Fjord Trends look back: 2014
Fifteen years of making business and design predictions, but how do our thoughts through the years seem to us now?
Fjord Trends 2022 will be our fifteenth report into what’s coming up for the business and design industries. To celebrate this milestone, we’ve asked some of our leadership team to pick out one trend from each of the past 15 years, to share their own thoughts and to ponder how things have panned out since. This is part seven.
This episode our Fjord Trends 2022 countdown is all about 2014 and it’s written by Celia Romaniuk, Managing Director of Design Experience for Accenture Interactive, Stockholm, Sweden.
As with everything, context is king, so let’s set the scene for the year leading up to launch, with some cultural references that might take you right back. Edward Snowden hit the headlines for leaking NSA information to the media, and the Boston Marathon was the target of a bomb attack. Lance Armstrong admitted to doping in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, “Breaking Bad” wrapped up, and 16-year-old New Zealander, Lorde, stormed global charts with her debut album.
My favorite trend: Living arrows
By Celia Romaniuk
What we said back then…
Brands used to be control freaks. But now users have high expectations for a more humanized relationship with their products and services, putting them in the command seat. In the past, we’ve seen brands address this by engaging in conversation with users openly on social networks or including their input in marketing campaigns. Now, brands need to relinquish their control in a new way: reacting more nimbly to their audience’s needs, infusing empathy and delight into every interaction, and being present in every interaction.
When I read through the trend report, I notice that some of our predictions have hit the mark: cash has all but disappeared, and we authenticate our bank accounts with our faces and thumbprints without thinking too much about it. But some things did not make it and have since been forgotten — and those who dream of the mainstream adoption of the connected home are still waiting.
Living arrows is the kind of trend that you look back on and wonder how it was a trend at all — surely things were always this way? The fact that it was a trend is a reminder that they were not, and the reality we take for granted now was at some point created.
In essence, Living Arrows describes how brands were becoming less controlled and controlling and starting to interact with their audiences. By 2014, social media was far from new, and it had become part of the everyday. This was “the year of the Selfie”, the year of Ellen DeGeneres’ celebrity-packed group photo at the Oscars. And just as we saw celebrities step out from behind the mask of their PR and interact directly with their fans, we saw brands doing the same.
Companies were engaging in discussions with their customers and critics in online forums, and we saw brands experimenting with being more transparent between employees and customers. In our trend, we recognized that this new relationship was characterized by a new emphasis on value and values: as parasocial relationships grew and people began to feel that they “knew” brands and customers more closely, they wanted to feel that there was a sense of shared values.
Now, in 2021, it is hard to imagine a brand not interacting with their customers. We take it for granted that we design for open engagement, cocreation, community and shared values. An openness, even porousness, between brand and customers is desired and strived for. The trend towards people wanting to see their values reflected by companies has been a persistent theme in our trends in the years since 2014 and we see it reflected in other research as well, such as our 2020 Consumer Pulse Report.
Now when we work with clients to create new areas of business, we are often fortunate to be working at the discovery and product definition phases, where we can shape the experience, and these questions of values and ongoing conversation with customers are an ongoing theme, almost a touchstone, for our work. We always ask how we can keep the conversation going, how we can listen to the conversations around this new product or service so that we can fold it back in to ongoing development. And now, when there is an imperative for sustainable products and services, how we help our clients show values that lead the way.
Fjord Trends 2022 is coming soon. Be among the first to know when it goes live. Sign up here to be notified.
