“Organizations must support customers’ and employees’ increasingly changeable desires and their pursuit of greater meaning in their lives”
Due to big environmental and social changes, people are re-evaluating what they find important in their lives. This started with the drastic and now highly visible impact of climate change on our environment and many animal species, which are now on the brink of extinction. This re-evaluation was then compounded with the outbreak of COVID-19 and it’s extreme toll on human lives and wellbeing. This has only heightened people’s desire to lead purposeful lives and treat the more vulnerable in our society with more care. People are moving away from consumerism and no longer want to be defined by what they wear, or what they buy. What does it mean to be a consumer? To be an employee?
There is intense behavioural change at a “scale and speed never seen before”. This is caused by fear, and only intensified by social media. Consumers have competing ethical demands and their own desires.
“Designers must begin to address people as part of a greater ecosystem, as opposed to being at the centre of everything”
Due to Covid-19, our ability to satisfy our wants and needs has changed. It’s not as easy to go out and buy things as it once was so many consumers are thinking a lot more about what they do and don’t buy. Not as likely to buy frivolous items and only buy things that they think are important in their lives, and more likely to hoard these items e.g. bare supermarket aisles. People shifting from a “me” to a “we” culture. There is a bigger sense of community as people choose to stay inside more and work from home, for the betterment of humankind in regards COVID-19. There is less of a sense of self importance and instead many are thinking how their communities will be affected. Two sets of values—personal and collective.
“Digital twins are established tools in industry, with data models and virtual 3D versions of real-life machines helping manufacturers troubleshoot and plan predictive maintenance. Now, they’re getting personal. The race has begun to create virtual manifestations of ourselves.”
The concept is a digital ‘twin’ version of yourself online. First used in airplane testing, a digital twin of the engine was made to test performance, safety etc. This then advanced to product design, where companies could make and test products digitally before making the physical object. Now designers have introduced ideas of how this could be applied to humans.
Signals of change – People are starting to play with identity and the idea of having idealizations of themselves online e.g. ‘finsta’ accounts on Instagram, gender swap filter on Snapchat
Eternime encapsulates the idea of digital immorality. It is a network of Artificial Intelligent avatars that preserve for eternity their owners thoughts, stories and memories. Gives the opportunity for you to create a version of yourself that your children, grandchildren etc, can hold on to forever. It reminds of a similar idea to that of Ready Player 1.
However this would not just be a collation of data about a person but a representation of self
There are still important questions though that need to be answered before this can be implemented.
In the future should this be somewhere you put all of your personal data?Can this be used to execute products or services to buy or consume? How can this be easy to interact with? How do we ensure data security?
Overall this must be very thoughtfully designed so that those that your digital double interacts with know that it is in fact digital and not a real person.
References: Accenture Interactive. 2020. Fjord Trends 2020. Accessed October 28, 2020. https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/digital/fjord-trends-2020.
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