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.