TARGETED
TRENDS ANALYSIS
The outcome of targeted trends analysis is
not simply being in-the-know, but delivering
inspired, informed and innovative design.
Creating meaningful design requires an organization to understand the world around them,
where they fit into it and how they can appropriately respond to shifting needs and influences. Therefore, it’s key that organizations be able to identify significant and relevant trends
that may affect their situation and strategy.
One powerful feature of trends analysis is its ability to assess and describe the context of an
entity’s position in the world. This process is broadly comprised of three steps: generate, select and frame. The generative step is about gathering influences in the world you believe will
affect your organizational interests. During the selection phase, you identify trends according
to relevant criteria. Finally, during framing, use the relevant trends to define research questions for further exploration or pass them through models that uncover design opportunities.
In this report you’ll find a process to
conduct a targeted trend analysis for
your next design project.
Step One: Generate
Step Two: Selection
Step Three: Framing
An example: AQUAR
Exercise Questions
USING STEEP
If you have a large, ambiguous question, use the STEEP
brainstorm model to generate broad trends that affect the
world. An example of a large, ambiguous question would be
“What are trends affecting human communication?” In
considering the categories of influences emanating from
society, technology, economy, ecology and policy, users can
evaluate the impact of a broader set of influences.
Influences in the society category include changes in
cultural values, ethics, education and even work-life
attitudes. Technology trends relate to the emergence or
recession of tools and techniques we use to solve problems.
These trends can also refer to shifts in in the way technology affects humanity. Economy trends refer to market
patterns, such as growth and decline, shifts in financial
institutions or changes in resource costs. The ecology trend
category addresses not only changes in the natural world,
but also our relationship to nature with regard to
infrastructure. Finally, policy trends refer to shifts in
governmental regulation, as well and changes in political
institutions both from a national and transnational
perspective.
Influences to consider when generating STEEP trends
include:
Society
Demographic shifts
Changes in cultural values
Changes in attitudes toward institutions
GENERATE
To begin, one must identify and categorize the
influences in the world around them.
Trends are merely observations of influences in the world. The best way to find and record
trends is through careful observation of shifts in values. Reading widely and consulting domain
experts are important ways of gathering this knowledge. It’s also helpful to keep in mind that
not every trend needs to be backed up with a slew of data points. Anecdotes are useful in conveying emerging trends that have not met with widespread adoption. After all, if an observation
is backed up with volumes of supporting data, it’s not likely to be an
emerging trend. Depending upon the scope of the problem or question that you are
attempting to address, there are generally two ways to generate robust sets of trends. These
approaches are STEEP and CISE.
Technology
Emerging technologies
Dying technologies
Economy
Emerging or declining markets
Employment shifts
Income shifts
Ecology
Resource availability
Changes in the built environment
Policy
Regulatory changes
Bureaucratic changes
Institutional stability
PHOTO CREDITS: ZOOM0-ALLCLUSTERS-NONAMES, CHEF_ELE (FLICKR); SLOW FOOD USA, KEVIN KREJCI (FLICKR); PROTEST 5, AHMAD HAMMOUD (FLICKR); BRONZE BULL, ZEROONE
(FLICKR); WATER POLLUTION WITH TRASH DISPOSAL OF WASTE AT THE GARBAGE BEACH, EPSOS.DE (FLICKR)
USING CISE
If your question or problem is more granular, or closer to
the product-level, use the CISE model to generate categorybased trends that directly affect your organization. An
example of a more granular question is “What are trends affecting smartphone adoption?” CISE investigates shifts and
influences affecting consumers, industry, story and experience within the context of a product development objective.
Influences in the consumer category include shifts in values,
attitudes and behaviors as they relate to the product or service. Industry trends include market-oriented considerations
like shifts in competitors’ strategies, new business models,
or partnerships. The story category relates to branding and
marketing, including how a product’s value is communicated
to the consumer, or if there are changes in promotional
channels. The experience category addresses changes to
the way a consumer experiences the product, such as the
context of use, point-of-purchase or even aesthetic trends.
Influences to consider when generating CISE trends include:
Consumer
Emerging behaviors and habits related to category
Shifts in demographic-oriented attitudes to category
Industry
Shifts in competitive strategies
Emerging players in the market
Category expansion/shrink
Partnerships
Story
Shifts in brand tropes
Shifts in the category value proposition
Shifts in promotional strategies
Experience
Context-of-use changes
Point-of-purchase shifts
Color, finish, material changes
Due to the breadth of domains and disciplines that need to
be referenced during a trend brainstorm, it’s imperative that
a diversity of viewpoints, interests and expertise are evaluated throughout. Prioritize internal and external experts with
a wide variety of domain knowledge. Focused expertize can
result in overly narrow and fragmented ideas.
PHOTO CREDITS: MOM AND HER NEW IPAD, RICHARD (FLICKR); 3D PRINTED OBJECT MADE WITH NETFABB, CREATIVE TOOLS (FLICKR); ONLINE PRIVACY IS DEAD, HOBVIAS SUDONEIGHM
(FLICKR); PLEASE CONNECT TO ITUNES, NATALIE GRECO (FLICKR)
SELECTION
Filter your set to relevant trends based on
mutually defined criteria.
The next step in the trends analysis process is the selection
of relevant trends. The relevancy of a trend to an organization can be based on many factors, including probability and
longevity.
Questions that frame these trend factors include:
1. What are unstoppable drivers that affect a company or
organization’s circumstances? (E.g., global population booms;
increasing scarcity of resources.)
Questions to determine trend filtering criteria include:
What is the pace of the product development lifecycle?
How quickly can the organization execute on designs that
would reference quickly emerging trends?
Considering risk, is the supporting data quantitative or anecdotal?
How widely could this trend be adopted?
2. What are trends that can be seen as reactions to these
unstoppable drivers? (E.g., implementations of efficient product design; corporate responsibility initiatives.)
3. What are the more fleeting or conflicting trends that, while
less momentous, influence consumer and product experiences? (E.g., consumers’ need for tradition in an unstable world;
products and experiences that provide whimsy and delight
against a background of economic austerity.)
Is the project focused on incremental or discontinuous innovation?
How critical is the project to the future of the organization’s
success?
Does the trend have an obvious market opportunity?
Does the trend reference the values of the organization?
Asking these questions will identify specific trends that can
be weighed against criteria that measure impact on an organization’s strategy.
Probability and longevity are important considerations to
analyze in the context of a project or initiative’s time frame.
But, so are factors like an organization’s willingness to take
on risk and how a trend aligns with the company’s brand
(E.g.: A semiconductor manufacturer may not be particularly
concerned about fashion trends in Japan.) Once an organization has determined its situation within the context of these
trends, it can begin to use them to its advantage.
Could the trend affect the organization’s product category, or
adjacent categories?
Could the trend interfere with the organization’s brand or market position?
SWOT: STRATEGY-ORIENTED TRENDS ANALYSIS
By comparing an organization’s strengths and weaknesses
with a set of relevant external trends, SWOT analysis opens
up discussions about where to go or how to proceed. It shows
directionality in trend factors like consumers’ values, habits,
as well as, market movements relevant to the client’s product category. Here a fixture company compares its internal
strengths and weaknesses to relevant external influences.
The approach also generates questions designed to fill gaps
in organizational knowledge that can determine appropriate
strategies. In turn, these questions help organizations decide
whether to build upon current strengths in response to beneficial trends or mitigate present weaknesses in the face of challenging trends. The research questions above were generated
by comparing a company’s strategic weaknesses to potentially
threatening influences.
FRAMING
Once you’ve selected relevant trends, use them
to guide research and inspire design. Here we’ll
focus on two framing approaches: SWOT and 360.
360: EXPERIENCE-ORIENTED TRENDS ANALYSIS
If design inspiration is the preferred outcome of the trend
analysis, overlaying a relevant trend on top of the current
consumer experience can uncover many opportunities. Most
consumer experience models are built around an Attract,
(how a user becomes aware of a Internal
product) engage (how a user interacts with a product) and
extend (how a user shares or repurchases a product) timeline.
PHOTO CREDIT: ZOOM3-NONAMES, CHEF_ELE (FLICKR)
In 360 trends analysis, discrete steps of the consumer journey
are passed through a trend to inspire design opportunities.
Here we see a company compare a few consumer experiences
relevant to the home fixtures category against observed trends
to generate potential design opportunities.
A trend analysis helps Aquar prioritize
strategies in response to changing markets.
For example, the company believes that the increasing
scarcity of water will continue to be a long term consideration
with a high likelihood of impacting its core product design.
To illustrate how the targeted trend
analysis process works we created,
Aquar, a fictional household bathroom
fixtures company.
AQUAR
AN EXAMPLE
Consider Aquar, a fictional household bathroom fixtures company. Initially, Aquar uses the CISE
model as a way to collect influences related to its product line and company strategy. In order
to return a comprehensive set of trends, the company solicits observations from a broad range
of internal discipline leaders including R&D, marketing and operations. It also consults external
experts and data to gather information from other domains like consumer electronics, household goods, architecture, industrial design, etc.
The company then selects the trends it deems most relevant to its objectives and strategic
direction. It uses criteria like predicted longevity and probability of occurrence to prioritize and
select trends of the most importance.
The next step of the process requires Aquar to address its
understanding of its strengths and weaknesses, using both
internal and external sources of information. Once the
company has compiled a list of relevant external trend influences and has acquired a sense of its strengths and weaknesses, it begins the process of cross-referencing this data to
uncover opportunities.
For example, as a 100-year-old company, Aquar’s strengths
include an established brand equity associated with quality,
durability and excellent craftsmanship. It has also recently
launched a fairly successful line of luxury home spa fixtures
in its domestic market. The company understands that the
current economic environment has trended consumer sentiment toward products that evoke stable traditions and
authentic heritage. From a marketing point of view, this
may be a good time for Aquar to refocus on the strength its
original brand story, instead of its current attempts to feature
more contemporary designs.
Another positive trend for Aquar highlights strong global
growth in the luxury market. This prompts the company to
investigate how its luxury spa line could be adapted for
greater appeal outside the domestic market. For example,
how do consumers in different regions perceive luxury? How
could Aquar accommodate these different attitudes and perspectives? How would these consumer insights be rendered
into appropriate designs, considering its competitors’ designs
are largely undifferentiated?
In examining its weaknesses, Aquar understands that it has
been focusing solely on hardware and traditional materials.
This weakness is of particular relevance given the rising trend
of ‘smart’ technologies that integrate software-based features into durables and appliances. Further, Aquar is losing
domestic market share after the unexpected and successful introduction of washlets by its competitors (a washlet is
essentially an electric bidet. Some models even have wireless
capabilities).
The company knows it can bide its time and hope that these
trends are mere fads (although prior introductions in other
markets show no reversal), or examine ways to authentically
incorporate electronic features into its products. To do this, the
company will need to carefully investigate consumers’ perceptions of these features within the context of the Aquar brand.
Ultimately, this process will have a broader impact by helping
to reinvigorate product lines, unearth new business opportunities and support discontinuous innovation.
By comparing its strengths and weaknesses to trends that
could potentially reinforce or threaten its position, Aquar can
respond to opportunities in a more relevant and targeted manner. If Aquar wishes to address opportunities for design at the
consumer experience level, it can use the 360 model for inspiration. For example, how might the design and brand-oriented
trend of ‘handcrafted luxury’ -- where craft, art and tradition
reign -- affect the 360-degree product experience of Aquar’s
consumer? Questions like this can quickly generate designs
worthy of validation.
Consider Aquar’s present (yet not exhaustive) model of the
consumer’s experience with the product:
1. Situate and install
2. Use
3. Maintain
Using this as a guide, the company can now quickly generate
design opportunities that address consumer desire for
handcrafted luxury in each of these stages: More opportunities
for installers to add personal touches. More malleable materials could emphasize hand-crafted value. Addition of delicate
materials that beautiful patina would enhance the use experience. Inclusion of luxurious, natural finishes that minimize the
need for cleaning.
The options are as limited as an organization’s imagination. If
Aquar extends the consumer experience model into steps like
learning about the product or shopping for it, more
opportunities are generated.
Trend analysis is less about style and
more about substance.
CONCLUSION
The outcome of a more targeted approach to trends analysis is not
one of simply being in-the-know, but being empowered to deliver inspired, informed and innovative design. It requires an organization to
be frank about its strengths and weaknesses so it can mitigate challenges, improve its existing situation and explore exciting opportunities.
1. Consider the scope of your project. Will the outcome generate incremental innovations or discontinuous innovations?
2. Gather a large team of individuals to trend-generation
brainstorms. Make sure as many perspectives as possible are
present from a wide variety of workgroups and domains. Bring
in external experts to assist generating trend in domains with
which your organization is unfamiliar.
3. Once trends have been identified, try to determine their
place on the cycle of adoption. Are they newly emerging? Are
they mostly hype? Have they begun to gain adoption?
4. Determine your organization’s comfort with emerging
trends. Is it more comfortable following trends or more eager
to be a trend influencer? Following a trend runs the risk of
generating ‘me too’ products and experiences. Adopting cutting edge influences exposes organizations to fads.
5. Determine which trends align well with your organization’s
strengths. Identify questions can you ask to inform strategies
that will reinforce these strengths.
6. Determine which trends may expose organizational weaknesses. Identify questions you can ask to fill gaps in competencies. Determine if current organizational strengths can be
leveraged or modified to address threatening trends.
Authored by Reece Dano, Researcher and Strategist at Artefact
Reece is a design researcher who has investigated user behaviors and analyzed
trends for a broad range of industries, including consumer electronics, household goods, durable goods, medical, athletic apparel, finance, retail and hospitality. Reece has a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of
Washington and a Master of Music Composition from The Peabody Conservatory
of The Johns Hopkins University.