Design Forecast 2016

Gensler Design Forecast 2016
Lifestyle Forecast
Leisure’s need for a customer
experience that’s real, authentic,
and seamless is a challenge for
tech/media integration.
Settings are
responding to
one’s own reality.
Environments will automatically welcome and
respond to an individual’s likes, dislikes, and
desires in overtly personalized ways. Artificial
intelligence, wearables, geo-location tools,
biometrics, and predictive technologies will
anticipate consumer needs based on user
behaviors and preferences, offering tailored
messaging and curated experiences that can
augment and enhance human expertise.
Peer-to-peer:
Sharing is the
new owning.
App-driven sharing platforms continue to
disrupt established businesses, from hotels
to retail stores. Peer-to-peer marketplaces
facilitate renting, sharing, and borrowing,
rather than owning or purchasing. Consumers
seeking real-time, communal, meaningful
experiences are prioritizing access over
ownership, driving the focus away from
personal space toward community and
collaboration space.
Customers seek
out destinations
that matter.
Transit-oriented destinations will grow.
Mixed-use developments will become the
norm, but they will take a more compact
form. With compactness and density comes
an active street life. Whether for health,
environmental, or economic reasons,
people are walking, biking, and shifting from
cars to public transit to shorten commutes
and avoid the hassles of parking.
The nuances matter
more in identifying
consumer types.
Traditional consumer categories are less
meaningful as generations blur, but regional
differences persist. At the same time, demographics
still serve an important purpose.
With improved segmentation tools, demographics—along
with psychographics and
ethnography—are telling a more holistic
story. To stay relevant, brands will need to
focus on specific consumer types or habits.
Having leisure close
at hand commands
a premium.
As work and life become increasingly
integrated, particularly in the US and
Asia, people are willing to pay a premium
for places, products, and services that
will give them back their time. Live/work
environments will change as people
embrace an ultra high-convenience
lifestyle that lets them shift easily from
work mode to leisure-focused activities.
Online-to-offline:
Consistency is
critical.
Virtual/real convergence implies a holistic
user experience. A unified online/offline
experience will yield virtual stores and
hypermarkets, interactive stores, and
click-and-collect retailing models. Fueled by
virtual and augmented reality, as well as by
consumers’ desire for real-world experiences,
brands will develop immersive, multisensory
services that engage on a visceral level.
Hyundai Card Music Library + Understage, Seoul
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