Anticipate
What is emerging — and what does it mean for users?
Investigate trends, behaviours, and signals to understand what's coming next — and ground the system in real user intent before you design anything.
Try Anticipate in the toolkit →Exploration
What forces are shaping the future? Scan the outside world and the user's real goal before committing to a direction.
STEEP Analysis
What it is · A scan across five forces — Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political — for emerging trends and weak signals.
Why it matters · Surfaces the context and change your AI will have to live inside, beyond the immediate feature.
Intent Map
What it is · The three-layer model — Intent at the core, wrapped by Workflows, wrapped by Algorithms — plus a gap check.
Why it matters · Exposes where the algorithm drifts from what the user is really trying to achieve.
Jobs-to-be-Done
What it is · Three linked jobs — functional, emotional, and social — scored by importance × dissatisfaction.
Why it matters · Reframes needs as outcomes, so the design targets the job, not a feature.
Horizon Scanning
What it is · Sorting signals by time-depth with the Three Horizons — H1 (0–2y), H2 (2–5y), H3 (5y+).
Why it matters · Separates what to implement now from what to prototype or merely position for.
Synthesis
What patterns emerge? Turn scattered signals into the few tensions that will define the product.
Insight Clustering
What it is · Affinity clustering of your Exploration outputs into themes, then naming the tensions that matter.
Why it matters · Turns scattered signals into the critical uncertainties that drive the next phase.
Audience Factors
What it is · An audience factor profile — “a person in a situation, not a demographic” — with jobs, behavioural stage, and how they evolve.
Why it matters · Gives your scenarios someone real to happen to, with temporal depth.
Vision
What futures are you designing for? Set the future worth building toward — and the one the design must prevent.
Desired & Undesired Future State
What it is · Two paired statements — the desired 5-year future and the undesired one the design must prevent.
Why it matters · Anchors the product to a future worth building, and names the failure to avoid.
Backcasting Milestones
What it is · A right-to-left milestone chain from the 5-year future back to the first 30-day action.
Why it matters · Converts a distant vision into near-term, testable steps.