The place of design thinking in the new economy

Design thinking as a process and approach to problem is no more the privilege of large corporates but a revolution which will be self-generated at social level. The social revolution by design thinking has to be framed and encourage by corporate and society for the benefit of the world economy. Business and society leaders need to adopt a ‘prosumer’ approach of business; become facilitator of change rather than change maker.

Many companies have already demonstrated that it is possible to align our deep aspiration as human been with efficient market offer and profit generation in a single goal. However rare are those companies who broke the traditional frameworks of producer to consumer.

In the future ecosystem here above presented, values will be generated and self-sustained by people and communities. Business and society will be providing tools, process and solutions to encourage individual and community initiatives. As avatar individuals may want to associate with a multitude of projects cheer to them. Bring their insights and values to the project. The fact that business ventures are built over personal inspiration in a co-creative environment insure the interest for the project. Thanks to crowd sourcing we have tools to assess the ongoing viability of a business rather than relying on stakeholders’ subjective opinion. Individual projects may be connected to larger networking projects under an umbrella of self-learning solution.

In the ideal economy Value Absolute, Value Relative and Profit would be aligned as a single goal for people, business and society.

They will be 3 groups of players in the making of values:

Consumer may want to associate with a particular ecosystem and benefit from it simply as consumer. They are likely to share values generated by the group project as we share values with brands today. The environment provided will invite a few to move from the consumer group towards the leader.

Leader are those who masteries the values shared by the group. They are passionate, specialist, self-motivated, guru, scientist, researcher, etc. They have the leadership profile to involves other into their cause and generate the interest of the general public.

Start-up converts value generation into business venture with the support of business and society leaders. They create the link between the industry and the leader to manufacture, edit and implement solutions.

Business & Society would increasingly become omnipresent and support individuals in their own walk of value creation without interfering. Their role is not to generate changes but facilitate change in society by providing the platform for business.

A democratic approach of innovation accessible to all not in term of consumption but production; which has rightly given the birth to the portmanteau word ‘prosumerism’.

Design thinking will have a dual role. First, it has to help business and society in creating the right platform for the people to develop values of their own. Second, it has to help people in developing their aspiration into profitable values for them and the society.

The disappearing of market trends to assess quality creation

Well I have always been a strong advocate about social trends usage in design thinking. We need to accept that trends does not work the way it used to work. And that contemporary consumers are increasingly versatile. The Internet has so fractured us (people) globally that we no longer are looking for mass-culture experiences earlier provided by public leaders and international brands. The internet is a kaleidoscope of color  design and lifestyle experience which has become the common’s man culture. The best stand next to the worst, the real next to the unreal, and the truth next to the false. It is an incredibly cacophony on which none would find a clue to assess what is right to go with.

"In the old days, style used to be the prerogatives of a small group of people. Now it is a national sport. Ticket sales are exploding. People are pouring into the arena in such vast numbers that none of us can keep track of the rule book. Et voila! Nobody is keeping score. All bets are off. Anything goes.”

Simon Doonan creative director at Barneys upscale 2010

The notion of style or design is not restricted to physical artifact but from a much holistic perspective to the complete ecosystem that surround the usage of a product, system or social organisation. Product and system of all kind are charged of historic, philosophic and anthropological insights that all together describe people’s art of living. As design was made for specific social trends belonging to specific culture and nation; things were simple. Product, system and solution were made for a specific scenario. Today’s consumer are so versatile that design is thrown to an extremely wide range of socio-type who at one particular point of time feel like been receptive to a specific design. Sizing market and assess leading consumer segment behavior become near to impossible. Marketing scholar call it the Generation Z, a generation who’s origin is in constant mutation.In this context no companies, politic, artist or brand would ever find the strength to re-generate the mass culture movement of the past. New tools and technologies are needed to empower consumers in their search of satisfaction.

STC Conference - Social trends analaysis

In august 2011, I was invited to the STC conference in Bangalore, India for a talk in Social Trends and Innovation.

Other speakers were from: Human Factors, IXDA, Yahoo!, Welingkar, balsamiq, FUSEBO,  loop, MK, O'RELLy, Optimal Workshop, Rosenfeld, STC,  Write Concept, etc.

Here is the presentation I have given. The videos of my talk are on Youtube.

Social Trends and Innovation - Patrick Roupin from STC India UX SIG

The reason for me to come back on that presentation is the radical shift we are facing today in analyzing social trends. In fact, we are many designers and trendsetters thinking that trends analysis strategy and process will face radical changes soon.

The fact is that, consumers are increasingly versatile and multi-identity in their behavior. For years we have been stressing on consumer trends as the key factor of user acceptance. Today we realize that even if consumer trends is still the prominent factor of design penetration. It has become increasingly complex to explore.

Consumer trends is between global trends and Industry trends. It is the most sensible aspects of design as it touch people values and behavior to the most. It describe their philosophy and lifestyle. 

Today's world is over saturated by information; people temps to quickly change their moods and desires. The trends market become inconsistent leaving people in a very pluralistic behavior.

The trends tools we are developing may have to embrace the diversity of co-identity that exist in a single individual. For years have been stressing the importance of developing design that reflect consumer lifestyle aspiration in a mono-axial direction. Today's consumers are chameleon, hipper connected, fully networked. Maintaining consistency in their identity become increasingly complex; the impact on product and service design is imminent.

Signs of failure of design thinking in the present economy

In spite of a well-organized design thinking strategy projects often goes to failure due to unpredictable user resistance that cannot be accessed by stakeholders. This fact is commonly accepted by a large majority of design firms in every vertical of the industry. Scholars have been advocating the importance of accepting and celebrating failure in the corporate world to rebound with success.

Encourage people in taking risk seems to be a positive change however the possibility of exploration would continue to increase has the mass consumer market dismantle. Keeping track of success and failure would become irrelevant considering the unique character of each business cases. User resistance factors are increasingly volatile and cluttered.

The three factors that would make business exploration and assessment increasingly complex and expensive are:

• The end of mass consumption and mass culture.
• The spread of specific technological solutions at every end of industry
• The development of emerging markets that would grow the overall amount of consumers and form new clusters.

In that context; corporate companies are required to make a large amount of live test projects, equips themselves with assessment process and develop generic business development solution.

That ecosystem would require a symbiotic relationship between consumer and producer which clearly announce the era of ‘prosumerism’.

End of mass consumer trends to assess the market

In the past decade, we have seen the media industry metamorphosed by entrepreneur journalist of all kind. The development of blogs, social network and unstructured reporting disassembled the news and media industry forcing then in moving from the print to digital format with even more targeted content. The entertainment and musical industry had to run competition with Google, YouTube, Torrent and other video sites who give the chance to anyone to become a user and a creator. Those very few examples prove that content and creation become accessible to all and that the world is getting empowered not by corporate but people who individually create with different level of professionalism. Technology is responsible for the democratization of information in terms of viewing as well as creation.

Since 2008 the number of things connected to the internet exceeds the number of people. By 2020 they will be 50 billion of things connected to the internet. By 2012, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire internet in 2008 - Source Cisco

How long would it take for a typical household to become a micro-industry who create replicate and network values of all kinds. Technologies like 3D printing are on the way of democratization  It gives a chance to contemporary artisan to manufacture their creations without complex outsource. Today lots of people convert their passion into livelihood through the internet. As the rate of unemployment continues to grow, people will continue searching alternatives to the streamline economy. Small scale initiative have the advantage of been socially integrated, flexible and highly personal which allow closeness to the needs of targeted market segmentation. Business and society have the interest in encouraging people in their endeavor of value creation; by providing business platforms to streamline their interest into economic reality.