Three Future Frames

An intuitive framework for design futures

Three Future Frames is a model, workshop format and teaching tool I developed to help people actively and easily engage with the idea that there are different levels of a particular imagined future that you can ‘zoom’ up and down within.

Here is an essay about the approach I wrote with Dr Rob Phillips that appeared in the August 2025 edition of Compass, the magazine of the Association of Professional Futurists. You can get the full magazine here, it’s a great issue.

Three Future Frames has been inspired by the work I’ve done with Scott Smith and Susan Cox-Smith of Changeist over the years, the Experiential Future Ladder by Stuart Candy and Jake Dunagan, the narrative worldbuilding approach of Paul Graham Raven, the AEIOU framework by Rick Robinson et al, and the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique by BE Erickson.

Note – it is called ‘Three Future Frames’ because the three frames (plural) help you think about one particular future (singular).

You can – and should – think about multiple different futures, but to do this you would either do this in series (one after the other) on one sheet, or in parallel in a workshop format.

Three Future Frames is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International. If you are interested in exploring this further, please get in touch.

There is a short explanation video here, unpacking the basic idea behind the model.