FROM STRAWS TO SILENCE
Fjord’s Tarek Sultani on the 2019 Trends report.
As well as concerns about our impact on the natural environment, our digital lives are a growing source of fear and distrust. While we struggle to navigate the stream of content funnelled at us from all angles, the rhetoric of data scandals and manipulative practices can paint an unwelcome picture of one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments.
With every new year, technologists and business leaders reach an uneasy consensus about technology that will take new prominence in our lives. Over the past decade, we’ve hailed fledgling applications of AI and machine learning, new interfaces such as mixed reality, social media and all kinds of smart mobile devices.
But this year is different. After all this forward momentum, 2019 presents an innovation plateau, a flat point in the development of technology, in which products and services are waiting for their mainstream application. To get there, we’re facing something of a digital spring clean, embracing that which has value and relevance to our lives and discarding the rest.
In light of ongoing scandals shaking public trust in data, government and society, we’re becoming more aware of the long-term consequences of many things we once took for granted. In a more savvy and sceptical age, we’re interested in what it takes to regain control and make technology work for us, not subvert us.
What will it take for products, services and organisations to thrive in this climate? They must deliver value, adaptability and personalisation with user interactions, but also a clear contribution to the circular economy and support of new cultural norms around data, identity and wellbeing.
Fjord’s latest Trends report identifies the biggest shifts around sustainability, the digital realm and the nature of public spaces.
Perhaps the clearest interplay between the personal and the global is the sustainability movement. Last year, Fjord Trends highlighted the rise of ‘ The Ethics Economy’, in which organisations took a political or ethical stance above and beyond their bottom-line concerns. In the 12 months since, anxiety and anger about the environment in particular has grown.
In our trend ‘ The Last Straw’, we describe a redesign of the supply chain with the user in the middle rather than at the end. Design priorities and associated costs will shift accordingly, placing emphasis on reverse logistics, repair, maintenance and use of sustainable alternatives to virgin materials.
As well as concerns about our impact on the natural environment, our digital lives are a growing source of fear and distrust. While we struggle to navigate the stream of content funnelled at us from all angles, the rhetoric of data scandals and manipulative practices can paint an unwelcome picture of one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments.
Three of Fjord’s seven key trends deal with the online world to some extent. ‘Silence is Gold’ tackles our digital distractions; ‘Data Minimalism’ proposes an alternative to opaque data collection; and ‘Synthetic Realities’ refers to the heightened sophistication of video and audio manipulation, and how those tools can be a force for good rather than ill.
Organisations have the power to make change, and those that do will succeed. Online content and its distribution are controllable, and change can be rapid. With a focus on transparency and a thoughtful use of data to support the user, balance can be restored.
The public realm is the third and final ecosystem poised to change radically with better design.
With so many companies competing across transit, personal mobility and delivery, we are facing an increasingly cluttered urban landscape. With a lack of regulation and no central planning body, the result is a fragmented and inefficient experience for urban services. We need to start treating the city as a platform with services consolidated into one mobility ecosystem built around citizens’ real-time needs.
Physical may have fought back against an early lead by online channels for commerce, socialising and working, but we predict more change to follow. In fulfilling new business purposes and lifestyles, the way we design spaces will have to change, with retail and workspace kicking off the revolution.
In recent years, big institutions have finally started to acknowledge a variety of voices. But providing value to diverse people – over and above merely recognising them in marketing material – requires inclusivity in design, addressing new standards and nuanced personal preferences at scale.
In time, AI will enable us to do this algorithmically, but first we need to draw on qualitative research and data to understand user needs and mindsets, to look beyond labels of customers, consumers, commuters and citizens.
The plateau is an opportunity for organisations that offer value, not scale or legacy. In busy lives and on a crowded planet, there’s no room for irrelevance.