Future-Feeling Frameworks
The Art of Seeing and Sensing What's Ahead
This is the second part of the series about Holistic Research. I advise you to read the first part before continuing.
Frens! ✨
Quick personal update — I've created something special that I wanted to share with you, my dear readers.
I'm launching the Learner Mindset Community — a stimulating space for curious minds and free spirits to discover breakthrough ideas together. It's an extension of the thinking journey we've been sharing through my writing, but now in a more interactive, community-driven format.
If you've enjoyed our explorations of ideas in my newsletter, you might really resonate with this. The application takes just a few minutes, and it's designed to give you a taste of the unique energy of our community.
Looking forward to potentially thinking together in this new space!
Now, back to the article 👇
While understanding the four dimensions (Intellect, Feeling, Imagination and Perception) is essential, the true magic of holistic research happens in the spaces where these dimensions meet and interact.
In this and the upcoming pieces, I’ll cover a host of specific dynamics, points of view and interactions that happen across all four dimensions. We will enter Areas, identify Planes and appreciate Dynamics. Let’s start with the Areas.
Areas: Where Dimensions Intersect
When you look closely, the holistic research diagram can be cut into four pieces. This creates a handy 2x2 matrix that we can use to add functionality and greater meaning to the entire framework. Let’s start from the top-left area.
The Intellect-Imagination Area: Envisioning Future Possibilities
This area is demarcated by the interaction of two dimensions — the Intellect and Imagination. Here, the researcher formulates the questions about the future. In particular, the questions like: ‘What could the future look like?’.
Notice how the question relates to the observable qualities of the future. This question invites the researcher to do a combo — to imagine while using their intellect. Or to intellectualize using their imagination. And yes, these two are kind of the same thing.
This area is all about ideating and seeing. Weaving elements of scientific approach with future possibilities. Here, a clear vision of the future can be conceived. Along with new concepts, coined terms, and vivid metaphors. It’s also the place where the thinking frameworks are created. I love frameworks because they help to put together and organize complicated things. Framework also can serve as interchangeable lenses we can use in our research. Let’s see some examples of the Intellect—Imagination area in practice.
In 'The Next Big Thing,' this area comes to life through various forms, concepts, and metaphors. In the article, I imagine and introduce the concept of High-Energy Processes (HEPs), which helps to tie the entire article around a vivid theme. The same article also features a framework of three innovation archetypes — Pioneers, Settlers, and Town Planners.
Why do I do it?
I do it because it helps me create a structure around which I can later weave far-out ideas. I create these lattice works to make it easier for me to imagine what the potential future might look like. These structures enable me to play with concepts and connect ideas in a way that makes sense. We are in the intellect-infused area, remember! For example, when I introduced the innovation archetypes into the article, it enabled me to consider how different personalities might approach and benefit from future technological changes. It combined systematic thinking about potential scenarios with imaginative foresight into how these roles might evolve. Essentially, I create a lens through which I can peer into the future. And then I simply describe what I see. There is no magic in it. It’s very practical.
The 'Living Ideas' article also offers a playground where Intellect-Imagination comes alive. When I conceived living ideas as 'ideas that one can interact with before adopting them,' I was combining systematic classification (what makes an idea "living"?) with imaginative leaps into how these digital organisms might function in future environments. This is the Intellect-Imagination dance at its finest — creating structured frameworks for things that don't yet exist.
Or take the Pottery-Making metaphor from the same article. Visualizing future AI interfaces, for example, through pottery-making (base, material, shaping device) shows how intellectual frameworks coupled with simple metaphors can help us grasp emerging technologies. The deeper you venture into these metaphors, the more connections you discover. This is the true beauty of the Intellect-Imagination area.
Your job as a holistic researcher is to create a suitable metaphor, treat it like a wormhole, and courageously enter it. Once you are in, your job as a writer is simply to observe what’s inside, pick up the pieces scattered around you, and describe them.
In the Intellect-Imagination area, we see the clearest vision of potential futures — not just what could be, but what could be with logical coherence, systematic structure, and analytical rigor. This is where futurists, strategists, and visionaries tend to operate most powerfully. The stimulating world of careful questions, vivid metaphors, and wormholes that take us places.
The Feeling-Imagination Area: Sensing Future Emotions
Now, if we move down one row, into the bottom-left area — we begin to draw from the Feeling space, and so our original question changes a little. It morphs into: ‘How could the future feel like?’. Inside you, or inside the others.
When researching holistically and futuristically, you want to ask yourself these heart-related questions over and over.
The bottom-left area is where the ideas about the future really come alive. You breathe life into them by asking specific questions. Questions that touch on human emotions, reactions, motivations, or stories. These questions are not asked from the intellect; they are asked from the heart. When you do that, you have a chance to get more meaningful and deep. And this is what you want. Whenever you feel like your research lacks depth or oomph, you can always move to this area and hunt for deep insights within.
In ‘The Next Big Thing,’ this area manifests in a powerful way through the Torrent Metaphor. When I wrote about:
torrents of massive energies flowing from the ground, (…)
I wasn't just describing technological change analytically — I was conveying the emotional experience of standing near transformative innovation. The metaphor evokes feelings of awe, opportunity, and perhaps even danger in the face of overwhelming potential. This is exactly how I feel when approaching events like the sudden explosion of blockchain technology or AI. The bundled human thought, financial capital pouring in, and possibilities of these systems can make the head spin and the heart pound.
"Living Ideas" offers some more examples of the Feeling-Imagination area in action. For example, I decided to begin the article with a poetic introduction. The verse:
Wherever I gaze, ideas shine bright. Ripe and red from absorption of light...(…)
creates an emotional experience of ideas as living entities. This poetic approach engages the reader's feelings about future possibilities in ways that pure analysis cannot. Or take the ‘Design Soul’ concept I touch on briefly later in that same article. When describing the future, idea sculptors having a design soul with an insatiable need to answer the question 'How things work?’ I was exploring the emotional drive behind creation and ideation — the feelings that motivate discovery and innovation.
In the Feeling-Imagination area, visions of the future become emotionally textured and meaningful. Ideas developed here don't just describe potential futures — they help us experience them emotionally before they arrive. This dimension adds depth and humanity to futuristic thinking, transforming abstract possibilities into futures we can relate to on a personal level.
This area is where futures become alive, where analytical frameworks gain emotional resonance, and where the researcher's own feelings become an instrument for deeper understanding. The combination of emotional intelligence with imaginative vision creates research that doesn't just inform — it moves and inspires.
The Challenge of Emotional Research
The journey from analytical thinking to emotional exploration is rarely smooth. When writing 'Living Ideas,' I found myself stuck in analytical mode (Intellect), struggling to access the emotional dimension that would bring my research to life. My notes literally screamed:
It’s harder than I thought — too dry
as I attempted to shift from structured frameworks to feeling-based exploration. The transition requires a deliberate change in perspective — what I called 'changing optics to feeling' — because our left-hemisphere-dominated minds naturally gravitate toward the comfortable terrain of analysis.
This resistance isn't surprising. We're trained as researchers to prioritize the intellectual, the measurable, the quantifiable. Activating all senses and engaging the intuitive requires conscious effort.
I had to remind myself to 'give myself some time to switch to feeling mode' and 'begin playing with the themes and let feelings emerge.' The most profound insights about future technologies emerged only when I followed those emergent feelings and let them 'enrich the piece' rather than rushing back to the safety of analysis. This is why the Feeling-Imagination quadrant, though challenging to access, offers such unique depth to holistic research.
In the Feeling-Imagination area, visions of the future become emotionally textured and meaningful. Ideas developed here don't just describe potential futures — they help us experience them emotionally before they arrive. This dimension adds depth and humanity to futuristic thinking, transforming abstract possibilities into futures we can relate to on a personal level.
This area is where futures become alive, where analytical frameworks gain emotional resonance, and where the researcher's own feelings become an instrument for deeper understanding. The combination of emotional intelligence with imaginative vision creates research that doesn't just inform — it moves and inspires.
What’s Next
As we've explored the Intellect-Imagination and Feeling-Imagination areas, we've seen how these quadrants offer complementary approaches to future-oriented research. While the former provides us with structured frameworks and coherent visions, the latter breathes life into these structures, making them emotionally resonant and deeply meaningful.
True holistic research requires fluidity between these areas, allowing us to shift our perspective as needed. Sometimes, we need the clarity of intellectual frameworks to organize our thinking; other times, we need the emotional wisdom of the heart to understand what matters most. The greatest insights often emerge when we navigate these different areas with intention and awareness.
In the next article in this series, we'll explore the remaining two areas of our holistic research framework: the Intellect-Perception area, where methodical approaches to gathering and analyzing present data flourish, and the Feeling-Perception area, where intuition guides our sensory engagement with reality. Together, these four areas create a complete ecosystem for holistic research — one that honors the full spectrum of human knowing.
Until then, I invite you to notice which areas you naturally gravitate toward in your own research and which areas might benefit from more conscious attention. The path to deeper understanding often lies just beyond our habitual ways of knowing.