Instructor Spotlight: Antonio Viva

What inspired you to teach this course?

I have spent most of my career working at the intersection of education, design, leadership, and organizational change. Again and again, I have seen how difficult it can be for people and institutions to imagine a future that looks meaningfully different from the present. We are very good at improving what already exists. We are less practiced at imagining what might exist instead.

That is what inspired Designing the Future: Worldbuilding & Time Travel. I wanted to create a studio where students could practice thinking beyond the immediate future, noticing signals of change around them, imagining different possibilities, and then using design thinking to make those possibilities tangible.

The course is really built around a simple idea: the future is not something that just happens to us. We participate in making it. I want students to leave the course feeling that they have both the imagination and the agency to help shape what comes next. Our central question is how might we design our preferred future?

What are some traits of a successful futurist or designer?

Curiosity is probably the most important trait, and one that futurists and designers clearly share. Both have to be willing to look closely at the world, notice what others might overlook, and ask questions before rushing toward answers.

They also need imagination, empathy, and a comfort with ambiguity and uncertainty. A futurist has to be able to ask, “What might happen?” without immediately needing to know what will happen. A designer has to be willing to make something, test it, learn from it, and change direction. I also think successful futurists and designers are good wanderers. They pay attention. They connect ideas across disciplines. They notice signals, contradictions, human behaviors, cultural shifts, and unexpected possibilities.

At their best, they remain more curious than certain.

Why is it important for us to pursue creativity from a futurist’s perspective?

We are living through a period of extraordinary technological, social, environmental, and cultural change. If our only response is to react to whatever comes next, we give up a great deal of our agency. Creativity allows us to imagine alternatives.

A futurist’s perspective stretches that creativity beyond solving today’s problems. It asks us to imagine different worlds, different systems, different relationships, and different ways of being human. It helps us ask not simply, “What is possible?” but also, “What is preferable?” and “What kind of future do we actually want to help create?”

That distinction matters especially now. The future should not be shaped only by technologists, policymakers, or those already in positions of power. We all need opportunities to practice imagining what could be different, what could be better, and what we might have a hand in creating. Because before we can build a different future, we first have to be able to imagine one.