Program Development, Professional Development
Design Imaginaries: New Approaches to Future-proofing Teams
Enterprise Brand and Marketing Summer Camp, Arizona State University
After the success of our 2025 Enterprise Brand and Marketing Summer Camp session, “Create and play: A hands on design jam” I led our team through the creation and execution of another design-centered engagement for the 2026 Summer Camp.
The session focused on design futures as an approach to problem solving and effective team building. Bringing in elements of design research, future studies, and foresight techniques participants were introduced to futures studies and taught easy-to-use tools that they could incorporate into their own teams.
Participants were first asked to complete a design pre-mortem, an exercise that explores potential failure as a way to design alternative approaches to the future. Once completed, they were presented with an interactive storytelling game designed specifically for this session. In the game they were presented with scenarios and constraints and were asked to tell an alternative future to the scenario they were presented with using their learnings from the pre-mortem as a way to reach a desired future.
