Author Archives: Neil Collman

Want to be a futurist? Start by cultivating these four habits

What are the foundations of futures thinking? Let’s take a look at four habits we’ve developed at Nile that can help you build futures literacy.

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Practicing foresight as a service designer

Design leaders and their teams should work with one eye on the future. Here are some practical ways to incorporate foresight and service design practices into your work.

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Remote teams fall apart. This is the framework Nile uses to keep them together.

Two things help build strong remote teams; their mindset, and their toolset. This is Nile’s approach to setting remote teams up for success.

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What’s next for workplace culture?

It was mental health week last week. We tried something groundbreaking at Nile.

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The hardest thing a service designer can do

How do you explain the role of a service designer to 90 eight-year-olds? Like any good service designer, it starts with audience research.

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SDN’s first Scottish meet-up on Foresight

Service Design Network is a global platform for connecting like-minded creative types on a mission to improve services and products for people. SDN had its first meetup in Scotland to discuss Foresight — we’ve written some highlights for those that couldn’t make it.

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Why it’s difficult to think about the future

Last year, we explored the future of insurance with a large finance client. This project unearthed the limitations of design techniques in helping our clients think beyond a two-year horizon. At that point, we started to explore additional methods such as foresight to expand how we work. Our exploration showed us that it’s not easy to think about the future — and we wondered why?

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The 5 elements of a brilliant design sprint

We’ve long talked about the benefits of using design sprints to solve problems and validate ideas.

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