Magdalena Kim Novak: SheTurns the Future into a Personal Experience
How can we prepare for a future we don’t yet know? Magdalena Kim Novak is developing an approach that brings possible futures to life.
For several years now, Magdalena Kim Novak has been exploring the question of how we can prepare for a future we don’t yet know. The experience designer and founder of NUVISIA combines storytelling, experience design, and artificial intelligence into an approach that not only describes possible futures but also brings them to life. Her goal is to help people find their place in a changing world.
When the Future Remains Abstract
Career decisions, professional changes, or major transformations within organizations often begin with the same challenge. Although the future can be planned and analyzed, it often remains abstract. Strategies are developed, goals are formulated, and visions are presented. Yet there is often a wide gap between the rational understanding of a possible future and the feeling of actually seeing oneself in it.
This is where Magdalena Kim Novak’s work comes in. The founder of NUVISIA explores how people can not only imagine the future but also experience it. The idea for this project arose from personal experiences in a wide variety of professional settings. From performance-driven corporate environments to fast-paced startups and highly specialized creative fields, she gained insights into different conceptions of success, identity, and personal development.
Over time, she came to realize that many people fail not so much because of a lack of opportunities as because of a lack of vision regarding who they actually want to become. This insight gave rise to the central question behind NUVISIA: How do our actions change when we can not only understand a possible future but also experience it firsthand?
From New York to the Austrian Creative Industry
An important milestone on this journey was her training in experience design at Odyssey Works in New York. There, Magdalena Kim Novak delved deeply into the design of experiences that can touch people emotionally, shift perspectives, and spur personal growth.
At the same time, her participation in we:transform 2025 opened up new avenues into entrepreneurship and the Austrian creative industries. Particularly valuable were the encounters and conversations that extended far beyond the actual program. She later built on these experiences as part of CIMIx, where she was able to further develop her work from a technological and media perspective.
Experience the future instead of just thinking about it
Through NUVISIA, Magdalena Kim Novak develops what are known as “Future Identity Experiences.” This involves an attempt to translate possible future scenarios into personalized stories that people can experience through text, audio, or video—as shown in the two images created during a Future Identity Simulation for a user via NUVISIA, which depict possible career paths.
The areas of application range from career guidance and leadership development to innovation and media. For example, a student could not only research different career paths but also experience herself in those roles. Executives could explore various future scenarios for their careers. Teams, in turn, could turn an abstract corporate strategy into a tangible part of their daily work.
Magdalena Kim Novak is particularly interested in the question of what role such experiences might play in a workplace that is rapidly changing due to artificial intelligence. When tasks, responsibilities, and work methods change, people’s professional self-image often changes as well.
“We are facing not only a technological transformation of work, but also a transformation of professional identity.”
Magdalena Kim Novak
She places particular importance on the question of how people perceive themselves in new roles and how they can apply their strengths, values, and interests in a changing world of work. In this context, NUVISIA explicitly does not view the future as a prediction. Instead, the goal is to make different possible paths of development visible and tangible. Technology serves as a tool for imagination and reflection.
Learn, test, and refine
The journey from idea to company was deliberately experimental. As early as late 2024, she conducted her first personal experiment in the form of an AI-generated vision of the future. Since February 2026, Magdalena Kim Novak has been working with users to develop concrete Future Identity Experiences. Instead of spending a long time working behind closed doors on a finished product, she focused on co-creation, feedback, and practical testing from the very beginning.
She was particularly interested in the impact such experiences have on people. Experience to date shows that narratives about the future can be especially effective when they help people derive a realistic next step from a vision.
This development phase was accompanied by numerous programs and initiatives. As part of Impact Hub Vienna’s Idea Starter Pack, Magdalena Kim Novak worked on the entrepreneurial development of the concept. In the Female Founders Bootcamp, she refined the business model and conducted numerous customer discovery interviews. At the HR Experts Lab, she discussed and tested the approach together with experts in the fields of human resources and leadership development. One of the most important insights from this period was that the real innovation does not lie in the finished video.
“The core of NUVISIA isn’t the video itself. The real innovation is the underlying Story Engine.”
Magdalena Kim Novak
A New Form of Storytelling
Meanwhile, the Story Engine is opening up new possibilities that go far beyond career guidance or leadership development. Together with her co-founder, Max Hofmann, Magdalena Kim Novak is currently working on new applications for the media sector as part of the Wiener Zeitung’s Media Innovation Lab Fellowship. The focus is on how complex topics can be made more understandable and relevant through personalized narratives. Instead of filtering news solely by interests, storytelling could help people experience societal developments from a personal perspective.
For example, how would a heat wave affect my daily life? How might economic changes impact my professional environment? Questions like these highlight the potential that lies in combining data, storytelling, and experience design. At the same time, this opens up an exciting field for the creative industries. After all, developing new narrative formats requires not only technological expertise but, above all, creative methods, dramatic thinking, and a deep understanding of human experiences.
Shaping the future begins with imagination
Magdalena Kim Novak has an ambitious vision for the coming years. She wants to help establish “Future Identity” as an independent framework for thought and design. At the heart of this is the conviction that people can actively shape the future if they develop a relationship with it. Whether in educational institutions, companies, innovation processes, or the media: the future must become something that can be imagined and experienced.
Magdalena Kim Novak’s story powerfully demonstrates how the combination of creativity, technology, and curiosity can give rise to entirely new approaches. It also serves as a reminder that innovation doesn’t begin where answers already exist, but with a question that won’t let us go. In her case, the question is: How can we experience the future before it becomes reality?
Connect with Magdalena:
On November 19, you’ll have the chance to meet Magdalena online at the Creative Transformation Summit. Don’t miss this opportunity—register now!