The 12 Trends That Will Rule Products In 2013
Think 2013 will spell the end of good old analog and human interaction? Eh, not so fast according to a group of agency experts.
WRITTEN BY: Chris Butler
Near the end of 2012, a group of associates at Ziba, a design and innovation agency out of Portland, OR, got together to review what they had learned over the course of the year. Working with dozens of clients who serve customers around the world, the designers spent a lot of time observing people as they interact with technology, services, and experiences, noticing how they seek solutions to everyday problems and make decisions. In the process, certain patterns emerge so forcefully that they’re practically unavoidable.
Meeting over three sessions spread out over a week, 23 Zibites (designers, researchers, and creative directors) discussed the patterns they saw, and distilled them down to the 12 insights they thought were most current and useful, to them and to our clients. Each one is presented here, as a brief essay that suggests how they feel it will affect business practices in 2013.
The mind is a competitive environment.
Our understanding of how we decide has evolved dramatically over the past 20 years, and it paints a messy picture. Rather than logical conclusions based on clear needs and preferences, choices are often just the slim visible portion of a rowdy internal struggle, pitting conflicting ideas and beliefs against each other. Even our most certain conclusions turn out to be stories we create after the fact, convincing ourselves that we’ve preferred chocolate to vanilla all along.
Be okay with the chaos. The smartest organizations in 2013 will embrace this conflict, and acknowledge the complexity in their customers’ minds. This means services that let you be predictable one day and impulsive the next, and products that appeal to values that once seemed in tension: eco and luxury, traditional and playful, retro and hyper-modern.
Revisit our blog next week for more trends that will affect business practices in 2013.