held by the Institute for the Future last year, 80% of attendees reported being inspired to act to shape the future they desired. After being immersed in potential futures, the youngest groups in attendance the visitors under 40, reported they could not only talk to their friends and family about the future more confidently, but they actually saw themselves in it. And while we believe hope to be one of the greatest ROI's of foresight, we also know that there are real concerns and challenges for the design industry that foresight can help us navigate.
Speaker 1:What happens if workplace headquarters go away? Specifically in my mind, what happens if it's a headquarters as for a single company? I think we're seeing signals that are actually pointing towards that being a possibility, and I'm not quite sure if the design industry is prepared for it or if they thought about it. That, in and of itself, would be a foresight project that you could study and start to think about and then write a scenario of what that means.
Speaker 1:Not necessarily about getting it right, but helping your company find a stance on what that could mean and helping your company to figure out what are the actions we want to take to either make that happen or, again, make sure that that doesn't happen.
Speaker 2:Once you decide, as an organization or team, what you think is a plausible potential future for any given topic, you can then begin to take action. Foresight is not about coming up with a really great, emotionally engaging story I mean it is. Those are very helpful for getting past that human brain glitch that Mark mentioned. But the point of forecasts and scenarios is to use them to take steps towards a desired future, or even multiple possible futures. It's this proactive approach that can give us more confidence that we, as designers, are in fact being more responsible with the places we're creating and who they're impacting, and in what ways. Clients can have more confidence knowing that flexibility and longevity is being baked into their spaces by architects and designers who are considering what matters to future users of that space. And, most importantly, foresight gives us all hope for a better tomorrow because it helps us realize our own power to shape it.
Speaker 2:So join us as we at Alternative Design continue to find signals of change and share how they could influence the art of placemaking, and stay tuned as we break down forecasts and scenarios about the future of workplace, health and education spaces. That's it for this episode. Watch out for our next episode, drop in two weeks where we look at micro-buries as not only a signal about the future of work but an inspiration on how to create places to belong. A big thank you to Senior Foresight Manager Mark Bryan at Future Today Institute for not only being a guest on today's show, but for helping us learn and adapt their signal collection, trend development and scenario frameworks as we develop content for these episodes. This episode was produced by myself and Brandy Small, audio Production and scoring by Andrew Reed, voice acting done by Gwyneth Galvin. Alternative Design podcast is, of course, brought to you by Kimball International.
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