Who Will Design Tomorrow’s Models Within The Context Of Uncertainty And Continual Change?

The terms I constantly hear that indicates the future state of the world are “sharing economy,” “peer economy,” “collaborative economy,” “on-demand economy,” “collaborative consumption” etc.

“The Sharing Economy is a socio-economic ecosystem built around the sharing of human, physical and intellectual resources. It includes the shared creation, production, distribution, trade and consumption of goods and services by different people and organisations”. (http://www.thepeoplewhoshare.com/blog/what-is-the-sharing-economy/)

For example, according to Rachel Botsman, we are “wired to share” and digital technology has created a collaborated economy, which she calls “collaborative consumption” She says that the peer-to-peer rental market alone is worth $26 billion. For instance, people are renting their homes through Airbnb and making extra money, people are renting their cars through Turo (formerly RelayRides) and making extra money. The impact of this is that there may come a time when people may not want to buy a car when they can rent it when they want.This will mean less cars and better for the environment.

Another phrase that I have also heard is the circular economy. It is defined as “…one that is restorative and regenerative by design, and which aims to keep products, components and materials at their highest utility and value at all times, distinguishing between technical and biological cycles” (https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy)

In the light of the above definitions, I share IDEO’s idea of “Circular Design”. According to IDEO, traditional design focuses mainly on the end user because of the linear nature of the economic system. Circular design has a wider perspective as it “considers everyone who extracts, builds, uses and disposes of things". In other words, circular design takes account of the the network of all stakeholders and aims to create value at each stage of the process. 

I think the challenges to designers of tomorrow in a connected or sharing economy is understanding the whole system, or may be the whole country or the even the whole world. as they will not only be designing for a particular user or one group of users, they will be designing for many users and many groups of users, In addition, it will not only about how the thing is used but how it will be disposed of and whether it can be reusable.

Design Sojourn has offered four interesting solutions:

1. Having multidisciplinary team of designers

2. Creating design alliances

3. Having a decentralised collaborative team

4. Having and integrated partnership where clients are regarded as partners.

Designing for the Future - Introduce Yourself.

Hello All,

I am Kenneth from Northfleet, Kent, UK. I manage a property consultancy business and one of the the services that we provide is management of client services and this is the area that cause most problems, especially as many property services are going digital. So, I have decided to do this course with the hope of finding a better way to deal with this problem.

What does designing the future mean to me? I would say everything! Things are changing around us very fast that the old ways of doing things are no longer enough. Some of these changes are positive, some are negative and others are too complex. I have studied Internet of Things, Digital Leadership, New Business Models etc. and what they all have in common is that they show the pattern of things to come. I think design thinking is an innovative way of dealing with these changes. For example, in a market where the customers have all the information about a product or service, there is not a lot to tell the customers as they have become “experts”. The only solution is to collaborate with them.

In addition, I think designers have always designed the future as can be explained by all these new things around us. For this reason, I think understanding the approaches and techniques that designers use are invaluable knowledge to have. I think incorporating these ideas into businesses can make them become more innovative for the benefit of customers and the society. For instance, in this course, we are going to cover the four aspects of design; strategic design, service design, transdisciplinary design and transition design, which we can use to solve not only business problems but also problems in our communities and the wider world.

Post Course Reflection and Next Steps - Digital Skills - Digital Fundamentals Accenture Skills to Succeed and Virgin Startup

The course started in Week 1 with the evolution of digital development and how this has impacted on people, society and business, as well as the technologies are driving these changes. The introduction of Mobile phones in the '90s accelerated the emergence of new  digital and social media platforms.

The course shows that digital has affected people in four main ways ; socially, through creativity, through information and through entertainment. The impact on people needs to be understood so that businesses can understand how to respond appropriately to the needs and wants of customers.

Week 2 focused on how digital has impacted business, particularly marketing, e-commerce, automation and efficiency, the emergence of new business models which are disruptive in nature and future development. This was the pinnacle of the course especially the ways new business models such Uber, Netflix, Airbnb etc. have emerged that are rendering existing  business models obsolete. We also learnt about how existing organisations are using digital to transform their business.

On the whole, the course has been great and has added to my understanding of how to use digital for my business. The course has also increased my interest in the subject and I can say that I am going to follow additional courses to deepen my knowledge and gain more confidence to prepare myself and look in anticipation of the future of digital development. With three 3D printing already on the horizon, driverless cars, artificial intelligent and other new developments, it is obvious that things will never be the same again.

I would like to say thank you once again to the course organisers, Virgin Startup, Accenture and Futurelearn for the opportunity given me to acquire this invaluable skill. In addition, I will not forget to thank all fellow participants for being such a great team. I wish you a happy digital future in all your digital pursuits.

Digital Marketing: Challenges and Insight - Post Course Reflection

This has been a great course right from the beginning and I must say that I have enjoyed every part of it. 

The course started with the definition of digital marketing and then the use of story-telling in marketing, a critical look at digital marketing, devices and channels, customer journeys, data and privacy, analytical tools, Web Observatory and Gamification.

There are a lot of excellent things about the course but I want to limit my reflection to the main ones. My understanding is that digital marketing is the use of digital channels to communicate with customers/consumers, instead of the traditional method, which mainly relied on tangible items such as business cards, newspapers, magazines, TVs, brochures and logo for branding of products and services etc. The main digital channels today used by digital marketing are the internet and social media. Google dominates the digital marketing sphere with its Google search engine and tools such AdWords, Google Analytics, Google Alerts, Trends etc. More people, especially young people are using mobile phones. As a result, it is becoming the most popular communicating device. For example, according to a report by Smart Insight, “Mobile digital media time in the US is now significantly higher at 51% compared to desktop (42%)”, which shows the central role that mobile is playing in digital marketing.

Two lessons stood out for me and these are story – telling and customer journey. First, on the use of story -telling in marketing, we met Steve Killick, a psychologist and storyteller who explained how to use story - telling to engage customers emotionally. This was a new thing to me and a very exciting one indeed. We also met Howard Scott, formerly of the National Trust, who explained how story -telling is being used in their digital marketing at the National Trust to engage customers. Then, we met meet Alan Rae, founder of Plants4presents who also gave us some useful tips on how to use story  - telling in our marketing, having applied this to his business which started as an online business.

We were also given the opportunity to listen to a fantastic BBC Radio 4’s ‘You and Yours’ programme, which gave different perspectives on how people shop both online and offline. We learnt that offline shopping still has a big part to play in the way people shop today, as businesses are adopting innovative ways to deepen the customer experience by integrating both their offline and online shops so that they function as one, instead of working separately. The radio interviews also demonstrated the importance of demographic and psychographic segmentation in determining customer journeys, as young people follow what their favourite celebrities do and prefer to shop online, always checking online for what is trendy.

The pinnacle for me was the digital transformation at the National Trust. It was fascinating to see that a non-commercial organisation is pioneering digital transformation. Their philosophy is simple – “Making marketing relevant and personal”. They thought me about the POST communication strategy - People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology. Their strategy is simple - Content, Devices and Relevance and having Central Repository that feeds the rest of the channels as appropriate. They have thought me about how it is beneficial to have a simple strategy. Simplicity works because it is easy to understand and implement. In addition, customers like simplicity because they can engage with it. It is a winning formula because nobody wants something that is difficult to understand and deal with. They have also taught me that though this development in marketing may be about technology, technology is not their main focus. They see technology as the enabler to deliver relevant contents to people, their main focus.

One more thing, Lisa was great. She is a great interviewer. I do not know whether she has ever thought of a second career as a journalist! Her interviewing skills added clarity and another enjoyable dimension to the course. In addition, the interactions of the mentors also deserve mention. Their interactions added another flair to the enjoyment of the course.

What is My Story?

I have passion for entrepreneurship and finance and have helped few people launch their start-ups. I would like to be acknowledged and trusted as a person who can help people or businesses to launch their start-ups from idea conception to launching the business. For this reason, I started this site to tell my story - http://www.businessstartupsupport.com/ It is still a work-in progress now.

In addition, before now, my businesses have mainly been selling to individual customers or consumers and I did not have any problems with that, as many of my customers came by word of mouth. However, in 2014, I started a property business that offers services to other businesses and that completely changed everything as I really struggled to get customers. The approach I used to sell to individual customers has not worked because when I call them to arrange a meeting, they would ask for my website to check me out as Alan has already mentioned.

One thing that I have found out is that on the online platform which digital marketing manly uses, customers are not only interested in how good your products or services are, but are also interested in you, who you are and what you have done. Alan makes a comparison between “drama” and “scenery” and I think with the skills from this course, I will rewrite my contents to provide the richness, authority and confidence needed to enhance my reputation. But I think this takes time.

I am also part of many networks but I need to improve my communication to become a better story teller. In addition I am learning how to use the social media more effectively.

The definition of Digital Marketing

The definition gives a good insight into the practice of digital marketing– the use of digital channels to communicate with customers/consumers, instead of the traditional method, which mainly relied on tangible items such as business cards, newspapers, magazines, TVs, brochures and logo for branding of products and services etc.

The development in digital technologies as well as the internet and mobile technologies have caused changes in the way people behave and do things, and as a result, a new approach to marketing is required.  I think one consequence of this is the amount of information that is available and how people are willing to connect and share information, create communities and build relationships. I think this aspect of connectivity, sharing information and building relationships present marketers with the opportunity to know their customers better and serve them well.

Digital marketing seems to be having a great impact and is reshaping some industries. For example, Newsweek’s announcement in 2012 that they were moving to digital sent shock-waves throughout business and media world after nearly 80 years of publication. This is an internationally renowned brand but despite that, consumers were being served through digital channels such as online, tablets better, where they can subscribe and read the news 24 hours. In the UK, early this year the Independent newspaper did the same thing and moved to digital too.

One aspect in the definition that I like very much is the idea of evaluating “the success of marketing campaigns”. As the course progresses, I would like to see how this happens.