2023 FutureView Design Trend Report: Conscious Calibration
Sparked by pivotal changes in humanity, technology, and culture, we believe that this decade marks the Conscious Era of digital transformation. An evolving level of consciousness between humans and machines is driving the need for digital experiences that are more intelligent, immersive, systemic, and social. These four areas of transformation are the guiding forces for conscious experience design and thoughtful product innovation, and they set the framework for our view of the future in 2023 and beyond.
Last year, exuberance drove a hype cycle that touted new technology often at the expense of confirming its alignment with genuine human needs. But today’s climate is adding a dose of reality. A new lens on innovation reveals the need for more practical, useful, and empathetic product design. Product teams are reframing products from aspirational ideals to meaningful realities. Successful products will be borne out of true human insight and real value for people.
Calibrating From Hype to Reality
Over the past year, accelerated technological progress and elevated consumer demand delivered record results for businesses and consumers alike. We witnessed a watershed moment of abundance and growth driven by rapid digital innovation. But as with any acceleration event, we’re now seeing a natural stage of calibration that’s reshaping innovation.
As we start 2023, it’s critical that companies consciously calibrate strategies in the face of economic headwinds. Similar to how an aircraft accelerates after take off and then calibrates its systems to reach an optimal cruising altitude and speed for a more sustainable long-term trajectory, the business innovation continuum requires calibration for long-term performance. Realignment of innovation strategies to navigate more conservative market conditions will prioritize value that’s in tune with user needs and mindsets, and fit naturally into users’ lives. This pragmatic lens focuses innovation on shorter-term realities rather than lofty aspirations that are further out.
The Four Conscious Design Themes For 2023
Social Essentialism
Social wellbeing will focus on essential activities that are most sustainable over toxic consumption patterns.
Intelligent Cooperation
Intelligent, AI-driven products will facilitate cooperative relationships with users rather than operating autonomously.
Immersive Connection
Immersive design will enable more meaningful human-to-machine connections rather than completely virtualized ones.
SystemicTrust
Systemic products will be designed to engender trust through community empowerment over trustless technology solutions.
Download the FutureView 2023 Trend Report here.
Social: Design for Essentialism
First Things First
After years of maximalist consumption behaviors, consumers are thoughtfully reevaluating priorities, resources, money, and effort to prioritize products and experiences that provide essential value.
Consumers are narrowing spending and interest as a result. The end of the pandemic in many parts of the world has coincided with an increase of economic, geopolitical, and environmental challenges. The result can be measured in scarcity, more expensive essential goods, and increased human migration. For those consumers who have been lucky enough to avoid calamity, there is an increased focus on the essentials — and an awareness of the fragility of security.
Consumers are prioritizing improving and maintaining physical and mental health — including reevaluating their work. A growing desire for green tech and inclusive solutions indicates that this renewed consciousness is influencing purchasing priorities. At the same time, it’s evident that people are willing to cautiously invest in experiences and activities that align with their current values and mindset. As consumer preferences move from maximalism to essentialism, successful product designers will calibrate their product strategies to align more closely with their users’ priorities.
See more examples of Social Essentialism trends.
How to Prepare
- Ensure that your product aligns with customers’ essential priorities by measuring innovation against users’ needs of health, safety, connection, and global awareness.
- Build flexibility and user control into experiences and products to deliver the highest level of value. Consider how digital experiences can shift to provide the most essential use cases based on the device surface.
- Consider whether your products can serve both the individual customer and their community. Support consumers in their connection to their communities.
Intelligent: Design for Cooperation
The Dream Team
In the year ahead, we will witness “cooperative intelligence” lead as an essential core to digital products and services. AI is the defining “conscious” technology of the decade — growing more aware and smarter every day.
But science fiction has led our imaginations to think of artificial intelligence as “oracle-like” — an intelligence that can function autonomously. In reality, AI will be most impactful and effectively adopted as it is used to augment human capabilities cooperatively. In 2023, we see the focus of AI shifting from a fully autonomous force to a powerful technology that facilitates cooperation between intelligent services and people — creating new, more valuable digital partnerships.
Calibrating AI to engender trust, relatability, and emotional connections with people can protect human autonomy and enable users to collaborate with intelligent systems as “digital partners.” New technology, including neural networks within generative AI, is inspiring an array of new cooperative AI skills — from artistic creation to code automation. It’s also sparking fundamental questions about the role of agency, creativity, and authenticity. It is important for product developers and businesses to leverage AI-enabled technologies in ways that engage human cooperation and not simply replace it. Only then will intelligent products offer valuable assistance and true digital partnerships that simplify people’s lives.
See more examples of Intelligent Cooperation trends.
How to Prepare
- Research consumer and employee expectations to understand their expectations and experiences in cooperating with AI-enabled products, both explicit and implicit.
- Map cooperative AI workflows to assess where human empowerment and machine automation deliver the most value.
- Determine the persona and style of your intelligent systems with use of AI personas.
Immersive: Design for Connection
Back to Reality
A vision of the Metaverse, fully immersive virtual worlds experienced via VR headsets, has been driven more by tech hype than by true consumer sentiment.
While virtual worlds will play some role in our future, mass adoption is further out. We see the Metaverse phenomenon as a mass desire to connect, participate in groups, and escape the day-to-day. The fantasy of a completely digital, ultimately customizable alternative world gained traction during the locked-down months of the pandemic, but as people return to more normal activities in the physical world, a more realistic view of immersive experiences is taking hold.
In 2023, we expect immersive experiences to be calibrated to meet people where they are, in reality, today. Products that naturally enrich connections across spaces, senses, and communities are gaining sustainable traction. We believe the Metaverse represents the next stage of spatial computing, enabling technology to integrate into living spaces, not just screens. In this way, spatial technology is becoming more aware of dynamic environments and allowing more immersive interactions across physical and virtual realities. Near-term solutions will eliminate technology barriers and create customer experiences that are fluid, intuitive, and enriching. This year, designers should calibrate multi-sensory interactions, spatial environments, and seamless ecosystems to create valuable immersive experiences that adapt to people and enable more natural interactions and connections.
See more examples of Immersive Connection trends.
How to Prepare
- Focus on reducing friction in existing experiences as a first step to more seamless, immersive experiences that are valuable to users.
- Avoid the hype and focus product strategies on alignment of immersive solutions that meet real human needs now, but that lead to greater innovation in the future.
- Expand 3D spatial design capabilities and skills to prepare for more multidimensional experiences in the future.
Systemic: Design for Trust
Big Brain Trust
Web3 and blockchain promise a shift in power to the larger human community over corporate entities and a redefinition of ownership of personal data. But, the promise needs to be better understood and trusted by the typical consumer.
Instead, there is a rise in distrust exacerbated by high-profile failures in the industry. While the reality may lag, the bold and necessary promise of Web3 and blockchain is ultimate trust delivered by a trustless system — assuming computers are fail-safe, accurate, and maintained by scrupulous people.
We believe that in these early stages of Web3 and Blockchain, trust will need to be earned by institutions and individuals through complete transparency. As these decentralized systems evolve, businesses will benefit from connected people and groups, not simply connected products. Calibration of products that embody security, ultimate transparency, and control by users will make more rapid adoption of Web3 and Blockchain possible.
See more examples of Systemic Trust trends.
How to Prepare
- Create digital spaces to foster conversations between content/product creators and fans.
- Invest in organizational transparency by acknowledging risks involved in participating in new systems and experiences.
- Balance equity and diversity across decentralized communal experiences with user councils and shared insights.
A More Conscious Future
In 2023, we see a critical theme of Conscious Calibration guiding innovation. Even though the winds may be shifting, digital transformation will continue. But, we believe it will be informed by a more sustainable approach that delivers longer-term value. In this complex environment, successful innovation will meet increasingly nuanced user needs across digital and physical activities. To that end, designers must consciously calibrate innovation to align with users’ expectations across the four dimensions of digital transformation — creating more intelligent, immersive, systemic, and social experiences.
