OVERVIEW
The Ocean Futures Toolkit is a strategic foresight and design library and framework to help organizations plan for change in marine and coastal systems. It's built to equip research teams, public agencies, startups, and educators with the information and architecture to map trends, drivers, scenarios, and develop meaningful pathways forward in ocean conservation. Built on the STEEP framework (Social, Technological, Environmental, Economic, and Political), it combines futures thinking with place-based knowledge, stakeholder insights, and storytelling.
Ocean Futures
Creating An Ocean Literacy Platform
CLIENT
Big Dreams Studio
2024-25
Providence, USA
MY ROLE
As the research and design lead, I headed the independent research, synthesis, design and development of the Ocean Futures Report, Ocean Futures Toolkit, and Ocean Futures Website launched in 2025.
COLLABORATIONS
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Natural Flux Studio
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Giant Shoulders
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Earth House Fund
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Possibility Ocean 2025
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BEAM Studio
Nick Scappaticci, Jack Lenk, Alyssa Bishop, Laila Aukee, Diana Sanchez
SERVICES
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Climate Research
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Report Writing
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Website Design
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Data Visualization
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UX/UI Design
CONTEXT
What If Oceans Weren't About Borders, But About A Vital, Interconnected System Supporting All Life on Earth?
The blue economy is growing rapidly across the world, with new technologies and activities being deployed in the oceans. Regional and hyper-local areas rely heavily on the regional sea waters for fishing and aquaculture, tourism, ports and shipping, energy. On the other hand, the oceans are warming at record levels each year, with significant effects on acidification, stratification, extreme weather, biodiversity loss, sea level rise and harm to coastal communities.
RESEARCH
Ocean Warming Today
Being inspired by the various innovation and leadership activities in the blue economy and its vibrant ecosystem, I started with sketching mental models and frameworks by capturing various perspectives of the studio team and stakeholders through brainstorming and informal interviews. These diagrams about the ocean guided our research directions, and informed the selection of core topics within the scope of this toolkit.
DESIGN
Climate Explainers & Data
Starting with how warming affects the ocean, several macro-level drivers and micro-level trends of ocean systems are of crucial to the way we understand the planet and its ability to cope with changes as human activities and technologies advance. These factors have the potential to create a broad-reaching impact across multiple sectors, and influence our near and long-term scenarios. We have categorized and described 8 drivers and 50 trends the pages of this toolkit, with individual attributes, reference links and sources for the data points.
A series of workshops and interviews were held with ocean technologists, entrepreneurs and researchers to better understand potential scenarios across infrastructure, conservation, education and policy. In order to help us cast the audience's speculations across a range of sectors, we have attempted to list locations of relevance from which we identified needs that may be addressed by a new service or product ability. These are areas where ocean-tech plays an important role the shaping new initiatives and ventures.
Global Warming & Carbon
Ocean Warming Effects
IMPACT
An Educational Resource and Co-Hosting a Conference
The toolkit website includes a trend and driver library, scenario-building guides and templates for co-creating ocean-related strategies. It is designed for flexible use - speculating the future of aquaculture, prototyping ocean monitoring models, or planning for climate literacy. By connecting localized insights with global relevance, it supports informed, creative, and collaborative decision-making in an era of climate uncertainty.
