Have you ever wondered what it will be like in the future? What will the office look like? How will offices be designed? While that’s a fun exercise, it probably won’t get you much closer to the truth. The future might seem mysterious and impossible to know, but there is a science behind studying it and a new educational program through IIDA is expanding the forward-looking nature of design into a core foresight capability.
The IIDA Certified Design Futurist program (CDF) is designed to train designers to be better at reading cues that create a path to the future. Understanding the future provides significant value to designers, firms and their clients.
The Beta CDF cohort began their studies a few weeks ago. The first official cohort will begin July 7 and the second cohort at the end of September.
The CDF curriculum was developed in an exclusive partnership with the Future Today Institute. FTI Founder and CEO Amy Webb, a world-renowned quantitative futurist, as well as FTI Senior Foresight Manager and IIDA Futurist-in-Residence Mark Bryan, collaborated with IIDA on a program based on FTI’s research-backed, proven methodologies.
“IIDA has always been future focused,” said Cindy Dampier, chief marketing officer at IIDA. “Designers have always had to explore what was needed down the road. That has always existed. This isn’t just guessing about the future. It is more disciplined and research based.”
The CDF is a 10-week course that is asynchronous with some live and interactive sessions. It is designed to be rigorous and will provide deep learning to participants. Participants will be able to take real-world problems and research them and begin to understand what different futures might look — and how that will affect design.
“This is the kind of skill needed for uncertain times,” said Dampier. “There’s a lot of noise out there. This course will provide the skills needed to dig deeper.”
The cohorts will be limited to 25 participants and there will be three open cohorts in 2025. The cost is $3,500 for IIDA members and $5,000 for non-members. Those who successfully complete the course will receive the designation of Certified Design Futurist.
“The CDF program will help designers advise clients with authority, which is a lot more reassuring to them than going with your gut,” said Dampier, who added that IIDA believes the program can help transform design.
Mark Bryan from the Future Today Institute is teaching the course. Bryan has a background in design and is no stranger to IIDA. He has been part of the IIDA Industry Roundtable event. He has worked with IIDA for two years to get the IIDA Certified Design Futurist program launched.
The Future Today Institute is a global consultancy. The consultancy teaches strategic foresight, which uses data and evidence to create a strategy for the future. The course will teach participants how to recognize partners and trends. CDF will teach participants how to examine 11 macro sources of change, which are the primary sources of change in the world. The 11 macro sources of change focus on change in governments, wealth distribution, geopolitics, education, demographics, infrastructure, the environment, health, the economy, media and technology. It will still consider changes in human-centric behaviors, cultural changes, and professional and aesthetic shifts. However, by examining changes in these 11 macro sources it will give the participants and practitioners a broader view of the world and the future versus just an internal industry perspective.
“Though I wish that we had a crystal ball, understanding the future takes weeks and months of research,” said Bryan, which can include digging through things like patent and SEC filings.
While the IIDA Certified Design Futurist program is designed for designers and architects, the learning will be applicable and open to everyone. Participants will learn how to collect data and model it out into an actionable plan. “The whole purpose of foresight is about action,” he said. “This is not about trying to predict.”
Strategic foresight allows clients to pre-experience potential futures, said Bryan. The goal is to provide clients with competency before a project event gets to the design phase. Strategic foresight allows for a design-tailored future. Strategic foresight has become a critical skill for businesses and clients of all kinds. Designers, product developers, real estate brokers, managers, researchers, executives, entrepreneurs, manufacturers, dealers and sales teams can all benefit from knowing how to practice strategic foresight. This course has been designed with each of these roles and aspects of the design industry in mind, backed by a rigorous evidence-based-research methodology that has been deployed by companies around the world.
“Strategic foresight is an important capability in every business intent on navigating a rapidly evolving future,” said Amy Webb. “Designers who learn to apply and adapt strategic foresight, and firms that develop company-wide capabilities, will ensure that projects anticipate and proactively address future challenges and opportunities for clients, and for the community.”
Course participants can expect to bring meaningful change to their organizations—to help see and shape the preferred future of the business. Clients will benefit from the CDFs’ ability to generate long-term insights that can lead to decisions that drive success.
“Designers behave like futurists every day,” said IIDA Executive Vice President and CEO Cheryl S. Durst, who spearheaded the creation of the program with Bryan. “They anticipate client needs and create spaces that serve humanity not just today, but for years ahead. But how do you quantify the incredible value of forward-looking design thinking, and create a real skill and capability around it? With this new certification, designers and firms gain a new capability with concrete business value, while the industries they serve benefit from research-backed foresight that enhances the investment in their spaces.”