Last week, I had the opportunity to speak at the Healthcare Experience Design Conference in Boston, MA. My talk, The #NXT Generation of Healthcare outlined the new expectations of Millennials in regards to health and healthcare, and 5 trends the healthcare industry should incorporate into their offerings to surprise and delight this new set of patients.
The 5 trends:
#bodyhacking
#drgoogle
#visiblehealth
Thanks to everyone who attended. Video will be available soon.
Tomorrow’s cover today: luckily, dysfunction in Washington is only one side of America’s story.
Trying out this new format to share GenY trends. This is for a piece around what’s trending in restaurant design.
The idea is to use the design sensibility—ethnographic field research, sketching, prototyping—to make a retail space run as smoothly as a high-performance car. “Instead of designing tangible things, it’s about designing all the interactions a customer has with the brand,” says Kerry Bodine, a vice president and principal analyst with Forrester (FORR). “One by one, brands are taking the plunge into this world, and there is a lot of hunger in the U.S. for these services.”
#madeintheusa
If there is anything Dov Charney and Rick Santorum can agree on, it’s that
the internet can be harshAmerican-made products are pretty great. Companies like GE, Apple and even the legendary Frisbee-maker Wham-O are relocating production of their wares stateside. While there is a solid business rationale – reduced shipping costs, protection of IP, ease of collaboration between the people who design the product and those that make it – there is an equally strong emotional component. Whether it signifies quality craftsmanship, a resurgence of our economy, or is just a rosy afterglow from the Olympics, people from Detroit to LA are bursting with a new nationalism that’s satisfied by buying stuff labeled “Made in the USA.”“GE’s appliance unit does $5 billion in business—and today, 55 percent of that revenue comes from products made in the United States. By the end of 2014, GE expects 75 percent of the appliance business’s revenue to come from American-made products like dishwashers, water heaters, and refrigerators, and the company expects that its sales numbers will be larger, as the housing market revives” (The Atlantic).
“…In a survey last year of 1,300 affluent shoppers by Unity Marketing, a Pennsylvania-based consulting and marketing group, respondents ranked the United States first (higher than Italy or France) in perceived manufacturing quality of luxury goods” (NYT).
“In an email to supporters of his grassroots group ‘Patriot Voices’ Tuesday, [Rick Santorum] unveiled a ‘Made in the USA Christmas Challenge.’ ‘We want you to … buy as many Christmas and holiday presents as you can that are made right here in the U.S.,’ reads the email from Santorum and his wife, Karen. ‘As you hit the stores on Black Friday, be mindful of who’s made what you’re buying’” (USNews).
“To some, this inauguration, in fact, may have been as much an occasion for celebrating the first lady’s style… Her choices are safe but interesting, with enough of a story and a variety to keep fashion obsessives engrossed. Wearing a broad array of mostly American designers also feeds into the idea that she is doing her part for the fashion industry” (NYT).
Implications:
We’re going to have to learn how to make stuff again.
image via American Apparel
Designer Kevin Young’s sketchbook.
ROUGH LUXE
Get used to your pricey dinner being served on a scarred farmhouse table by a whippersnapper in a dirty thermal. Rough Luxe is a design aesthetic that has permeated everything from food to fashion to architecture. It places importance on good storytelling and a restrained combination of raw elements. It’s success is in it’s ability to heighten the relationships and sensorial experiences we have with objects, environments, or brands by emphasizing the original, unique or authentic elements. Elements are often repurposed while holding true to their raw character and mixed thoughtfully with unobtrusive technology. The overall experience is luxurious, as the quality and simplicity of ingredients remains thoughtful, whether it be a walnut slab or iPad checkout system.
“But collecting these old things, it’s like there is an aura attached to them. It’s not some prepackaged product being foisted on you by a big corporation” (NYT).
“The worn, vintage and unfinished look of ‘rough luxe’ is more than just the masculine side of shabby chic. It creates the kind of authenticity that is unscripted history in physical form. It reinvents the past by redefining luxury today. Here design rejects minimalism and extravagance and celebrates imperfection. It is the embodiment of real at a time when the unexpected and the surprising is valued higher than pristine and probable” (Amazon).
“It’s artful dissonance. For those who have come to think of luxury as smooth, shiny, polished, refined and expensive, rough luxe will undoubtedly come off as unfinished, unplanned and somewhat chaotic” (WSJ Magazine).
“Gjelina is one of the coolest, hippest restaurants in LA. The decor is vintage industrial chic with rustic wood tables and exposed “Edison Bulbs” dangling from weathered metal bars” (Consuming LA).
IMPLICATIONS:
How can we imbue our products with a meaningful history and help their stories be told and felt?
“Great food should be like great design…”
Gianfranco Zaccai, President and Co-Founder of Continuum, is the star of Herman Miller‘s latest video for their “Why Design” series.
(Source: continuuminnovation.com)
This week, Continuum will be participating in the TEDxOrangeCoast conference. The theme for this year: “Redefining Relevance.” Lara Lee, Continuum’s Chief Innovation & Operating Officer, will be speaking and the NXT team that I lead will share trends that inspire how we design the future.
As our clients race to stay ahead of the competition and ethnographic research becomes more commonplace— NXT tracks changes in culture, business and technology to combine emerging trends with our insights about people helping us to make sure our innovations remain relevant today and in the future.
NXT will invite TEDxOC attendees to snap a pic in their photobooth and join a trend they’ve named “#TagMe.” This trend illustrates how people today are capturing, documenting and sharing their lives in real-time to “remain relevant” in their own social circles. Let’s face it, in a world where you are your profile page, if there’s no proof, it literally didn’t happen. So please, visit us on October 10th at the conference to snap a pic and be sure to check out the TEDxOC facebook page to see who was there!
OUTSOURCE YOUR LIFE
The newest outsourcing isn’t Fortune 500 companies sending work overseas. Instead, it’s average people relying on technology to make time for the things they want to do and avoid the things they don’t. New jobs that never existed before have been created in a world where individuals are increasingly specialized.
“In an effort to improve productivity, some companies are turning to personal concierge services. The idea is to let someone else plan employees’ trips — both for work and leisure — find them a plumber or a dog sitter, or choose where to take their car for an oil change….“Concierge services used to be associated with this white-glove service of bringing you a lobster at 4 a. m., but the new concierge is more about saving time,” said Daniel Abas, founder of Red Butler” (NYT).
“In the 1940s, there were no life coaches; in 2010, there were 30,000. The last time I Googled “dating coach,” 1,200,000 entries popped up. “Wedding planner” had over 25 million entries. The newest entry, Rent-a-Friend, has 190,000 entries” (NYT).
“Apps such as Habit Maker, Habit Breaker let users choose the behavior they’d like to target, whether it’s saying “thank you” more or going shopping less” (The Atlantic).
IMPLICATIONS
If we farm out our actions and our decisions, how will we take responsibility for our actions?
Check out the new set up at work— #worklifemerge
Data can’t tell you where the world is headed.
Lara Lee, cited by Stephanie Clifford in Social Media Are Giving a Voice to Taste Buds via NY Times.com
In a piece about the fad flavors for corn chips and cosmetics colors is buried a bit of deep insight by Lara Lee, chief innovation and operating officer at the design consultancy Continuum, which helped design the Swiffer and the One Laptop per Child project.
Our knowledge is constrained by the fabric of the post-normal. The notion that there is a deterministic future ahead of us, rolling out like a yellow brick road, is an illusion. Next year emerges out of an opaque sea of trillions of semi-independent decisions made in the present by billions of individuals and groups, cascading into each other and impacting each other in literally unknowable ways. When systems become as complex as the modern world there are no tools that can see more than a very short distance into the future.
Yes, taste makers can concoct a spicy chip that sells well this season in southern California, or what beer will be popular in NYC for Labor Day, but we can’t predict, for example, the invention of alternatives to antibiotics in a world where bugs are growing antibiotic-resistant. There are limits to our knowledge:
Stowe Boyd, Re: The Future Impact Of Big Data In 2020 and The Limits Of Our Knowledge
Big data is unlikely to increase the certainty about what is going to happen in anything but the nearest of near futures — in weather, politics, and buying behavior — because uncertainty and volatility grow along with the interconnectedness of human activities and institutions across the world. Big data is itself a factor in the increased interconnectedness of the world: as companies, governments, and individuals take advantage of insights gleaned from big data, we are making the world more tightly interconnected, and as a result (perhaps unintuitively) less predictable.
(via stoweboyd)
That’s my boss!
SO EXCITED TO BE A SPECIAL GUEST @ xanadu:
Special guest post!
Sean: We don’t have a full length mirror in our LA office bathrooms, which disappoints me because I was looking forward to showing off the old black running sneakers im wearing with no socks. There’s something about the holes in them that I think make them cooler. Today it’s hot, so I’m wearing these shorts (actually a bathing suit). I wasn’t feeling great so I wanted to wear a sweatshirt, but opted for this FutureSport jacket instead.
![nxtfuture:
#madeintheusa
If there is anything Dov Charney and Rick Santorum can agree on, it’s that the internet can be harsh American-made products are pretty great. Companies like GE, Apple and even the legendary Frisbee-maker Wham-O are relocating production of their wares stateside. While there is a solid business rationale – reduced shipping costs, protection of IP, ease of collaboration between the people who design the product and those that make it – there is an equally strong emotional component. Whether it signifies quality craftsmanship, a resurgence of our economy, or is just a rosy afterglow from the Olympics, people from Detroit to LA are bursting with a new nationalism that’s satisfied by buying stuff labeled “Made in the USA.”
“GE’s appliance unit does $5 billion in business—and today, 55 percent of that revenue comes from products made in the United States. By the end of 2014, GE expects 75 percent of the appliance business’s revenue to come from American-made products like dishwashers, water heaters, and refrigerators, and the company expects that its sales numbers will be larger, as the housing market revives” (The Atlantic).
“…In a survey last year of 1,300 affluent shoppers by Unity Marketing, a Pennsylvania-based consulting and marketing group, respondents ranked the United States first (higher than Italy or France) in perceived manufacturing quality of luxury goods” (NYT).
“In an email to supporters of his grassroots group ‘Patriot Voices’ Tuesday, [Rick Santorum] unveiled a ‘Made in the USA Christmas Challenge.’ ‘We want you to … buy as many Christmas and holiday presents as you can that are made right here in the U.S.,’ reads the email from Santorum and his wife, Karen. ‘As you hit the stores on Black Friday, be mindful of who’s made what you’re buying’” (USNews).
“To some, this inauguration, in fact, may have been as much an occasion for celebrating the first lady’s style… Her choices are safe but interesting, with enough of a story and a variety to keep fashion obsessives engrossed. Wearing a broad array of mostly American designers also feeds into the idea that she is doing her part for the fashion industry” (NYT).
Implications:
We’re going to have to learn how to make stuff again.
image via American Apparel](http://24.media.tumblr.com/2298ff5b9b9f589d5832aac96ea0157b/tumblr_mh5k0aJwkD1ro62wco1_500.jpg)
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