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What is a futures cone?

The Cone helps categorise future scenarios into four distinct buckets:

• Preferred
• Probable
• Plausible
• Possible

And lastly, preferred futures, the Holy Grail of speculative design. Preferred is where you place the scenarios you want to happen.

This is where most design practitioners operate. It describes what is likely to happen unless there is an extreme disturbance or turmoil.

Plausible refers to what could happen. It’s where scenario planning and speculation live.

At the edge of the cone is what might happen, even if it’s difficult to imagine.