Futures and Foresight Tools

Looking for a creative way to bring your futures research to life or to create a digital experience for the possible futures you’re describing in your narratives? Check out this collection of some of the best futures and foresight research tools, techniques, study programs, practitioners and think-tanks

There's been a load of new research, capturing, synthesis and personal knowledge management tools emerging in the online space over the past few years. I've collected a bunch that I found interesting but this is by no means a complete list and is ever growing.

Futures and Foresight Research Tools

Use Case | Futures Research

No matter your use case, you'll find a bunch of tools to help you jump somewhere new.

• Academic Article Processing

• Citation Management

• Data Analysis & Modelling

• Creating Digital Gardens

• Horizon Scanning

• Creating a Knowledge Management System

• Info Gap Mapping

• Mind Mapping

• Product Validation

• Research Interviews & Surveys

• Saving & Curating Web Links

• Spatial Note-Taking

• Summary Generators

• Web Scanning

• Longform Writing Workflows

• Information Visualisation

• Strategy Development

• Open Source Intelligence Tools (OSINT)

• Outliner Apps

Futures and Foresight Study Programs

If you're looking for futures and foresight study options, this directory contains loads of foresight study programs and is a good place to start. There are many lists all over the web but as I've trawled through them I've found that many of them are out of date. Plus, it's hard to get a good sense of the differences between each program to decide which one might be the best fit for you.

The list included in this directory is by no means a complete list - it is simply the major courses across Finland, Taiwan, USA and the UK that I've found so far. If you live in Australia like me you'll be disappointed to know that the Swinbourne Masters Degree is no longer, and whilst universities like the Sunshine Coast, QUT and UTS do offer some futures style subjects, they are not exclusively futures and foresight focused as you'll find in say the Strategic Foresight programs at University of Houston or Finland.

The directory also lists a number of online cohort courses you can do from places like Hyper Island and MetaFutures School. Some of these are self-paced (such as the Coursera ones) and others have live cohort sessions so there are timezones to consider.

Futures and Foresight Presentation Tools

If you click on the "Creative Project Tools" you can see the master listing of all tools under 'Get Started' or head straight to the use cases and look for tools to help with 'Storytelling Tools', 'Systems Mapping Tools' or 'Data Visualisation Tools'. Some of the categorisations may not be completely 100% accurate in all their detail as the site runs off a connected database where I webclip tools quickly as I come across them on the web, but hopefully it gives you a starting point if you're looking to experiment.

Use Case | Creative Presentations

You'll find tools for:

• Creating Dynamic Presentations

• Simple Web Building

• Design & Editing

• Data Visualisation

• Systems Mapping

• Storytelling

I've also put some tips on each of the use case pages to get you started when you're thinking about picking a simple web build tool or a presentation tool. I haven't used them all . . I just have a small obsession with collecting and experimenting whenever I come across something new. And if you love a good relational database, Airtable is pretty awesome.

Anyway, there's a lot there; my usage is mostly trial and error but hopefully it provides a good starting point if you're looking to jump somewhere new.

Enjoy! ✨