Planning the future with visual tools

Abstract

Planning the future with visual tools is a 9 hour-long course for university students to assist them to make conscious plans about their careers using the visual methods of design thinking and strategic planning. The course can be changed flexibly to accommodate a wide range of circumstances, such as smaller and bigger groups, offline and online settings, students from different backgrounds and ages, etc. We recommend that the programme is completed in 1 to 5 days, in order to maintain intensity, momentum and focus. However, it is also possible to create a weekly schedule for 1-hour long sessions for 9 weeks. In this contribution we provide suggestions for the timing although these can be changed according to the needs of the group. During the course we use a canvas or an exercise book with printed templates that serve as guides for each task. The canvas or the exercise book also gives an easy-to-understand framework for the whole process and helps participants to build on their previous works. The left side of the canvas helps participants to discover and understand the present and the right side helps participants to envision the future and to set well defined goals. The middle part is about building a bridge between the two: identifying possible barriers and resources, listing and evaluating possible ideas to achieve future goals and creating a realistic timeline from these ideas. In this chapter we explain the process step-by-step with suggestions on how to facilitate the session.