The IIDA Design Futurist Certification (CDF) Course
Designers have always relied on their ability to create for the needs of the future. But what if you had the knowledge and skill to accurately foresee what’s coming next, and map a path to success — for yourself, your firm, and your clients?
IIDA’s Certified Design Futurist (CDF) program is built on the methods of noted quantitative futurist Amy Webb, Founder and CEO of the Future Today Strategy Group (FTSG), who was commissioned by IIDA to create a brand-new curriculum, specifically for designers and the design industry.
Working directly with FTSG leader and IIDA’s Futurist-in-Residence, Mark Bryan, IIDA, candidates will learn and apply research-based foresight practices to real-world scenarios, and exit the program with new, industry-leading capabilities that add significant value to firms and clients.
The CDF program lasts 10 weeks. Learning will be asynchronous, so participants can study the material at their own pace. After completing the course, design professionals will understand how to practice strategic foresight — a rigorous, systematic, evidence-based approach to identifying a range of plausible futures to ensure resilience in the face of unforeseen disruption. This skill set will help you clarify how people, clients, businesses, and users will act and behave, and how spatial and product use will change in these plausible futures in the next 5, 10, 15, and 20 years.
You could be among the first to become a Certified Design Futurist!
What You’ll Learn
CDF will teach participants how to examine 11 macro sources of change, which are the primary sources of change in the world. These include changes in governments, wealth distribution, geopolitics, education, demographics, infrastructure, the environment, health, the economy, media, and technology.
Module One: Introduction to Foresight
Learn about the foundations of strategic foresight — what it is, why it’s important, and how it can enhance your work and give your firm a competitive advantage.
Module Two: What Is Influencing the Future?
Explore macro sources of change and foresight scoping — how to do it, and why it’s valuable. Learn how to collect and use signals to create and qualify trends.
Module Three: What Is the Future?
Develop skills to write plausible, probable, and possible scenarios about the future. Assess how to generate scenarios, and the differences between prediction and preparation.
Module Four: What Is Your Firm, Company, or Client’s Future?
Learn how to turn insights from scenarios into actionable elements that can be used in your projects or product development process.
Module Five: Foresight Integration
Learn how this methodology fits into the design process and how to effectively apply it to work with clients.
IIDA has been at the forefront of providing the ideas, skills, and knowledge for strategic foresight. Explore our videos and articles below.
Learn more
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Watch
Visions for the Future: Conversations About What Comes Next | Season four of IIDA’s Collective Design webinar series explores the innovation changing our lives, the design thinking we all need now, and today’s pressing issues, from equity and justice to sustainability.
How To Think and Work Like a Futurist, Starting Now | In a conversation with IIDA EVP and CEO Cheryl Durst, Hon. FIIDA, and IIDA Futurist-in-Residence, Mark Bryan, dives into the careful methodology behind foresight and how it can help us shape the future we want to see.
The Big Picture: Building Empathy to Design for the Future | A conversation between Cheryl Durst and Mark Bryan about the ecosystem of design ,rapid changes in our world, expanding who we design for, and being a design futurist. -
Read
Strategic Foresight: What It Is, Why It’s Important, and How to Harness It in Your Work | In a conversation with Cheryl Durst and Mark Bryan, we dive into the careful methodology behind foresight and how it can help us shape the future we want to see.
The Car Has a Face: BMW Is Crafting Vehicles with a Human Feel | BMW Designworks is exploring advanced technology to create results that are profoundly human—and elicit human emotions.
The New Face of Design: Creating for Humanity in a Tech-Enabled Future | The 2024 IIDA Industry Roundtable Report explores the benefits and hindrances of AI, big ideas to advance sustainability, and how to build strong relationships between designers and manufacturers, among other topics.
"IIDA Maps out the Future of Work" | Covid changed everything. Here are three key takeaways from 2023’s IIDA Industry Roundtable on how to design for the post-pandemic employee.
What Will Work Look Like in the Next Decade? | The summer 2023 issue of IIDA’s Perspective magazine is focused on this question. “The old roadmap is out the window,” writes Cheryl Durst, “but the trip has gotten a lot more interesting.”
Sustainable Practices: What You Can Do Now, and What Lies Ahead | This issue of Perspective explores the critical topic of sustainable design practices, taking a closer look at how sustainability intersects with equity, education, and our collective future.
The Female Future of Design | Women are at the center of this issue of Perspective—women leaders, entrepreneurs, and mentors shaping the built environment, the way we think about design, and the next generation of designers.