FutureForge
Overview
A Strategic Design Model for Internal Workforce Transitions in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
This project is a SaaS platform concept that reframes workforce transition not as a one-time event, but as a continuous, supported journey. It offers a vision for how financial institutions align employee agency with organisational needs, bridging strategy, skill-building, and human motivation through an integrated design system.
Categories
Service Design
Coming Soon
Date
Jul 28, 2025
Client
Royal College of Art
At the time of writing, we are at the foot of what many are calling the "Fourth Industrial Revolution". While many are seeking ways to utilise artificial intelligence (AI) to further the way we live. My team and I set out to understand the consequences of AI and automation in the Future of work and how it might impact current and future generations.
This project examines how the retail banking sector is currently addressing this issue by redeploying its employees and how we utilise Service Design to develop a human-centred approach that impacts employees as individuals and optimises organisational agility in this era of change.
Team In-Picture (from Left to Right): Kenichiro Kaneko, Jihyun Kim and David Soh (me)
What is the current situation?
Macro:
As trends indicate, the retail banking sector is likely to become one of the most affected industries by the emergence of AI and automation. Just within the UK alone, around 54% of employees are set to have their jobs disrupted in the coming years, as 90% of the industry remains reliant on legacy systems and routine processes, compared to most other sectors.
To combat this many organisations across industries as well as in the retail banking sector have looked to reskilling and redeployment as the answer and investment to this issue.
Meso:
Through the lens of a Multi-Level analysis framework, the effects of AI and automation began to emerge. We identified two main strategies employed by banks to combat this trend, which required effective workforce transitions.
Reskill and redeploy current employees for future roles.
Terminate displaced workers and recruit new talent externally.
Focusing on redeployment, Banks are likely to lose over £49,000 per failed redeployment. For the organisation, this means more money lost, more training, and less retained institutional knowledge, much of which lost, has an intangible value that isn't reflected on a spreadsheet.
Micro:
Through interviews with several retail bank employees (both current and former) at both domestic and global banks. It was revealed to us that these transitions are often fractured, mismanaged and opaque, with many sharing similar sentiments.
This particular quote represented the majority sentiment well.
"These transitions aren’t choices.
You’re told your role is changing, and then you’re asked to reapply for your job."
The system was not broken, but it was inefficient and lacked empathy.
Based on our interviews, we developed maps illustrating the current overall employee journey during job displacement. We used dynamic personas and journey maps—shown later—as tools to tailor our design to the livelihood needs expressed by our interviewees.
Stakeholder mapping showed that the power to approve change sits with leaders who pass on their directive to the Human Resource team (HRBP, SWP, etc.), while employees feel the risks of change.
We dubbed the following persona, "Lisa", to portray the experiences that resonated with many interviewees, as mentioned in the previously mentioned quote.
Simply put, the current transition journey is reactive. When (for eg, Job Reapplication) is triggered and affected employees are at risk of losing their jobs, they face high-stakes decisions with little guidance, limited transparency, and minimal support — at work or in life.
In short: one trigger, high stakes, high emotion, no support.
To gain a clearer understanding of the current landscape, we conducted additional research and analysis on the approaches, products, and transition models employed to support workforce transitions in this sector.
In summary, our research and framing tools helped us pinpoint four major systemic failures that made workforce transitions inefficient—impacting both individuals and the organisation as a whole. We summarised them as follows:
4 Systemic Failures:
Technical: Dependence on legacy systems and separate datasets means these outdated platforms hinder efficient data-driven planning in UK banks.
Emotional: Transitions feel threatening, leading to disengagement, fear, and, at times, panic and attrition.
Cultural: Employees wait for permission due to a risk-averse environment, creating a culture that feels psychologically unsafe when change is on the table.
Strategic: Short-term moves and a lack of alignment between employees and roles increase the risk of long-term mismatches.
All together, these failures create an environment where clarity is lost, confidence erodes, and trust in the transition process breaks down. Our approach and solution is found in Futureforge.
Direction
In response, we set out to reframe the challenge—moving beyond surface fixes and toward the root of the problem. Meaningful change meant that we needed to shift the perspective of the top-down culture (especially during transitions) to one where employees gain a stronger sense of agency and ownership, while still allowing and maintaining leadership and their teams to have oversight and authority to guide the company's direction.
Thus, we began by forming this hypothesis:
Instead of blindsiding employees with top-down directives…
What if banks enabled people to choose transitions that still align with organisational needs?
Shifting employees from passive recipients to active participants in their careers.
The real challenge isn’t launching another training course or digital platform. It’s about designing transitions that are structured, safe, and strategic. For banks, that means less wasted spend and stronger retention of expertise. For employees, it means shifting transitions from reactive leaps of faith to empowering, proactive journeys.
Diagnosis to Design
We focused first on where to act, rather than what new feature to ship. Pairing the use of a system map with lived employee journeys surfaced five self-reinforcing loops that could either drive or block mobility: Growth & Engagement, Skill Visibility & Matching, Career Clarity, Leadership & Trust, and Reskilling & Mobility.
Two high-leverage barriers sit across them: cultural/structural constraints (top-down control, risk aversion, low visibility) and system fragmentation (disjointed platforms, mismatched timelines, thin touchpoints). These explain why many existing systems and models hinder progress rather than enhance it.
Implication: "Change the loops, not just the screens."
Thus, our aim as service designers will be to design integrated interventions across policy, process, and product to increase employee agency and meet workforce needs.
Practically, we aim to coordinate capabilities like HRBP, SWP, L&D, and learning systems into a single, psychologically safe transition system, avoiding new silos.
Designing FOR Employees (Individuals)
Now with our direction clearly defined, we focused on ensuring our design was tailored for the lay employees. As the backbone of any bank, change could come not only from a top-down initiative but also from a bottom-up approach.
Shaping the reason for how and we crafted our End-State User Journey.
By supporting shifts earlier (pre-trigger), readiness and pathways become visible, and handoffs are engineered (L&D → role placement) instead of left to chance.
What makes this change possible?
Behavioural mechanisms follows the stages defined—awareness → discovery/goal-setting → sustained action. This way, lay-employees can move with confidence rather than react under pressure.
-
We focused first on where to act, rather than what new feature to ship. Pairing the use of a system map with lived employee journeys surfaced five self-reinforcing loops that could either drive or block mobility: Growth & Engagement, Skill Visibility & Matching, Career Clarity, Leadership & Trust, and Reskilling & Mobility.
Two high-leverage barriers sit across them: cultural/structural constraints (top-down control, risk aversion, low visibility) and system fragmentation (disjointed platforms, mismatched timelines, thin touchpoints). These explain why many existing systems and models hinder progress rather than enhance it.
Implication: "Change the loops, not just the screens."
Thus, our aim as service designers will be to design integrated interventions across policy, process, and product to increase employee agency and meet workforce needs.
Practically, we aim to coordinate capabilities like HRBP, SWP, L&D, and learning systems into a single, psychologically safe transition system, avoiding new silos.
We aim to tackle the challenges in the Retail Banking sector through an employee-centric model founded in Behaviour Change theories to create lasting and enduring impact, which is then delivered through the various features offered by the FutureForge (concept) platform. (need to add)
-
-
Conclusion
-
FutureForge
Overview
A Strategic Design Model for Internal Workforce Transitions in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
This project is a SaaS platform concept that reframes workforce transition not as a one-time event, but as a continuous, supported journey. It offers a vision for how financial institutions align employee agency with organisational needs, bridging strategy, skill-building, and human motivation through an integrated design system.
Categories
Service Design
Coming Soon
Date
Jul 28, 2025
Client
Royal College of Art
At the time of writing, we are at the foot of what many are calling the "Fourth Industrial Revolution". While many are seeking ways to utilise artificial intelligence (AI) to further the way we live. My team and I set out to understand the consequences of AI and automation in the Future of work and how it might impact current and future generations.
This project examines how the retail banking sector is currently addressing this issue by redeploying its employees and how we utilise Service Design to develop a human-centred approach that impacts employees as individuals and optimises organisational agility in this era of change.
Team In-Picture (from Left to Right): Kenichiro Kaneko, Jihyun Kim and David Soh (me)
What is the current situation?
Macro:
As trends indicate, the retail banking sector is likely to become one of the most affected industries by the emergence of AI and automation. Just within the UK alone, around 54% of employees are set to have their jobs disrupted in the coming years, as 90% of the industry remains reliant on legacy systems and routine processes, compared to most other sectors.
To combat this many organisations across industries as well as in the retail banking sector have looked to reskilling and redeployment as the answer and investment to this issue.
Meso:
Through the lens of a Multi-Level analysis framework, the effects of AI and automation began to emerge. We identified two main strategies employed by banks to combat this trend, which required effective workforce transitions.
Reskill and redeploy current employees for future roles.
Terminate displaced workers and recruit new talent externally.
Focusing on redeployment, Banks are likely to lose over £49,000 per failed redeployment. For the organisation, this means more money lost, more training, and less retained institutional knowledge, much of which lost, has an intangible value that isn't reflected on a spreadsheet.
Micro:
Through interviews with several retail bank employees (both current and former) at both domestic and global banks. It was revealed to us that these transitions are often fractured, mismanaged and opaque, with many sharing similar sentiments.
This particular quote represented the majority sentiment well.
"These transitions aren’t choices.
You’re told your role is changing, and then you’re asked to reapply for your job."
The system was not broken, but it was inefficient and lacked empathy.
Based on our interviews, we developed maps illustrating the current overall employee journey during job displacement. We used dynamic personas and journey maps—shown later—as tools to tailor our design to the livelihood needs expressed by our interviewees.
Stakeholder mapping showed that the power to approve change sits with leaders who pass on their directive to the Human Resource team (HRBP, SWP, etc.), while employees feel the risks of change.
We dubbed the following persona, "Lisa", to portray the experiences that resonated with many interviewees, as mentioned in the previously mentioned quote.
Simply put, the current transition journey is reactive. When (for eg, Job Reapplication) is triggered and affected employees are at risk of losing their jobs, they face high-stakes decisions with little guidance, limited transparency, and minimal support — at work or in life.
In short: one trigger, high stakes, high emotion, no support.
To gain a clearer understanding of the current landscape, we conducted additional research and analysis on the approaches, products, and transition models employed to support workforce transitions in this sector.
In summary, our research and framing tools helped us pinpoint four major systemic failures that made workforce transitions inefficient—impacting both individuals and the organisation as a whole. We summarised them as follows:
4 Systemic Failures:
Technical: Dependence on legacy systems and separate datasets means these outdated platforms hinder efficient data-driven planning in UK banks.
Emotional: Transitions feel threatening, leading to disengagement, fear, and, at times, panic and attrition.
Cultural: Employees wait for permission due to a risk-averse environment, creating a culture that feels psychologically unsafe when change is on the table.
Strategic: Short-term moves and a lack of alignment between employees and roles increase the risk of long-term mismatches.
All together, these failures create an environment where clarity is lost, confidence erodes, and trust in the transition process breaks down. Our approach and solution is found in Futureforge.
Direction
In response, we set out to reframe the challenge—moving beyond surface fixes and toward the root of the problem. Meaningful change meant that we needed to shift the perspective of the top-down culture (especially during transitions) to one where employees gain a stronger sense of agency and ownership, while still allowing and maintaining leadership and their teams to have oversight and authority to guide the company's direction.
Thus, we began by forming this hypothesis:
Instead of blindsiding employees with top-down directives…
What if banks enabled people to choose transitions that still align with organisational needs?
Shifting employees from passive recipients to active participants in their careers.
The real challenge isn’t launching another training course or digital platform. It’s about designing transitions that are structured, safe, and strategic. For banks, that means less wasted spend and stronger retention of expertise. For employees, it means shifting transitions from reactive leaps of faith to empowering, proactive journeys.
Diagnosis to Design
We focused first on where to act, rather than what new feature to ship. Pairing the use of a system map with lived employee journeys surfaced five self-reinforcing loops that could either drive or block mobility: Growth & Engagement, Skill Visibility & Matching, Career Clarity, Leadership & Trust, and Reskilling & Mobility.
Two high-leverage barriers sit across them: cultural/structural constraints (top-down control, risk aversion, low visibility) and system fragmentation (disjointed platforms, mismatched timelines, thin touchpoints). These explain why many existing systems and models hinder progress rather than enhance it.
Implication: "Change the loops, not just the screens."
Thus, our aim as service designers will be to design integrated interventions across policy, process, and product to increase employee agency and meet workforce needs.
Practically, we aim to coordinate capabilities like HRBP, SWP, L&D, and learning systems into a single, psychologically safe transition system, avoiding new silos.
Designing FOR Employees (Individuals)
Now with our direction clearly defined, we focused on ensuring our design was tailored for the lay employees. As the backbone of any bank, change could come not only from a top-down initiative but also from a bottom-up approach.
Shaping the reason for how and we crafted our End-State User Journey.
By supporting shifts earlier (pre-trigger), readiness and pathways become visible, and handoffs are engineered (L&D → role placement) instead of left to chance.
What makes this change possible?
Behavioural mechanisms follows the stages defined—awareness → discovery/goal-setting → sustained action. This way, lay-employees can move with confidence rather than react under pressure.
-
We focused first on where to act, rather than what new feature to ship. Pairing the use of a system map with lived employee journeys surfaced five self-reinforcing loops that could either drive or block mobility: Growth & Engagement, Skill Visibility & Matching, Career Clarity, Leadership & Trust, and Reskilling & Mobility.
Two high-leverage barriers sit across them: cultural/structural constraints (top-down control, risk aversion, low visibility) and system fragmentation (disjointed platforms, mismatched timelines, thin touchpoints). These explain why many existing systems and models hinder progress rather than enhance it.
Implication: "Change the loops, not just the screens."
Thus, our aim as service designers will be to design integrated interventions across policy, process, and product to increase employee agency and meet workforce needs.
Practically, we aim to coordinate capabilities like HRBP, SWP, L&D, and learning systems into a single, psychologically safe transition system, avoiding new silos.
We aim to tackle the challenges in the Retail Banking sector through an employee-centric model founded in Behaviour Change theories to create lasting and enduring impact, which is then delivered through the various features offered by the FutureForge (concept) platform. (need to add)
-
-
Conclusion
-
FutureForge
Overview
A Strategic Design Model for Internal Workforce Transitions in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
This project is a SaaS platform concept that reframes workforce transition not as a one-time event, but as a continuous, supported journey. It offers a vision for how financial institutions align employee agency with organisational needs, bridging strategy, skill-building, and human motivation through an integrated design system.
Categories
Service Design
Coming Soon
Date
Jul 28, 2025
Client
Royal College of Art
At the time of writing, we are at the foot of what many are calling the "Fourth Industrial Revolution". While many are seeking ways to utilise artificial intelligence (AI) to further the way we live. My team and I set out to understand the consequences of AI and automation in the Future of work and how it might impact current and future generations.
This project examines how the retail banking sector is currently addressing this issue by redeploying its employees and how we utilise Service Design to develop a human-centred approach that impacts employees as individuals and optimises organisational agility in this era of change.
Team In-Picture (from Left to Right): Kenichiro Kaneko, Jihyun Kim and David Soh (me)
What is the current situation?
Macro:
As trends indicate, the retail banking sector is likely to become one of the most affected industries by the emergence of AI and automation. Just within the UK alone, around 54% of employees are set to have their jobs disrupted in the coming years, as 90% of the industry remains reliant on legacy systems and routine processes, compared to most other sectors.
To combat this many organisations across industries as well as in the retail banking sector have looked to reskilling and redeployment as the answer and investment to this issue.
Meso:
Through the lens of a Multi-Level analysis framework, the effects of AI and automation began to emerge. We identified two main strategies employed by banks to combat this trend, which required effective workforce transitions.
Reskill and redeploy current employees for future roles.
Terminate displaced workers and recruit new talent externally.
Focusing on redeployment, Banks are likely to lose over £49,000 per failed redeployment. For the organisation, this means more money lost, more training, and less retained institutional knowledge, much of which lost, has an intangible value that isn't reflected on a spreadsheet.
Micro:
Through interviews with several retail bank employees (both current and former) at both domestic and global banks. It was revealed to us that these transitions are often fractured, mismanaged and opaque, with many sharing similar sentiments.
This particular quote represented the majority sentiment well.
"These transitions aren’t choices.
You’re told your role is changing, and then you’re asked to reapply for your job."
The system was not broken, but it was inefficient and lacked empathy.
Based on our interviews, we developed maps illustrating the current overall employee journey during job displacement. We used dynamic personas and journey maps—shown later—as tools to tailor our design to the livelihood needs expressed by our interviewees.
Stakeholder mapping showed that the power to approve change sits with leaders who pass on their directive to the Human Resource team (HRBP, SWP, etc.), while employees feel the risks of change.
We dubbed the following persona, "Lisa", to portray the experiences that resonated with many interviewees, as mentioned in the previously mentioned quote.
Simply put, the current transition journey is reactive. When (for eg, Job Reapplication) is triggered and affected employees are at risk of losing their jobs, they face high-stakes decisions with little guidance, limited transparency, and minimal support — at work or in life.
In short: one trigger, high stakes, high emotion, no support.
To gain a clearer understanding of the current landscape, we conducted additional research and analysis on the approaches, products, and transition models employed to support workforce transitions in this sector.
In summary, our research and framing tools helped us pinpoint four major systemic failures that made workforce transitions inefficient—impacting both individuals and the organisation as a whole. We summarised them as follows:
4 Systemic Failures:
Technical: Dependence on legacy systems and separate datasets means these outdated platforms hinder efficient data-driven planning in UK banks.
Emotional: Transitions feel threatening, leading to disengagement, fear, and, at times, panic and attrition.
Cultural: Employees wait for permission due to a risk-averse environment, creating a culture that feels psychologically unsafe when change is on the table.
Strategic: Short-term moves and a lack of alignment between employees and roles increase the risk of long-term mismatches.
All together, these failures create an environment where clarity is lost, confidence erodes, and trust in the transition process breaks down. Our approach and solution is found in Futureforge.
Direction
In response, we set out to reframe the challenge—moving beyond surface fixes and toward the root of the problem. Meaningful change meant that we needed to shift the perspective of the top-down culture (especially during transitions) to one where employees gain a stronger sense of agency and ownership, while still allowing and maintaining leadership and their teams to have oversight and authority to guide the company's direction.
Thus, we began by forming this hypothesis:
Instead of blindsiding employees with top-down directives…
What if banks enabled people to choose transitions that still align with organisational needs?
Shifting employees from passive recipients to active participants in their careers.
The real challenge isn’t launching another training course or digital platform. It’s about designing transitions that are structured, safe, and strategic. For banks, that means less wasted spend and stronger retention of expertise. For employees, it means shifting transitions from reactive leaps of faith to empowering, proactive journeys.
Diagnosis to Design
We focused first on where to act, rather than what new feature to ship. Pairing the use of a system map with lived employee journeys surfaced five self-reinforcing loops that could either drive or block mobility: Growth & Engagement, Skill Visibility & Matching, Career Clarity, Leadership & Trust, and Reskilling & Mobility.
Two high-leverage barriers sit across them: cultural/structural constraints (top-down control, risk aversion, low visibility) and system fragmentation (disjointed platforms, mismatched timelines, thin touchpoints). These explain why many existing systems and models hinder progress rather than enhance it.
Implication: "Change the loops, not just the screens."
Thus, our aim as service designers will be to design integrated interventions across policy, process, and product to increase employee agency and meet workforce needs.
Practically, we aim to coordinate capabilities like HRBP, SWP, L&D, and learning systems into a single, psychologically safe transition system, avoiding new silos.
Designing FOR Employees (Individuals)
Now with our direction clearly defined, we focused on ensuring our design was tailored for the lay employees. As the backbone of any bank, change could come not only from a top-down initiative but also from a bottom-up approach.
Shaping the reason for how and we crafted our End-State User Journey.
By supporting shifts earlier (pre-trigger), readiness and pathways become visible, and handoffs are engineered (L&D → role placement) instead of left to chance.
What makes this change possible?
Behavioural mechanisms follows the stages defined—awareness → discovery/goal-setting → sustained action. This way, lay-employees can move with confidence rather than react under pressure.
-
We focused first on where to act, rather than what new feature to ship. Pairing the use of a system map with lived employee journeys surfaced five self-reinforcing loops that could either drive or block mobility: Growth & Engagement, Skill Visibility & Matching, Career Clarity, Leadership & Trust, and Reskilling & Mobility.
Two high-leverage barriers sit across them: cultural/structural constraints (top-down control, risk aversion, low visibility) and system fragmentation (disjointed platforms, mismatched timelines, thin touchpoints). These explain why many existing systems and models hinder progress rather than enhance it.
Implication: "Change the loops, not just the screens."
Thus, our aim as service designers will be to design integrated interventions across policy, process, and product to increase employee agency and meet workforce needs.
Practically, we aim to coordinate capabilities like HRBP, SWP, L&D, and learning systems into a single, psychologically safe transition system, avoiding new silos.
We aim to tackle the challenges in the Retail Banking sector through an employee-centric model founded in Behaviour Change theories to create lasting and enduring impact, which is then delivered through the various features offered by the FutureForge (concept) platform. (need to add)
-
-
Conclusion
-
