Fjord Trends 2019
Download as PPTX, PDF11 likes6,036 views
The annual trends report highlights the search for value and relevance in a rapidly changing world influenced by technology and environmental concerns. It outlines key trends such as data minimalism, sustainability, inclusivity, and the evolving nature of work and retail spaces, emphasizing the need for brands to adapt to consumer expectations and collaborate for better outcomes. The report encourages organizations to rethink metrics, simplify interactions, and leverage insights from digital behaviors to inform physical spaces.
Fjord Trends 2019
- 2. Introduction Our annualTrends report is born from plenty of Post-it notes, more coffee than we care to mention, lots of healthy debate and quite a few laughs.Trends is always a labor of love, crowdsourced from Fjordians (all 1,000 of us) from around the world – from San Francisco to Berlin, Hong Kong to Johannesburg, Dubai to São Paulo, and 22 other places in between. This process results in the trends we expect to affect business, technology and design in the year ahead.
- 3. Value Today, we stand at a technological, political and environmental inflection point.Two decades of rapid technology growth and innovation have generated enormous physical and digital clutter.The steep demand on the planet’s resources mirrors the demand on our time and attention, which leads to our meta theme this year: the search for value and relevance. In 2019, success will lie in providing value relevant not only to individuals, but also to the world.Value creation will not come from simply growing bigger, but by being better. In busy lives and on a crowded planet, only the relevant will remain.
- 4. Silence is gold The last straw? Data minimalism Ahead of the curb The inclusivity paradox Space odyssey Synthetic realities 01 02 03 04 05 06 07
- 5. Silence is gold Brands must find ways to connect with consumers who just want quiet in a noisy world. 01
- 6. Fjord suggests 01 Be quieter Take a lack of responsiveness as a hint to be quieter, not noisier. Rethink your metrics, and find new ways of measuring performance of your services that are not purely engagement- related. 02 Radically simplify your feedback surveys Listen to the changing needs of your customers and make providing feedback as easy and instant as possible. Pay attention to the online reviews – customers are probably already telling you what you need to know. 03 Invest in content design When the number of interactions you have with your consumers is minimal, each one of them counts. Change the language of your messaging, and do it frequently. It’s not just about what you say but how you say it. 04 Measure the cognitive effort that you expect from your customers Recognize the attention and effort your service expects from its users and demand it only when it’s useful to people.
- 7. The last straw? Enough talk. People expect products and services to have built in sustainability, or they’ll reject those who don’t. 02
- 8. Fjord suggests 01 Redesign everything Focus on the experience of making a difference. Make the experience of refilling, borrowing, returning or disposing as great as the experience of buying.To remove potential barriers to behavior change, make your sustainable products as desirable, affordable and convenient as non- sustainable alternatives. 02 Collaborate to get ahead Think beyond your brand and business to industry opportunities, and shift together with your peers or even competitors. Join forces with others to solve problems collectively. 03 Tell your stories Brands must tell stories around traceability, sourcing and impact to cut through and differentiate. Help consumers navigate the complexity of promises, certifications, and what's “real” versus what’s “greenwashing.” 04 Turn waste into wealth Think about how to monetize and extract value from something that is no longer wanted, as well as how to create new value where it was previously nonexistent.View sustainability as a measure of impact and value alongside financial results.
- 9. Data minimalism People and organizations disagree on the value of personal data.Transparency is key to bridging the gap. 03
- 10. Fjord suggests 01 Set expectations, and live up to them Empower people to know how, where and why their data was used in your personalization framework, and make clear what they will get in return. Gone are the days when users would willingly hand over all their information without clear reason or payback. 02 Embrace “data minimalism” Ensure your data strategy follows the minimal viable data pattern and collects only what’s needed to drive the service. Closely align your data collection strategy to your business objectives. Collection, measurement and tailoring of services are intrinsically linked. 03 Champion trust Allow people to act when data about them is wrong by designing transparency and enabling people to recalibrate algorithms. Prove that what you get out of using their data doesn’t outweigh the value they get from sharing it.
- 11. Ahead of the curb Cities’ infrastructures are slowing us down.They must combat the clutter with ecosystems that meet real-time needs. 04
- 12. Fjord suggests 01 Design for moving from A to B People will soon stop thinking about transport mode and instead start thinking about simply getting from point A to B. Allow for customers’ needs that ebb and flow depending on context and over time. Provide hassle-free pick- and-choose services.Think beyond classic market segmentation, and address regional archetypes and places sharing the same mobility characteristics – beyond borders. 02 Go for gains, not pains You don’t have to be a transport provider today to embed mobility in your service. Consider new business models that capitalize on the benefits of adding mobility into your service layer. 03 Remember the last mile As mobility becomes an ecosystem, many aspects will connect or merge. At this point, the main economic and social value lies in smart system management. It’ll be critical to link this mobility system to existing infrastructures, manage access to it and allow seamless connections to other adjacent service areas. 04 Partners trump platforms Many mobility needs are currently unmet, but anyone can remedy this with the right partner.The critical mass required to deliver a working ecosystem will require collaboration and white- label platforms, API consolidations and partnerships, both public and private.
- 13. The inclusivity paradox People are individuals, not types. Organizations must embrace meaningful mindsets to meet demand for true inclusivity. 05
- 14. Fjord suggests 01 Marry quant and qual When designing services, carefully mix human insights with data to breathe more color into facts that are often black and white. Learn the differences between qualitative insights and quantitative statistics at scale and how each can make the other more powerful. 02 Focus on mindsets over segmentation Move away from traditional marketing approaches that treat people as a homogenized group according to their demographics. Instead, focus on the mindsets that group people together based on their motivations, attitudes and behaviors. 03 Become a Living Business Living Services are personalized services that adapt to user needs in real-time context.To be able to deliver them, you need to rewire your business by putting humans at the center and strive for ultimate customer relevance – you need to become a Living Business.
- 15. Space odyssey Work and retail spaces need a digital makeover. It’s time to rethink our approaches and tools for design spaces. 06
- 16. Fjord suggests 01 Let online behaviors inform offline People’s digital behavior can give powerful insights to what people want and value. Use those insights where appropriate in a physical environment, just like Amazon did with their four- star physical store that only stocks products that have been given four stars or more in their online reviews. 02 Mind the gaps The experience of seamlessly moving between digital and physical channels is evolving. Explore the potential of new tech partnerships, such as the one between Google and Mastercard, to make it happen. 03 Link space and business strategy Define the productivity you want from your space, and design around it.The business purpose of space is changing, and that needs to be reflected in your business strategy. 04 Create a connected ecosystem Look at the ecosystem of services and experiences offered in your space, and link those to your customers’ mindsets. This is what should drive your design decisions.
- 17. Synthetic realities With face-swapping and voice simulation creating more believable synthetic realities, companies must work out how to capitalize on it – and manage risk. 07
- 18. Fjord suggests 01 Reframe “authentic” In a world of synthetic realities, authenticity – something consumers value highly – will be more important than ever. Understand how to be authentic and communicate that authenticity effectively. 02 Be clear, be prepared Continue to distinguish your brand by having a clear purpose and a platform that can be built from, rather than an entity that can be copied and manipulated. Be prepared for when things do go wrong, and have policies in place to handle them quickly. 03 Explore synthetic realities as a creative tool Don’t be put off by the fear of being accused of bending the truth. Audiences already accept CGI in film; soon people will accept synthetic realities in everyday life. Once it’s familiar, no one will call it new or different or scary anymore. 04 Harness the power of AI-generated images for learning Explore ways that this technology can be used to educate people and other AI systems in scenarios that were previously not possible. High-fidelity simulations offer a whole new way to test and train.
- 19. Thank you
Editor's Notes
- #3: Be sure to mention that we are looking at Trends that we expect to be relevant to our work, clients and probably friends and family too over the year to two years ahead. We try not to focus too far out, but we sometimes get the timing wrong
- #4: Digital is now so widely adopted that its novelty has worn off. We are at an innovation plateau – a flat point in the S-curve before new products and services become mainstream. Some will be powered by artificial intelligence, such as hyper-personal Living Services; others will be driven by a shift to the circular economy and new cultural norms around data, identity and well-being. Digital is facing a big spring-cleaning: a time when we decide whether something still has value and relevance to our lives. This is a question about the long term, not just the sugar high of instant gratification. As you read through the Trends, you will see that they raise plenty of fundamental questions. Does the brand deserve a space in my life and in the world? Is the value exchange two-way? Is it doing something more than straining the planet? If the answer is no, then unsubscribe or delete. It has never been easier to do so. The plateau is an opportunity, though, to get our houses in order. Once the pace picks up again, the winners will be organizations that navigated the shift from monoliths to ecosystems, providing hyper-relevance to people and going beyond the labels of customers, consumers, commuters and citizens. This requires a mindset shift that feels counterintuitive: Be quiet, don’t shout. Be relevant or don’t be there at all. Know your customers, but only on their terms – not yours. Do less, not more.
- #6: We’re seeing a dramatic escalation in the rate at which people disconnect, unsubscribe and opt out to stem the barrage of content and messages that clutter daily life. As consumers, we’ve come to realize that it’s no longer simply a lifestyle choice, but a serious mental health issue. As we put up more barriers between ourselves and digital technologies, organizations must learn how to offer value to users who crave quiet in a noisy world. This Trend builds on two we have written about before. We predicted Digital Dieting back in our 2015 Trends, which looked at how our behaviors were evolving because of the growing tension between our reliance on digital and our need to focus on the unmediated real world. In 2016, we talked about Disappearing Apps, and the rise of alerts, notifications and voice services built on this thinking. Now we are (globally) directing our attention toward fears that digital technologies could have a lasting negative influence on our mental health, especially for children. “The digital divide was about access to technology, and now that everyone has access, the new digital divide is limiting access to technology.” Chris Anderson, former editor of Wired magazine https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/style/digital-divide-screens-schools.html
- #8: Our climate is changing, and so is the way we’re thinking about it. Our concerns about global warming, pollution and sustainability have experienced a cultural shift. Where once it was “too big to do anything about,” now it’s personal. In 2019, it won’t be enough for companies to simply acknowledge environmental concerns; consumers will expect commitment to be proven through action. Organizations will need to redesign their systems and business models to fit the “circular economy,” where users are active participants, and sustainability is built into their products and services.
- #10: Data’s headline appearances throughout 2018 distorted people’s understanding of the value exchange between data owner (you) and data user (organizations). Expectations around how much people’s personal data is worth became falsely inflated, and the mystery surrounding how it’s used became a cause for concern. Moving forward, organizations must design for transparency, so consumers trust that they’re pursuing only the data they need to build new products and services, and that they’re using and storing that data responsibly. Cracks started to appear in the long-held assumption that customers happily share data with the organizations they deal with so long as they get better and more personalized products and services in return. This is something Apple CEO Tim Cook described as a “bunch of bunk.”
- #12: Our cities are changing. Around the globe, lines are blurring between public and private transport, passenger transit and item delivery. The problem is that cities aren’t keeping up, so insufficient regulation and lack of central planning has resulted in a free-for-all that’s leading to urban mobile service clutter and a fragmented user experience. In 2019, organizations must start to consolidate mobility services within a single, coherent ecosystem built on real-time needs.
- #14: The last 50 years have seen a major long term trend towards individualism (especially in the West). It has been driven by the need to feel relevant in a globalized world of megacities, and a parenting trend that started in the 1960s to tell children they are special and unique. People expect organizations to see and engage with them as individuals. But there is a risk that by trying to be more inclusive, organizations inadvertently exclude others. And by trying to speak to the individual, organizations risk saying something not quite right. Eventually, artificial intelligence (AI) will help overcome this paradox of inclusivity. Until then, organizations must evolve their approach beyond stale segmentation to meaningful mindsets if they’re to meet developing expectations.
- #15: Think Big data (quant), thick data (qual = human insights) and wide data (e.g. trends).
- #16: First, digital drove us to our screens. Then, physical fought back. Both dramatically changed our expectations of the physical world – first in retail, then in the workplace, and soon in public spaces. Now, as digital and physical intertwine, organizations must find ways to seamlessly interconnect digital and physical experiences. This will require a fundamental rethink of the approaches and tools for designing spaces in order to meet users’ expectations of greater flexibility and personalization. In our 2018 Trends, we predicted Physical Fights Back against digital with a shift in emphasis away from screens to physical spaces. For years it had been assumed that digital would lead to more of us working and shopping remotely from home. Then, physical space was acknowledged as a powerful way to engage audiences, talent and communities. Our point was that physical was becoming frontstage in the experiences we design. Next, a further shift occurred. People became more global, on-demand, social and holistic, blurring the boundaries between work and play. The resulting digital data powered a race to better quantify human experiences in physical spaces and meet their increasingly personalized demands by creating new ones. Across retail and work, there was a switch from focusing on designing space for technologies to designing space for humans in order to elevate the minds and experiences of its users. Now, however, the emergence of an increasingly integrated approach to digital and physical space is becoming evident, led by the retail environment and followed by work. Convenience powered by seamless connectivity depends on data, and there has been a further shift among retailers to gather, use and act on customer data both more effectively and creatively. BTW – E-commerce is still only 10% of all retail in the US, the same size as the gas station part of retail.
- #18: There’s a new kind of reality on the block. Generated and mixed realities are blurring the boundaries of “truth” and challenging how we value it. As synthetic realities become more normalized in 2019, organizations should look past the drama and fear associated with them. Instead, they should hone new strategies to capitalize on their creative potential and manage the risk of unwittingly featuring in a synthetic reality created by someone else.