The Art of Boxed Design: How to Use Foresight and Strategic Thinking to Set Better Product Goals (Part II)

by Rachel Magaji

Image by freepik

I work as a product designer with startups. In my experience, I have noticed a common problem. Many teams struggle to set realistic and flexible goals. Startups, in particular, want to move fast, but the future is often unclear. One market shift or customer change can throw all plans off track.

Strategic foresight becomes useful in these kinds of situations. The OECD defines strategic foresight as a structured way of using ideas about what the future could be to prepare for change.  It prepares us by giving us better ways to approach several opportunities without losing focus. I call this approach the "boxed design". Here, the box represents the space where we explore ideas, risks, and possibilities. Inside this box, we can imagine many futures. Outside the box, we stay grounded in what is possible today.

In Part 1, I explained why boxed design matters. In Part II, I will show how to use it in product work. The goal is simple: set better goals by thinking about the future in a structured way.

Step 1: Scanning the Horizon

The first step is scanning. It simply means looking at trends, signals, and weak hints of change. It could be a new technology, a shift in customer behaviour, and/or a government policy.

Startups often ignore scanning because they focus on immediate needs like funding and customers. But if you only look at the present, you risk missing what is coming next. Think about how many companies ignored the rise of mobile phones until it was too late.

To practice scanning, set time every week to look outside your product. Read about your industry, follow global news, and pay attention to how people use technology in daily life. Write down what you see. Over time, you will start noticing patterns. As Hines & Bishop in Thinking about the Future note, scanning builds the habit of asking better questions before committing to decisions.

Step 2: Seeing Systems, Not Just Features

The second step is to see the system around your product. Every product is part of a bigger system. For example, if you are building a payment app, you are not just competing with other apps. You are part of a financial system that includes banks, laws, and even culture.

When you understand the system, you can see how one small change in one area may affect many others. This understanding helps you avoid tunnel vision. Instead of asking, "What feature should we add?" you start asking, "How will this feature change the way people interact with the system?"

This view also helps with risks. If the government introduces a new law that makes digital payments harder, what will happen to your product? If internet costs rise, will your users still be able to afford to use your app? Considering how systems interact can help keep you alert and prepare you for surprises. The World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report shows how systemic shocks like regulation or infrastructure failures can cascade through whole industries.

Image by gemini.ai

Step 3: Building Future Scenarios

After you have scanned and mapped the system, the next step for you is to build scenarios. Scenarios are simply short stories about possible futures. They are not predictions, but rather are tools you can use to imagine "what if."  Peter Schwartz explains that scenarios help organisations explore uncertainty without betting on one single future.

For example, think of these three scenarios for your product:

• In the best case, your product performs well and you raise funding.

• In the worst case, a bigger company copies your idea and takes over the market.

• In the middle case, your product growth is slow because building trust takes a while.

  
  

By exploring futures, you can design flexible goals. Rather than saying, "In one year, we must acquire one million users," you rephrase it as, "We will expand if our growth is fast." “If our growth slows, we will explore building trust and deepening relationships”. This way, you are prepared for different outcomes.

Step 4: Bringing It Back to the Box

The last step is to bring your learning back into the box. The box is not about being stuck. It is about setting limits so your team stays realistic. Too much freedom creates confusion. Too little freedom kills creativity. The box gives balance.

Inside the box, you allow imagination, questions, and what-if thinking. But once you step out, you focus on clear goals that the team can work on today. For example, after scanning and scenario building, you may decide your main box for the next six months is "grow trust with early users." Everything you do should connect to that focus.

Why This Matters

Startups live in a world of uncertainty. Many fail not because their idea is bad, but because they set goals without preparing for change. Rohrbeck & Kum posited that companies that practice foresight outperform their peers over the long term. Strategic foresight is not a cystal ball that lets you see the future perfectly. However, it is about training your team to expect the unexpected.

Using the "boxed design" approach helps you to create room to blend creativity with discipline. It becomes easier to prepare for different futures while still keeping the team moving in one direction. This balance makes your goals stronger and more achievable.

Final Thoughts

Over the years, I have seen how easy it is to get caught up in features, deadlines, and investor pressure. But when teams take a step back to scan, see systems, and build scenarios, they gain new clarity.

The future will always surprise us. But with the art of boxed design, you do not have to fear it. You can work with it. You can set goals that bend but do not break. That is the true strength of thinking inside the box.