Contemporary society faces unprecedented challenges—from rapid technological evolution to climate change and demographic tensions—compelling organisations to anticipate the future for informed decision-making. This case study aimed to design a digital system for end-users called the Time Machine, which enables a generative artificial intelligence (GAI) system to produce prospective future scenarios based on the input information automatically, proposing hypotheses and prioritising trends to streamline and make the formulation of future scenarios more accessible. The system’s design, development, and testing progressed through three versions of prompts for the OpenAI GPT-4 LLM, with six trials conducted involving 222 participants. This iterative approach allowed for gradual adjustment of instructions given to the machine and encouraged refinement. Results from the six trials demonstrated that the Time Machine is an effective tool for generating future scenarios that promote debate and stimulate new ideas in multidisciplinary teams. Our trials proved that GAI-generated scenarios could foster discussions on +70% of generated scenarios with appropriate prompting, and more than half included new ideas. In conclusion, large language models (LLMs) of GAI, with suitable prompt engineering and architecture, have the potential to generate useful future scenarios for organisations, transforming future intelligence into a more accessible and operational resource. However, critical use of these scenarios is essential.

In recent years, the advances in information and communication technology (ICT) have resulted in the development of systems and applications aimed at supporting rehabilitation therapy that contributes to enrich patients’ life quality. This work is focused on the improvement of the telemedicine systems with the purpose of customizing therapies according to the profile and disability of patients. For doing this, as salient contribution, this work proposes the adoption of user-centered design (UCD) methodology for the design and development of telemedicine systems in order to support the rehabilitation of patients with neurological disorders. Finally, some applications of the UCD methodology in the telemedicine field are presented as a proof of concept.

Patient Centered Design (PCD) is a particular type of User Centered Design (UCD) where the end-user is a patient that will use an Information and Communications Technology (ICT) solution for healthcare. It focuses on needs, wants and skills of the product’s primary user and implies involving end-users in the decision-making and development process of the solution. e-Therapy aims to provide support to therapy sessions through ICT solutions. In the mental health arena is being used for specific therapeutic contexts and is an especially difficult environment due to specificities of the patients’ conditions; the physical access to patients is restricted and, sometimes, not even possible. Thus, a PCD approach can be accomplished through the health professionals involved, applying some of the most well-known methods of UCD: interviews, questionnaires, focus groups and participatory design. eSchi is an e-Therapy tool that complements traditional practices for the cognitive rehabilitation and training of schizophrenic patients and was successfully developed using a PCD approach.