Educating Future-Ready Designers introduces Design Futures, an educational approach developed through years of research and experimentation at Politecnico di Milano. Combining Design Thinking, Futures Thinking, creativity, immersive storytelling, experiential learning, and artificial intelligence as a creative collaborator, the approach equips students with the skills needed to engage with uncertainty and complexity.
Educating Future-ready Designers
By Marita Canina and Tatiana Efremenko
The book offers a new vision for design education, starting from a crucial question: how can we prepare future generations to navigate a world shaped by continuous change, artificial intelligence, climate crises, and profound social transformations?
More than a teaching method, Design Futures is presented as a comprehensive learning ecosystem in which students do not simply imagine the future, they actively experience it. Through the Ministry for the Future educational framework, they take on the roles of ministers, researchers, policymakers, and futuremakers, exploring emerging signals, constructing alternative futures, and translating speculative visions into design concepts, artefacts, and strategic actions.
The book brings together classroom-tested activities, practical tools, facilitation techniques, templates, student projects, and applications developed within European research and innovation programmes. Together, these experiences demonstrate how Futures Thinking can become a transformative educational practice, fostering the critical, creative, and strategic capabilities required to navigate uncertainty.
Intended for educators, researchers, curriculum designers, and innovation professionals, the book is an invitation to rethink the role of education in contemporary design. Rather than simply teaching how to respond to future challenges, it provides the tools to imagine, shape, and take responsibility for the future itself.
Educating Future-ready Designers is available in the FrancoAngeli open access catalog.