Originally Published: March 2012

This was my dissertation whilst studying a BEng in Product Design and Manufacture at the University of Nottingham. View the PDF here.

This report analyses how home products have changed from 1900–2012 and uses this analysis, combined with futurologist literature, to present and explain four important trends which will affect home products from 2012 to 2020. The report follows the effects of mass production, wars, social responsibility and technology on design as well as how these affect and initiated the design movements, such as modernism and post modernism. It is shown that the four defining trends are:

• A physical digital world.
• Personalisation.
• The connected home.
• Adaptive technology.

With these trends a future scenario is proposed in which trends and fashions are short lived, self expression in the home becomes more popular and home products become more connected to the internet and begin to be more adaptive to human lifestyles. Some example future products are described including a larger and more important role of the internet enabled television, SMART home lighting and domestic 3D printers. The accuracies and inaccuracies of the report are mentioned, including a possible need for a more extensive report and the effectiveness of historical analysis.

This report aims to help inform the readers thoughts about emerging home trends so that they are more informed for the development and creation of their own projects.