2016: Our want-to-do-list

It’s a new year — well, it was — so it’s time for some resolutions. We took a look at some creativity and technology trends and asked ourselves: what kind of projects do we really want to do this year?

1. Meet our artificially intelligent overlords-to-be

Talk about the incoming wave of sophisticated AI and robotics has been around for a few years now — they’ll take our jobs, we’ll fall in love with them, they’ll take over. Outside of films and Siri, though, most of us haven’t really interacted with AI — making these dark threats seem all the more worrying. If AIs are to become autonomous intelligences, with personalities, wouldn’t you like to meet them? And given they may not have bodies, faces, or other recognisable animal or human characteristics, how might you respond? Platforms like Google’s Tensor Flow are making it easier to build and experiment with the technology. Let’s see what we can do with it.

2. Tell stories in virtual reality

Last year the New York Times gave away a million Google Cardboard viewers, and just recently Oculus Rift finally started taking orders. But to us the missing bit is content. For all the innovation, most things we’ve watched still feel like they’re proving a concept, rather than using great stories and characters to engage viewers on an emotional level.

Sure, some great, big-studio games will be released this year. But with cheap 360° cameras on the market, what can be achieved by content creators on a smaller budget? This year we’d like to make VR content people want to watch for its own sake, not merely as an example of the technology in action.

3. Really rethink retail

That “retail” means more than “a store selling stuff” has been a trend for some time now. In an omnichannel world, a brand’s brick-and-mortar manifestation becomes a link in the sales chain rather than the end of it, freeing our humble shop to aspire beyond hosting racks of product.

But if it’s not (just) a buy-things-place, what is a retail outlet? We can turn a store into a destination for entertainment, to exercise, to meet up and hang out, sure — but what about creating a sense of wonder (see below), or the homeliness of a great bookshop, or the meditative, contemplative state of an art museum? It’ll take a mix of tech, design, and theatre — for those brave enough to take the plunge.

4. Start a YouTube series, for grown-ups

Our 2015 prediction was that adults would start migrating media consumption to YouTube, and if you check out YouTube’s new Trending tab, you’ll see videos from Buzzfeed and late night chat shows appealing to a post-teen demo. Meanwhile individual creators like Casey Neistat, Just Between Us and Tom Scott seem to be building audiences with content that differentiates from teen-focused beauty and gaming videos.

But it feels there’s some way to go until YouTube is the go-to media source in offices and family homes. This year we’d like to do our bit, and produce a channel that gets a post-college crowd hooked.

5. Create wonder

What does it mean to create a sense of “wonder” in an audience? The word is evocative but ambiguous — something more intense than the now-hackneyed “surprise and delight,” playing with the world around us to engender a sense of magic. That question will surely be heard later this year, as Emma Rice takes charge artistically at the Globe Theatre and opens with a “wonder season”. The idea that Shakespeare was aiming for wonder in his writing, and not just storytelling, leads to fascinating interpretations. Brands have tried to be storytellers for years now: maybe now they should start thinking about being wondermakers.

6. Make sensory moments

Last summer we took over a gallery at Tate Britain and created a multi-sensory experience called Tate Sensorium. Visitors entered a controlled environment, enveloped in darkness and hush, full of things to touch, smell, taste and hear, while sequenced lighting and sound moved them from painting to painting. The effect was powerful, highly immersive, even overwhelming.

We learnt a lot about how the senses work, and the technologies that exist to stimulate them, so this year we want to apply all that to less controlled environments, and create powerful moments using sensory stimuli to retail outlets, foyers, shopping centres and beyond.

7. Crowbar in blockchain reference here

AKA: skepticism time. As per usual, there’s a bunch of very exciting technologies breaking the horizon which will produce acres of huff and puff in marketing and advertising circles without generating anything that customers want, and will help brands do little more than lose time and money. Sounds cynical, but we feel you should be warned: raise eyebrows at the following.

• Blockchain: the hard-to-explain trust protocol that underpins Bitcoin. You can do interesting non-currency things with it (like authenticate sourcing); but you probably don’t need a strategy for it just yet, #justsaying.
• Internet of Things: talking about products in a home becoming connected isn’t new, but doing something genuinely interesting would be. Cheap kit means time-consuming gimmicks will proliferate. Approach with caution.
• Unrestrained analytics: Consumers’ trust of advertisers is already sufficiently low that they are, by the million, actively opting-out of the walking UX disaster that is banner ads. Tech like cross-device tracking has already attracted the FTC’s attention and will weaponise consumer mistrust still further. Can we all stop angering our customers already?

8. It’s good to talk

That little computer-camera thing in your pocket with the screen that always breaks? It’s a phone, and somewhere in the “mobile revolution” we seem to have lost track of that. The idea of inviting consumers to dial a number sounds rather quaint, but there’s actually lots of fun tech out there for setting up cheap and sophisticated telephony toys. From simple 0330 advice lines, to Twillio’s flexible VOIP APIs: it’s a personal audio experience in your pocket.