Greetings, trend enthusiasts!
In my first article, I discussed trend prediction and pitfalls, especially the hype and FOMO surrounding certain trends. Many companies are quick to react but rarely take the time to break trends down before deciding whether or not to follow them. To help you be more informed when engaging with trends, I decided to share my trend analysis process in this article.
Trend Collection: The PESTLE Approach
To predict the future, I like to use a framework called PESTLE. It's like having a crystal ball but with more acronyms. PESTLE stands for Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental. Examining these factors enables futurists to gather comprehensive insights and anticipate how various elements could influence each other to shape new realities.
When exploring and forming a hypothesis of possible futures, I tune into various ‘signals of change’ as commonly referred to among trend practitioners. These signals are essentially data points that indicate shifts in a landscape. They can be detected through diverse sources, including academic research, news articles, industry reports, art, pop culture, social media, and social movements.
Prioritising Signals: Strong vs. Weak
Not all signals are created equal. There are two categories: strong and weak.
Strong signals are trends already making waves globally or across markets, and they often accelerate rapidly due to being mobilised through technological advancements or social movements. For instance, the adoption of AI in workplaces is a strong signal of change—it's reshaping productivity and the nature of work at a breakneck speed to create new professions.
However, weak signals are trends that have yet to reach mainstream adoption in specific contexts, niches or areas. They’re often met with scepticism or volatility on a larger scale, hindering their growth and disruptive potential. Consider remote working, for instance. After the pandemic, many companies looked like they would pack up their offices and turn all employees remote to save money. However, a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) in 2023 revealed that 72% of executives planned to return employees to the office three days a week at the very least. According to that same survey, 35% of companies adopting remote work during the pandemic also mandated a return to the office.
While remote working is all the rage among younger generations residing in product and software development companies, it has yet to trickle down to all sectors. Some economies even rely on people returning to offices to prevent business closures in urban districts due to lack of footfall. In some locations, this could even lead to the creation of district laws that prevent certain sectors from transitioning into remote-only setups due to business tax dependencies, thus preventing this trend from escalating beyond a certain scale.
Although remote working might not necessarily qualify as a strong signal in all contexts, it can fall somewhere in the middle depending on demographics. However, mainstream VR use in workplace collaboration settings is arguably much easier to categorise as weak.
Another instance where the strength of a signal can vary depending on the market and audience could be China's social scoring system. Due to ethical and privacy concerns, it might seem like a weak signal in Europe, but if you're designing a new property rental service for Asian markets, it's an established societal factor and, therefore, a strong signal worth paying close attention to.
Interconnected Topics: How Everything Pays Into Something
Every topic we examine intertwines with the future of something. From AI automation affecting future job security to health advancements extending people’s lifespans, these trends shape how we’ll live out our golden years. Taking into account these factors, along with decreasing state pension rates worldwide and rising living costs, property scarcity, and inheritance tax rates, I came up with a sci-fi future reality called EternaLife 2124.
EternaLife: The Future of Retirement
Picture this. It's 2124, and thanks to radical healthcare advancements like implants and sentinel AI co-pilots, people’s average life expectancy has soared to 150 years. The state pension age is now 110, but nobody's in a rush to retire. Why? Because retirement has transformed into a blend of passion projects and AI-automated care.
In EternaLife, you don't just retire; you become a Wisdom Sharer. As a Wisdom Sharer, you mentor younger generations on topics of interest and earn social points in return. Think of it as the ultimate senior discount club with a twist!
These points can be redeemed against goods and public services, thus reducing living costs and extending retirement savings. People's AI co-pilots manage their day-to-day finances and retirement portfolios using real-time economic, health, and environmental data to determine how many wisdom points are needed to achieve and maintain an individual’s desired quality of life.
In EternaLife, retirement isn't an end—it's an opportunity to continue earning, learning, and thriving, supported by advanced technology that prolongs your health, and a community that values the wisdom of elders.
Cross-Pollinating Trends: Forced Associations
For this future reality, I created forced associations, a term for pairing strong and weak signals to create unconventional scenarios.
Strong Signals I tuned in to include:
Increases in productivity and decision-making through AI adoption in various sectors
Glucose and heart rate monitoring devices
Employers offering private insurance, share vesting and tax-free transportation purchase perks
Volunteer transportation services for elderly and disabled people
Public service discount schemes for elders
The ageing population crisis in certain countries
Protractions to state retirement age across countries
The global cost of living crisis
Finance planning influenced by buy-now-pay-later models
Delayed retirement planning among millennials
Robo-advisors in financial management
Weak Signals include:
Urban wellness trends like IV drip clinics in urban areas
Non-traditional employment benefits like mental health days
Social media donation services like Patreon
You’ll notice I've included many more strong signals than weak ones. This deliberate choice provides a solid foundation and credibility for my future reality. However, weak signals are equally important. They allow us to flex our imagination and explore creative realms that might not feel plausible but have the potential to disrupt the future significantly. By cross-pollinating trends, we can craft believable through to absurd future scenarios that offer glimpses into what existence could be like if various factors collide and grow together.
My future retirement narrative is relatively tame in the grand scheme of things. I could have been far more adventurous! Suppose Wisdom Sharers, equipped with sentinel AI co-pilots, are deployed on corporate responsibility projects requiring their unique skills. AI monitors all companies' activities and decides what causes they support. VR and voice-translation services allow AI-mobilised teams from different companies to work seamlessly together, to fix economic problems caused by resource inequality locally and abroad.
Since this is just a story, it's okay to be naive. But in the end, to arrive at something valuable, we need to critique how such situations might occur.
Backcasting: Making EternaLife a Reality
We can envision catalysts leading to potential realities by thinking in backwards steps. To analyse my EternaLife narrative, I broke down its potential evolution into four increments: 2024-2040, 2040-2070, 2070-2100, and 2100-2124. I considered possible developments across several domains to determine how sentinel AI co-pilots and Wisdom Sharers might come to fruition.
Domains | 2024-2040 | 2040-2070 | 2070-2100 | 2100-2124 |
Tech | Significant AI improvements lead to widespread workplace adoption to manage routine tasks.
Early diagnosis capabilities of wearable health tech advance to regulate health. | The majority of lifestyle activities are handled by AI co-pilots, including household, health and financial planning.
Medtech implants become widely available and affordable, and are often covered by employer health plans.
Virtual and augmented reality become central to Communication, eliminating the need for physical collaboration. | In specific professional fields, implants that prolong active and healthy living are mandatory rather than encouraged.
AI extends to manage Wisdom’s work schedules and health expenditures. | Everyone has health implants regulated by AI co-pilots, ensuring optimal health to around 150 years.
Wisdom Sharing is an established global practice to enable equilibrium and mitigate foreign financial burdens. |
Social & Economic | Advances in healthcare and medicine begin increasing average life expectancy, with people living healthier lives into their 100s.
Governments raise retirement ages to compensate for longer life expectancy and work with banks to establish social credit schemes. | New economies form around contributions and consultancy of ageing populations. Volunteer-based credit systems are an integral part of this.
Company perks often include survival healthcare benefits. Lifelong learning becomes a norm, with corporate training programs adapting to the needs of older workforces. | Wisdom Sharers start contributing to the development of disadvantaged and indebted countries to resolve dependencies and inequalities. | Social credit systems are fully integrated into the global economy. |
Regulatory | Enhanced regulations around health and DNA data privacy build public trust in data sharing.
Regulatory bodies relax rules around prescription Medtech, allowing commercial solutions to enter the market. | Policies are implemented to integrate live data sharing for healthcare.
Tax incentives and benefits for older workers contributing to the economy are globally introduced. | International standards for Medtech implants ensure safety and effectiveness. Comprehensive reforms to pension systems are completed, supporting longer working lives and flexible retirement options. | International cooperation leads to unified policies on data privacy, Medtech regulation, and economic development. |
Imagine these increments, and it’s easy to see how technological advancements, social attitudes, and policy reforms could lead to the actualisation of my EternaLife scenario. Tracking these developments over time would help me determine the likelihood of EternaLife becoming a reality.
I'd keep an eye on:
AI and health tech adoption rates
Relaxation of prescription medtech regulations
Health and DNA data privacy trust
Pension contributions and retirement age policies
Changes to income tax
Perks listed in job advertisements
Increases in volunteer services
Expansion of robo-advisory in everyday products
Workforce demographics and employment trends
Development and adoption of VR/AR
Collecting this data bi-annually would help calculate the velocity of change across domains and predict when and how quickly my sci-fi story might promise to become a reality.
Applying This Method to Product & Service Design
The approach outlined in this article isn’t just for dreaming up sci-fi scenarios; as you’ve seen, it’s also practical for everyday product and service design. By tracking signals of change, you can anticipate market needs and future-proof offerings.
A preventive measure I might take as a financial services provider is improving the connections between budgeting and transaction functionalities in banking applications so that robo-advisor integrations can be more proactive. Working with large businesses to subsidise healthcare offerings typically privatised and partnering with government bodies on social contribution schemes could also be advantageous. These schemes could target demographics struggling to maintain a higher quality of life in later years due to income loss in earlier life.
Predicting the future is part science, art, and a dash of whimsy. By blending strong and weak signals, we can imagine and prepare for possibilities that seem straight out of a sci-fi novel.
What do you think? Is EternaLife a future you'd embrace, or does it feel dystopian? How do you imagine the future?
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