This is Mona

As many people fumble with the dreaded word recession, I personally think that there is much gain to be had as a result of the economic downturn. Let me put this into deeper context. The digital arena, which I classify as a service industry mainly because its success is based on a positive user experience, we all play in has not only emerged as a dominant communications channel, but has evolved from a single to a multiple track platform. The explosive growth in this domain has been realized in part ever since the advent of online community. I don’t mean to be absolute when I say that these movements, if you will, have marked digital in 2008/2009. They have set the stage for the next wave of trends we are currently and soon will be witnessing for digital, such as advanced mobile communications, location based services and citizen journalism. Its a lot to handle for the likes of brands and consumers as they equally try to reconcile some purpose and relevance among the many emerging technologies. Now more than ever companies have to recalibrate to offer compelling value based on understanding user wants.

Design provides much value in this context. There is a strong opportunity to capitalize on the effects of the recession by embracing design across a multitude of functions, all towards igniting innovation and a basis for human centred offerings. There is lots of room for companies and their brands to improve the customer experience. To highlight my point, I was reading an article in Monocle on how a recession can yield positive challenges for the hotels industry. The recession has seen a great halt of hotel projects. In tandem, user desires for an unparalleled experience is unabated. Times like these call for hotel management types and designers to really consider what the customer wants. What’s the difference in the evolved desires between hotel guests and digital consumers currently? Not much. Both are looking for relevance, originality and context. Realize, the intent here is not to isolate my point to the hotel industry per se, but to highlight a universal truth that applies to the digital communications industry.

Where momentum of new technologies is rapid, agencies offering digital capabilities are gradually witnessing clients seeking them out for thought leadership, rather than for production alone. Good move. Clients need to be just as savvy as their consumers when it comes to properly adopting technologies to meet a business objective and user need. If the outcomes of a recession are placing increasing onus on behalf of the clients to get creative with their value proposition, all the better.

As we near a closing chapter that is 2009, I’d like to take a different approach to discussing the series of past events and a look into the year ahead. This time, I’d like to discuss the future from a holistic standpoint. In accumulation of emerging trends and observations over the course of the near past and current year through futurists, media, technology designers and the like, there is a vision that is prevalent to the notion of openness and co-creation.

More than ever humans are becoming increasingly empowered to shaping the way of the future. Empowered folk are using tools of design to think and to make. They are moving the future agenda forward by embracing divergent experiences. With this, the future no longer looks authoritative, but more democratic and chaotic. Walk into a design studio these days and you will find a dissolve of specialists and an emergence of generalists that are contributing to a messy, but value driven future. Technology is looking to be advanced in a very atypical, but relevant way. What this means is that it will incorporate an important ingredient, emotion.

In my previous post, A Nokia future beyond Connecting People, we see evidence of such technology. Ubi comp in general (ubiquitous computing) embraces the idea of technology becoming co-created, based on a humanistic and emotionally centered approach.

What’s more important is for companies who are fundamentally interested in providing value to their patrons to recognize this shift in the way our future is shaped. Value, or more importantly, sustainable value is realized when disseminated through channels and/or technology that enable the customer to co-author the story.