Engagement framing

For leaders deciding whether to bring me in before a major commitment.

I help organizations make possible futures tangible so consequential decisions can be discussed before they harden into roadmap, budget, policy, or operating commitments.

The work usually begins when a team knows the decision matters but cannot yet see the implications clearly. The output is not a report for the shelf. It is a set of artifacts, scenarios, sessions, and decision frames that make options, risks, and assumptions easier to inspect.

Discuss a decision or mandateSelected workResume

Use This Work When

The organization needs clarity before it needs another plan.

A familiar idiom has stopped working

The available forms and metaphors no longer carry the condition at hand. A new artifact, format, or situated example can activate conversations that would otherwise not happen. Long-lived teams are comfortable in their idioms, ways of working, ways of fixing on what makes sense, and what does not make sense. Bringing in an external perspective with an artifact that otherwise would struggle to find a voice can move an organization into unfamiliar terrain and help it explore the implications of a new product, service, or technology.

An emerging capability needs meaning

A technological capability, emerging signals or trends, or institutional condition needs to be explored through artifacts, products, interfaces, scenarios, or public media. How a new capability becomes meaningful, useful, and ordinary is often not obvious. A tangible artifact can help a team explore the implications of a new capability, its consequences, and its possible futures.

A product direction is still being discovered

A team has a set of signals, hunches, materials, and technical possibilities that deserve a voice to explore, test, and translate into a product, service, or experience. Now, what does that product, service, or experience look like? How does it behave? What are its consequences? What is its meaning? A tangible artifact that takes a team into unfamiliar possible futures can help a team explore the implications of a new capability, its consequences, and its possible futures.

AI is amongst us — what are the opportunities?

Beyond the hype, the AI conversation is full of unknowns, anxieties, and hopes. What are the opportunities for product, service, and product design? Artifacts, creative R&D, applied speculation, speculative R&D is a form of applied research that can identify the opportunities, the challenges, and the unknown possibilities that will not reveal themselves with traditional incremental product design or strategy work.

Offers

Engagements are time-bounded, outcome-oriented, and legible to non-design executives.

Applied Speculation Inquiry

When to use

Use this when a live question needs research, artifacts, and prototypes that can hold its social, technical, and institutional dimensions together.

What happens

I work with the people closest to the question to develop research, artifact directions, and prototype studies around its conditions and implications.

What you get

A focused body of artifacts, scenarios, and prototype studies that give the question a richer form.

Why it matters

The work gives people something situated to return to, compare, and develop together.

Strategic Artifact Engagement

When to use

Use this when a strategy, technology shift, market possibility, or policy question needs an artifact that can carry its implications into a fuller world.

What happens

I develop artifacts from plausible near futures: product catalogs, policy outcomes, user manuals, immersive narrative environments, functional prototypes, plausible news stories, or other tangible objects.

What you get

An artifact with enough texture to be circulated, examined, and used in the contexts where the question is alive.

Why it matters

Artifacts carry propositions through a culture in ways that decks and reports rarely do.

Working Session

When to use

Use this when a group needs time with a question, a set of artifacts, and the conditions surrounding them.

What happens

I facilitate a focused session around prompts, artifacts, scenarios, and the tensions that they bring forward.

What you get

A shared encounter with the material, named tensions, and questions worth carrying forward.

Why it matters

A well-made artifact gives a group more to work with than generalized future language.

Embedded / Advisory Practice

When to use

Use this when a company wants applied speculation alongside an evolving product, research, policy, strategy, or communications practice.

What happens

I work alongside founders, executives, product leaders, researchers, strategists, and policy teams as questions, artifacts, and organizational forms develop over time.

What you get

An experienced independent contributor who can frame questions, make artifacts, build prototypes, convene people, and connect technical work to its wider conditions.

Why it matters

This is often how an applied speculation practice begins inside an organization.

What Changes

The practical outcome is stronger decision posture: clearer tradeoffs, sharper options, and a better basis for commitment.

After the engagement

Shared language

People have a more particular way to discuss the question, the artifacts around it, and the disagreements it holds.

After the engagement

Situated implications

Consequences, dependencies, institutional arrangements, and everyday details become part of the work itself.

After the engagement

A wider field

The question can be held through more than one product, service, policy, or public form.

Decision Product

Workshops, talks, and artifacts earn their place when they help leaders inspect assumptions, implications, and commitments.

The main product is a more legible decision process. Sessions and materials belong inside that process when they help leaders surface assumptions, compare implications, and move toward a better commitment.

The useful question is always: what does this help someone decide?

Futures Of..X

A larger decision program for testing assumptions and consequences.

A Futures Of..X program is the fuller version of this work. It uses research, expert input, synthesis, and artifacts from plausible near futures to help a team examine what a market, technology, policy, product category, or institution could become.

The value is not prediction. The value is making hidden commitments visible early enough that leaders can adjust the bet, change the brief, expose risk, or choose a different path.

Budget-Holder Fit

This work is best when there is a real mandate and a path to action.

Executive teams with a live questionFounders shaping a new product, company, or practiceStrategy, product, policy, and governance leadersR&D or futures teams with a mandate and budget

Evidence

Selected examples of artifact-led strategy, consequence modeling, and founder-level execution.

Cover image of TBD Catalog

TBD Catalog

What is 'the future', when 'the future' arrives as a printed junk mail catalog of yesterday's vision of the future?

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A Newspaper from an Artificially Intelligent (Near) Future

This project is a Design Fiction artifact that imagines a world where artificial intelligence is mundane, woven seamlessly into the fabric of everyday life. We used this as one of the prompts/provocations leading into a two-day workshop on AI policy, governance, and strategy. Through the newspaper we explored the implications of AI futures through speculative narratives and future artifacts. This was created over the course of a couple of weeks leading up to the workshop itself. Each artifact in the newspaper (e.g. advertisements, classified ads, news articles, etc.) was created to provoke and inspire the workshop participants to think about the implications of AI futures. Each was also an extrapolation of current trends in AI and machine learning, as well as a reflection of the broader societal, ethical, and policy implications of increasingly pervasive intelligent systems.

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Julian Bleecker working on the electronics for the OMATA One cylcing computer

Prototyping the OMATA One

Prototyping the Omata One in this early instance was a way to work through some of the ideas in hardware. I had a fairly clear idea of the functional requirements, but needed to work through them in a grounded way rather than just drawing boxes and arrow on sheets of paper. I'd descxribe this as a macro board representing the major subsystems tha twould need to be implemented. It gave me something to point at and say, "This is what I mean by the Omata One", and could feed directly into the engineering specifications. It was a way to work through the engineering requirements and get a better sense of the overall system. (This all from the perspective of engineering dept.; of course there are the brand aspects and such, but first you need a thing that does what it says it does — later you can make sure the character of it as a brand is right and consistent. But, if the thing doesn't work, then the brand is irrelevant.)

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Cover of the OMATA Annual Report from the Future

OMATA Annual Report From The Future

A representation of a company using the Design Fiction archetype of an Annual Report as seen from its anticipated, speculated future based in the analytics and rational representations of the company's Financial Model.

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Next Step

Start with the decision, mandate, or uncertain bet.

A useful first note includes the decision at hand, why it matters now, who needs to be aligned, rough timing, and whether there is already a budget or mandate for the work.

Discuss a decision or mandateRead the OMATA case study