The Role and Value of Trend Reports for Product Designers

The Role and Value of Trend Reports for Product Designers This dissertation is submitted to the University of Cambridge

for the Degree of Master of Philosophy

30th March 2011

Nani Brunini F it zw il l ia m Co l l e g e Supe r v iso r : J a m e s Mo ul t r ie U n iv e r si t y o f Ca m br id g e D e pa r t m e n t o f E n g in e e r in g I n st i t ut e fo r Ma n ufa c t ur in g

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Abstract

Today’s global economy is a very complex and hard to read environment. Competition is fierce and

being the first to ‘get it right’ when designing new products could be decisive. With so much at

stake, many companies have turned to trends research as a way to differentiate their products. This

work starts by looking into the current theoretical evidence that is available, aiming at making sense

of how the issue has been portrayed in academic and commercial literature.

The research itself was conducted in two steps: a quantitative study and a qualitative one. In the

quantitative strand the aim was to understand how trend reports have been used in new product

development and what opinion was had held about them by their users. The results indicate that

trend reports were frequently being used but not thought of as an essential tool. In the qualitative

step the aim was to drill down specifically on the opinions and expectations of product designers for

trend research and reports. The results show that there was a discrepancy of expectations between

designers and management about what trend reports are, how they should be used, and what they

should be used for. And finally, five possible roles of trend reports for product designers were

identified: source of discoveries, boundary objects, brand compasses, sparks and recipe books.

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Index

Preface .................................................................................................. 01

Index ................................................................................................................................ 02

Abstract .................................................................................................................. 05

Chapter 01 – Introduction 1.1 Background .................................................................................................................. 06

1.2 Research objectives.................................................................................................................. 07

1.3 Research focus .................................................................................................................. 08

1.3.1 Product designers ............................................................................................................ 08

1.3.2 Trends reports ................................................................................................................ 09

1.4 Structure of this thesis .................................................................................................................. 10

Chapter 02 – Literature review 2.1 Overview .................................................................................................................. 11

2.2 Available literature .................................................................................................................. 12

2.2.1 Futures studies .................................................................................................................. 12

2.2.2 Forecasting and trends .................................................................................................................. 12

2.2.3 Coolhunting .................................................................................................................. 13

2.2.4 Futures and trends research in design ................................................................................................ 14

2.3 Literature gap and research questions ................................................................................................... 17

Chapter 03 – Research design 3.1 (quant+) QUAL = enhanced experiment........................................................................................................ 19

3.1.1 Embedded design .................................................................................................................. 21

3.2 Benefits from each methodology ......................................................................................................... 21

3.2.1 Why we needed quantitative data ......................................................................................................... 21

3.2.2 Why we needed qualitative data ........................................................................................................ 22

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Chapter 04 – Web survey 4.1 Survey design .................................................................................................................. 23

4.1.1 Writing the questionnaire .................................................................................................................. 24

4.1.2 Selecting and recruiting the sample ............................................................................................................ 28

4.1.3 Piloting the survey .................................................................................................................. 29

4.1.4 Finding the survey engine .................................................................................................................. 29

4.2 Data compilation .................................................................................................................. 30

4.2.1 Filter from 378 to 200 responders ............................................................................................................... 30

4.2.2 Cross-‐analysis .................................................................................................................. 31

4.3 Results .................................................................................................................. 32

4.3.1 Group 02 vs. Groups 1 and 4: how the use of trend reports can be affected by the characteristics of person and company. .................................................................................................................. 32

4.3.2 Group 03 vs. Groups 1 and 4: how the opinion on trend reports can be affected by the characteristics of person and company. .................................................................................................................. 33

4.3.3 Group 05 vs. Groups 1 and 4: how the investment in trend reports can be affected by the characteristics of person and company. .................................................................................................................. 35

4.4 Discussion .................................................................................................................. 36

Chapter 05 – Qualitative interviews 5.1 Overview ...................................................................................................................................... 38

5.2 Some considerations on qualitative interviews ............................................................................................ 39

5.3 Designing the interview .................................................................................................................. 40

5.3.1 Sampling .................................................................................................................. 40

5.3.2 Visual prop and exercises .................................................................................................................. 42

5.3.3 Interview guide .................................................................................................................. 45

5.4 Data compilation and analysis.................................................................................................................. 46

5.4.1 Transcription .................................................................................................................. 46

5.4.2 Coding .................................................................................................................. 46

5.4.2 Analysis of exercises .................................................................................................................. 48

5.5 Interpretation of findings.................................................................................................................. 50

5.5.1 Trend reports as sources of discoveries ..................................................................................... 51

5.5.2 Trend reports as boundary objects ....................................................................................................... 53

5.5.3 Trend reports as brand compasses ................................................................................................ 58

5.5.4 Trend reports as sparks ..................................................................................................... 59

5.5.5 Trend reports as recipe books ..................................................................................................... 61

5.6 Summary.................................................................................................................. 62

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Chapter 06 – Synthesis 6.1 Back to the main question .................................................................................................................. 63

6.1.1 Divergent expectations .................................................................................................................. 64

6.1.2 New challenges for trend reports ................................................................................................ 65

Chapter 07 – Conclusion 7.1 Contributions .................................................................................................................. 66

7.1.1 Contributions to theory .................................................................................................................. 68

7.1.2 Contributions to practice .................................................................................................................. 67

7.2 Limitations + Future research .................................................................................................................. 67

Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 68

Appendices

App. 01: LinkedIn groups to which invitations were sent ................................................................... 73

App. 02: Coroflot groups to which invitations were sent ................................................................ 73

App. 03: Final demographic of web-‐survey ................................................................... 74

App. 04: Questions from survey used for analysis ......................................................................... 75

App. 05: Definitions of SME (European Commission, 2003) ...................................................................... 76

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CHAPTER 01

Introduction

1.1 Background

Today’s global economy is a very complex and hard to read environment. Competition is fierce and especially

in delicate times as we are living now, being the first to ‘get it right’ when designing new products could be

decisive.

With so much at stake, many companies have turned to trends research as a way to differentiate their

products. Whole departments and disciplines have been created to help companies think in an open-‐minded

way and to create new products that could succeed in this busy marketplace.

Trend reports1 come then as one of the most popular vehicles for trend research. Top management are usually

the main targets of these expensive strategic documents, which commonly provide quantitative data and rich

scenarios of how the future might look like in a determined timeframe.

Most literature on innovation and trends research is also written from a management point of view (Raymond,

2010; Courtney, 2001), and it seems that economics, marketing and advertising are the most common

audience for that type of publications.

But where does design interact with trend research? Design is a discipline that is always concerned with the

future (Lawson, 2005; Evans, 2010) since designers are constantly being asked for innovation (Kelley and

Littman, 2004). Designers are noticeably key to the process of new product development2 since they are

ultimately the ones that execute the ideas. Thus delivering trend reports to just marketing and company

executives without the buy-‐in of the design team can be potentially a huge waste of effort and money. Despite

that, there seems there to be a lack of understanding on how designers take that sort of information.

1 “Trend reports” will be also referred here by its acronym “TR”. 2 “New Product Development” will be also referred here by its acronym “NPD”.

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Furthermore, the idea of following trends is not really attractive to designers, since they are often expected to

create the future themselves (Lawson, 2005). The use of trends research by designers sounds natural, but do

they need someone else to look at the future for them? After all, designers have always been able to keep up

to date by researching their fields and being connected to the latest developments. Thinking about the

designers’ role in trends research has not been much of an issue for designers so far.

In the case of product design, which is the focus of this study, futures research is particularly relevant as issues

with product longevity and production costs can bring some interesting challenges to product designers in

developing products that cater for a future audience.

Investments in future forecasting and trends research are growing very rapidly as a form of managing risks and

uncertainty (Evans, 2010; Scott, 2004; Raymond, 2010; Courtney, 2001; Gloor, P. & Cooper, 2007; Gladwell,

2001), but the “pink elephant in the room” seems to be that designers may actually not be using the content

of those reports, since they could potentially not be relevant to them.

Despite their growing prominence, there is very little scientific research on how trend reports are being

created and used (Evans, 2010; Scott, 2004). Moreover, no publications were found on what designers think

about those types of reports.

It’s due to these reasons that this research aims at focusing on the impact of trend reports in the work of

designers. Our main question is: What is the role and value of trend reports for product

designers?

We intend to obtain an answer, or at least some first indications to an answer, mainly from designers

themselves.

1.2 Research objectives

This study is not intended to be prescriptive. Our goal is not to give a detailed description of ‘what to do’ or

how trend reports are used and produced. We want to know from some specific users of trend reports, what

kind of relationship do they see between product design and trend reports.

Thus the main objectives of this research are to:

• Look into the current theoretical evidence and understand how the issue has been portrayed in

academic and commercial literature: How do both strands differ from each other? How is design and

futures research portrayed in each domain?

• Explore specific issues relating to product design and trend reports: What do designers think about

trend reports? Do they think they need them? Can they be useful to their daily practice? In what

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ways? What are their expectations towards trend reports? What have been their experiences? What

could be improved?

As a result of fulfilling the above objectives, this paper also aims to:

• Encourage further research on trend analysis in the design field.

• Stimulate conversations within design practice about what could be done to improve forecasting

processes for product design.

1.3 Research focus

Since this study focuses on the experiences of ‘product designers’ with ‘trend reports’, it is important to first

establish how those terms were interpreted throughout this research.

1.3.1 Product designers

This research focuses on the opinion of product designers on trend reports -‐ an area positioned by Moggridge

(2007) in the quadrant of Human & Subjective/Physical design (Figure 01).

Fig. 01: Areas of design and the focus of this research – adapted from Moggridge’s (2007) axis of disciplines in product

development. The area noted here as “product design”, is called “industrial design” in the original version.

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The area of Product design itself is vast and encompasses a whole sub-‐set of areas – such as lighting, furniture,

digital appliances, electronic devices, apparel and fashion. Thus to keep our scope more manageable, this

study approaches the term ‘product design’ in a rather broad sense, as the creation of tangible objects which

fulfil particular human needs and desires (Moggridge, 2007), originated from a design process -‐ sketches,

prototypes and models (Slack, 2006) -‐ and created through industrial processes (Löbach, 2001).

It is also important to mention, that although we refer to the opinion of non-‐designers as a comparative

counter-‐point (see Chapter 04), the idea is to look at trend reports from the product designers’ contexts – their

experiences and visualizations of an ideal document for them.

1.3.2 Trend reports

In a broader sense, a report is an official document that summarises the assessment and analysis of a certain

topic (Bowden, 2011; Lichtenberger et all, 2004). Each type of report serves a very specific purpose and is

aimed at a very particular audience. Bowden (2011) and Lichtenberger (2004), describe some of the main

purposes of reports in general: describe and explain a certain problem; evaluate products, situations and

practices; inform decision making, provide recommendations and instruct and even provoke debate and/or

persuade someone or a group of people.

In design practice, that list could also go on and on. For reasons of clarity, this study revisits the way some

distinguishing authors (O’Grady & O’Grady, 2009; Laurel & Lunenfeld, 2003; Tidwell, 2011) describe the most

common types of research in design and it proposes the following descriptions as a first attempt3 to distinguish

the types of reports in design practice:

TYPES OF REPORTS FOCUS COMMON CONTENT

User research reports

Human behaviour and product experiences.

Heuristics, ethnography, ergonomics and usability tests, colour and typography psychology, patterns of (present) behaviour.

Market research reports

Consumption, brands and market dynamics.

Demographics, ethnography, segmentations, customer satisfaction, sales and pricing data, projections, competitor analyses, brand equity and strategy analyses.

Trends research reports

Behavioural shifts and evolution in society as a whole.

Timelines, ethnography, trends analyses, (indication of future) behaviour patterns.

Table 01: Differentiating the most common types of reports in design practice (suggested by the author).

3 The author of this study recognises the limitations of table 01 and indeed encourages further scientific research on the differences and commonalities of research reports in design practice.

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These three types of reports are very commonly used in a more or less interchangeable way. As a way to

explain why that happens, this study also presents the following matrix, which illustrates how closely

intertwined the three reports are:

Fig. 02: Exploring differences and similarities between user research, market research and trends research reports

(suggested by the author).

In summary, this study describes trends research reports, or trend reports, as “strategic documents that track

down the behaviour and evolution of notable shifts in society, culture, aesthetics, technology, environment,

consumers, etc. Contrary to user research or competitive analysis, trend reports go beyond what is

happening now and always present patterns suggesting directions to future projections”4.

1.4 Structure of this thesis

This work is organised in eight chapters. Chapter 02 (literature review) and 03 (methodology) lay the

groundwork for the research, while Chapters 04 and 05 have the main body of the research itself. We start

with a quantitative approach (Chapter 04) to help inform our work during the qualitative stage (Chapter 05).

Chapters 06 and 07 have our synthesis of the results and our conclusions respectively, while Chapter 08 has a

list of all the references utilised.

4 Despite being proposed by the author of this research, the definition of trend reports is presented here in quotation marks, as that was the way they were presented to responders in the quantitative web-‐survey (see chapters 03 and 04).

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CHAPTER 02

Literature review

2.1 Overview

Exploring current literature was the first step taken to collect data on the issues we wanted to investigate. As

the exact research questions were not clearly established at first, the review of the literature went through a

rather broad spectrum of issues1. The objective was not only to get better acquainted with the subject, but

also to also find possible avenues to focus on that could be aligned with personal interests.

The starting point was to look at what had already been published in the academic world about trends

research and design. Among these were: various journals on design, product development and futures studies

that were accessed via academic databases such as Science Direct, Google Scholar and CUED from Cambridge.

Some of that material was also obtained via personal requests for copies to academics when the literature was

not readily available.

In order to achieve more breadth there was also an attempt to search for this topic in other languages.

However, putting potential language barriers aside, very little was found about the penetration of trends

research in the design world.

In the academic field, it seems there is a recently growing interest in trends research and design. Interestingly

they all came from the United Kingdom – an MPhil dissertation (Scott, 2004) and a doctoral thesis (Muir Wood,

2010) from the University of Cambridge and a PhD thesis from Lancaster University (Evans, 2010).

Unfortunately, besides a few sporadic papers, little other scientific effort was found.

In the commercial world however, publications on trends research and design related issues are getting more

and more popular. The corporate world is used to following trends, mostly through business figures and

market research, but it seems there is also a growing interest in the very alluring world of “coolhunting” and in

the possibilities of becoming “cool” and “trendy”.

1 In order to allow for a greater focus on the results of the study, whilst maintaining scientific robustness, the researcher made the deliberate decision of presenting only some key authors and topics in the literature review. This was decision was a compromise, taken in consideration the word count allowed for MPhil theses.

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This section presents how some of the most relevant issues to this study are portrayed in current available

literature. It starts with giving an overview of literature on ‘forecasting’, inside and out of the design field.

Then it narrows to summarise what experts say about ‘trends’, which is seen both from a perspective of a

phenomenon and as business opportunities. The chapter is then finalised with how the construction of this

study’s research questions as an attempt to fill up a gap in current literature.

2.2 Available literature

2.2.1 Futures studies

Futures Studies as a formal discipline is now well over 50 years old (Sardar, 2009). In fact, some scholars trace

it back much further as trying to guess what the future holds is quite a fundamental part of being human.

According to Wendell Bell, professor emeritus of sociology at Yale University, currently a “consultant futurist”,

futures studies’ main purposes are "to discover or invent, examine and evaluate, and propose possible,

probable, and preferable futures” (Bell, 1997).

Godet and Roubelat (1996) suggest that the role of futures studies has to be rethought, as in the 1980s and

1990s a number of errors in forecasting were made based upon two mistakes: “overestimation of the pace of

change (of technologies)” and the “underestimation of inertial factors (structures, behaviours)” (Godet &

Roubelat, 1996).

In a similar vein, Sardar (2009) makes the point that future studies should not to be about getting it right since

this is not possible; instead it should be about “exploring and developing creative, novel and inclusive

solutions” (Sardar, 2009).

2.2.2 Forecasting and trends

The great majority of texts on forecasting and trends come from fashion and economics (Muir Wood, 2010) –

two worlds at first seen as completely different from each other. With regards to how they apply forecasting

and the finding of patterns, usually they also behave very differently: the first relying more on instinct and

visual observations, such as the change of preferences in colours and materials (Kim et al, 2011; Diane &

Cassidy, 2005), whilst the other searches for certainty in numerical projections in different demographics and

sales figures (Friedman, 2010; Gordon, 2008; Watson, 2009).

Some authors even try to combine both worlds. Chan, C, for example tries to measure style by creating

complex mathematical formulae (Chan 2000).

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In the business sector, there is a huge volume of books on forecasting. From ‘how to do it’ (Raymond, 2004

and 2010; Highman, 2009; Brannon, 2005; Kim, Fiore & Kim, 2011; Taleb, 2008; Gordon, 2008) to ‘what trends

are relevant for a certain year’ (Friedman, 2011; Dixon, 2007; Watson, 2009).

Although authors are very careful in saying you cannot really predict the future, the atmosphere is more about

‘getting it right’ (Raymond, 2010) and having “decision making power”(Lindgren and Bandhold, 2003).

Martin Raymond, co-‐founder of one of the most influential trends agencies in the design world, The Future

Laboratory2, says in his latest book for example:

“Yes accurate! If a company hires you, invests in you and asks you to identify the next social,

cultural, ethical or environmental trend that is set to impact on consumer behaviour, they’l l expect you to get it r ight.” (Raymond, 2010)

A quick look to Amazon.com, the largest online book retailer to date, can illustrate how commonplace the

words ‘forecasting’, ‘prediction’ and ‘certainty’ have become in titles of economics, business strategy or even

fashion books. According to Sardar (2009), ‘forecasting’ is a term that should be carefully used, as they

‘seduce’ readers with the illusory idea of being able to see what is coming next and control the future (Sardar,

2009).

2.2.3 Coolhunting

Coolhunting is a recent popular term for identifying trends and is related to spotting new and unusual ‘triggers’

in society – from products to behaviours. Being “cool” is generally understood as being different and unique

and companies are very interested because this is something they can capitalise on. “Cool” is the ultimate

point of difference and appeals to very broad audiences – “young people gravitate towards it and older people

covet it because it makes them feel younger” (Kerner & Pressman, 2007).

The term ‘coolhunting’ was coined by the noted writer Malcom Gladwell, who in 1997 wrote an article in The

New Yorker (Gladwell, 1997) about Deedee Gordon, an American coolhunter with an impressive list of clients -‐

from manufacturers of apparel, footwear, health and beauty, cosmetics and fragrances; movie studios; sports

associations; electronics companies and advertising agencies (Gordon, 2001).

Some suggest that the rise of coolhunting was heavily influenced by the record amounts of disposable income

in the past 10 or so years (Kerner & Pressman, 2007). Combine that with a growing commoditisation, fear of

competition and an increasing difficulty to differentiate products, and suddenly the hunt for the next trendy

thing can raise immense interest.

2 www.thefuturelaboratory.com

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Nowadays coolhunting is such a ‘hot topic’ that there is not only a growing number in print publications on the

subject, but also a huge selection of influential blogs and websites from experts and amateurs alike. In Italy, for

example, there is even a “school” dedicated to coolhunting, preparing professionals from all over the world

with theories and techniques3.

On the other hand, even though it’s such a young topic, there are already some critics on the subject. Kerner &

Pressman for example are really emphatic on their opinions; they describe the outcomes of focus groups and

trend reports as “short sighted, artificial and gimmicky”. They strongly believe that companies shouldn’t be

chasing cool, but rather be inspired by it. “Do your research but spit it out in your own way”, they argue

(Kerner & Pressman, 2007). Tom Ford, a celebrated fashion designer, goes as far as to say “if you have to pay

someone to tell you what the next trend is, then you are in the wrong business” (Kerner & Pressman, 2007).

2.2.4 Futures and trends research in design

Futures research is a very mature discipline and one can find a vast array of material on philosophical

considerations on the importance and consequences of future studies to society as well as to corporate

environments and product development. Conversely, only very few of these consider the influence of

forecasting in design practice (Evans, 2010; Muir Wood, 2010; Scott, 2005).

The design industry, despite recognizing trends research as an important topic, has largely failed to formally

adopt it as part of their processes (Scott 2005). Also there seems to be a fair amount of confusion around the

nomenclature, as it often uses the term “trends research” as an umbrella term for many types of research

(Muir Wood 2010).

As noted earlier, that gap seems to be filled from the academic side. The first material encountered on the

subject was an MPhil thesis from the University of Cambridge, which investigated the possibility of product

trends being predicted and how the trends research process was being applied in design companies in the UK

(Scott, 2005). The author, Natalie Scott, uses practical and real life examples by conducting eighteen “highly-‐

structured” interviews with manufacturers and design agencies in the UK. She concludes the study with a very

interesting tool designed by the author (Fig. 03), which “combines all the proposed models used to represent

the patterns identified from the interviews”.

3 From their website: “TrendsGymnasium is an online Coolhunting training course designed to help people effectively learn how to spot and analyze short, medium and long term trends, by interpreting their impact on society using the technique of coolhunting to originate fresh ideas”. http://www.trendsgymnasium.com/

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Fig. 03: “Design map for capturing trends” designed by Natalie Scott (2005).

Martyn Evans, a senior lecturer from the University of Lancaster, also presents the issue from a practical

perspective, considering the role of futures thinking in design (Evans, 2010). He refers to the long established

field of future studies to serve as theoretical base for his investigation. One of the major outcomes of the

research is the construction of a theoretical framework drawn upon the results of a series of qualitative

interviews with top management, designers and researchers, mostly from coming from design agencies. Evans’

study concludes on a note of the “growing need for organisations to engage designers to consider the future in

the design process” since that is a requirement that is becoming more and more frequent in a very uncertain

world (Evans, 2010). He also finds out from the literature and the interviews with design practitioners that

although futures thinking techniques4 are increasingly being employed in design practice, this is not a field

designers are very knowledgeable about (Evans, 2010).

4 Common techniques in design practice include trend monitoring, Delphi methods, scenarios building, etc.

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Fig. 04: “Design Futures” framework designed by Martyn Evans (2010). Picture merely illustrative. Please refer to original

work for more details.

A month after Evan’s publication, a further important thesis is submitted by Andrew Muir Wood (2010), this

time from the University of Cambridge. To a certain extent, Muir Wood also considers the influence of futures

thinking in the design environment, except he approaches the topic from the perspective of the product,

rather than that of the designer, consumer or firm. His focus is on understanding and explaining the

phenomenon of “change” in the design of consumer products (Muir Wood, 2010) and he does that by

analysing the relationships between the aesthetic and technical qualities of products. Andrew applies a series

of qualitative interviews with design experts and conducts a case study on the evolution of mobile phones,

providing some novel approaches and a very visual, thus also very “designerly”, way of depicting the evolution

of a trend. Similarly to Evans and Scott, Muir Wood summarises his investigation in a theoretical framework,

which depicts how form is developed in the context of design (Fig. 05).

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Fig. 05: “Theoretical framework of change in the design of products”, designed by Andrew Muir Wood (2010). Picture

merely illustrative. Please refer to original work for more details.

2.3 Literature gap and research questions

Going through the available literature has shown there is already a reasonable amount of material (mostly

from commercial literature) on the creation and use of trends research in non-‐design environments. Some

literature on how trends have been introduced in the design process was also found (mostly from academic

literature).

This study did not attempt to be prescriptive or to go too deep into the making of reports. It should be noted,

however that this is also an area that deserves more attention. The only reference that was found that talks

directly about the making of trend reports, Martin Raymond’s book “The Trend Forecaster’s Handbook”

(Raymond, 2010), mainly acts a ‘how-‐to guide’ and only leaves three pages (out of 216) to the subject.

As seen in chapter 2, though not exhaustive, there is already some evidence on how design practitioners set

about creating and using trends reports. However little attention has been put onto the actual value of trends

research. Thus, the primary research question that this study seeks to address is: What is the role and value

of trend reports to product designers?

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As that seemed a rather large question to answer, we have decided to break that question into two semi-‐

independent subsets with two research questions each:

Fig. 06: The two sub-‐sets of research questions.

As figure 06 illustrates, these two sets were approached by two different methodologies. The reasons why we

have taken a multi-‐method approach is going to be explained in detail in the methodology section (chapter

03), but the abovementioned figure can give a brief overview on how the investigation of our primary research

question was tackled: a quantitative path for the first one and a qualitative for the second. These came

sequentially and the qualitative phase had more weight in the data analysis.

The next chapter will open up the discussion about how that mixed-‐methodology was approached.

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CHAPTER 03

Research design

Having established the research questions in the previous chapter, we will now introduce our process in

selecting the most appropriate methodologies to guide our investigation. This chapter contains an

introductory discussion on what methodologies have been used; first it describes the multi-‐method approach

that was taken and then it goes over the rationale behind those choices. For clarity reasons, a more detailed

description of how those methodologies have been assessed will only be provided in the upcoming chapters 4

and 5 within the context of their use.

3.1 (quant+) QUAL = enhanced experiment1

As we have seen in the previous chapter, this research poses two independent sub-‐sets of research questions.

The figure below illustrates how the design of this research builds up from the results of the literature review

and starts with the collection and analysis of quantitative data. The first set of research questions (RQ01 and

RQ02) is assessed via a web-‐survey and followed by a subsequent collection and analysis of qualitative data

through interviews, which then refer to the second sub-‐set of research questions (RQ03 and RQ04).

Fig. 07: Research stages.

1 Notation based on the system suggested by Creswell & Plano Clark (2001).

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As it will be explained in section 3.2, the results from the quantitative phase were mainly used in this study as

a way to better inform the design of the next qualitative phase. They were analysed both as a “recheck” (not

as statistical validation) of the researcher’s previous assumptions and as indicators for further inquiries. During

the final analysis a higher priority was given to the results of the qualitative interviews. Some of the findings

from the quantitative phase were indeed further investigated in the interviews, but the rationale for this

approach was that both strands of methodology would remain independent.

The results from the first phase provided a more general understanding of the research problem, whilst the

second phase explored more focused, less generic problems. The outcomes of both strands were then collated

once the qualitative analysis was done.

The following table presents a detailed comparison between both lines of study:

QUANTITATIVE QUALITATIVE

RESEARCH QUESTIONS RQ01: How have trend reports been used in NPD?

RQ02: What do users of trend reports think about trend reports?

RQ03: What do people who work with product design think about trends research and trend reports?

RQ04: How do people who work with product design see the role of trends research and trend reports in their field?

LEVEL OF EXPLORATION Shallow, illustrative. Deep, exploratory.

TYPES OF QUESTIONS Simple, closed.

Who, what, when, how much

Complex, open.

Why, what, how come.

REASONING, OBJECTIVES Indication, insights and observations.

Recheck on assumptions based on the literature reviewed and on the researcher’s previous professional experience.

In-‐depth investigation, insights and observations.

ONTOLOGIES Real experiences.

Use and opinion from professionals.

Real experiences and ideal conceptions.

Use and opinion from professionals working with product design.

Personal/individual + company Personal/individual + company UNITS OF ANALYSIS

Trend reports (concrete) Trend research (abstract) + trend reports (concrete)

Breadth (200 participants). Depth (11 participants).

Different types of professionals. Designers working with product design.

Users or user/creators of trend reports. Users or user/creators of trend reports.

All levels of seniority. Mid-‐weight, senior, managers and head-‐of-‐department.

B2C products, durables and non-‐durables. B2C products, durables.

SAMPLE

All countries. London (UK) and São Paulo (Brazil).

Table 02: Comparison between used research methodologies.

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3.1.1 Embedded design

The mixed method approach we have used for this study was what Creswell & Plan Clark (2011) would call as

“embedded designs”. According to the authors, these types of methodologies occur when “the researcher

combines the collection and analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data within a traditional quantitative

research design or qualitative research design” (Creswell & Plan Clark, 2011). They are mostly suitable for cases

when the researcher has questions that require different types of data. In our case, we needed a more generic

strand in order to contemplate the big picture as well as more specific view of the use of trend reports.

The authors also point out that in some embedded designs, one data set could provide a supportive or

secondary role in the study, which was indeed the case with this research. They also explain that this type of

design is appropriate when “the researcher has little prior experience with the supplemental method” and

when “the researcher does not have adequate resources to place equal priority on both types of data”

(Creswell & Plan Clark, 2011).

A particular aspect to embedded designs is that, because the two methods are used to answer different

research questions, integrating the results later can be very challenging. Conversely, an advantage to the

design is that the two sets of results can be kept separate, so the “pressure” of converging their results is very

low (Bryman, 2004).

3.2 Benefits from each methodology

There are several reasons why is good to choose quantitative and qualitative approaches. Below we list the

ones that were most relevant to our selection.

3.2.1 Why we needed quantitative data

Unbiased information

'How much' and 'what' questions are more easily identified by fixed or quantitative approaches (Robson,

2003). However the decision to include a quantitative method to this thesis actually came only a bit later in the

process.

Our initial planning was to answer the research questions only through qualitative interviews, but in the first

attempt at writing the qualitative questionnaire there was some concern around the possibility of a biased

approach due to the researcher’s previous professional experience. This fact was very critical since the

sampling for the qualitative phase would be done via the researcher’s personal network.

22

Thus in order to decrease that risk of partiality, a quantitative web-‐survey was conducted. The idea is that by

giving more breadth to the research and reassessing our preconceptions, we could potentially prevent the

following of unfruitful leads.

Far-reaching and cost-effective

An online survey is a cost-‐effective way to include participants from all over the world. That could potentially

grant us insights to major influential factors such as cultural and economical instances. Moreover, it makes it

easier to add non-‐designers in the analysis, which could give some indication on how much the problems

reported in the reviewed literature relate exclusively to the design field.

3.2.2 Why we needed qualitative data

In-depth knowledge

'How' and 'Why' questions are more difficult to pin down and often indicate the need for a qualitative

approach (Robson, 2003). We were also looking for more personal statements, going beyond the participants’

real experiences. Real, spontaneous and almost unconscious commentary was expected to help paint a richer

idea of who has been using trend reports specifically in design environments.

The real deal

The great majority of trend reports contain confidential information. The way we would be most likely able to

refer to that sensitive material would be via personal contact, thus making a qualitative method necessary. By

referring to real examples of trend reports we would have a better idea of what kind of trends reports and

what kind of trends information product designers are utilising. Furthermore, that documentary analysis could

also give us stronger hints on what product designers actually understand by the term “trend reports”.

Previous expertise

The researcher has been conducting qualitative research as well as qualitative interviews in design

environments for over 7 years. Although there was a substantial research on the scientific approach to

qualitative interviews (Creswell & Plan Clark, 2011; Robson, 2003; Mason, 2002; Bell, 2005; Gill & Johnson,

2010; Collins, 2010), the previous experience of the researcher and thus her familiarity with the tools was also

an important decision factor in the choice for this methodology.

23

CHAPTER 04

Web survey

In the previous chapter we have seen the rationale behind the overall design of this study. This chapter and

the following will now provide a more detailed discussion on both methodologies that were used –

quantitative and qualitative.

We now focus on the creation and development of the quantitative phase of this research. First some

considerations will be made with regards to using that kind of methodology. We will discuss the key strategies

employed to overcome the usual challenges of an online quantitative survey.

We then consider the survey design – how the questionnaire was made, how it relates to the research

questions and what type of sampling strategy was selected to achieve our goal. Once that is established, we

demonstrate our process of data analysis by showing how the results from the survey matched our previous

hypotheses.

The chapter concludes by discussing the results and their relation to the research questions as well as by

making some observations on the limitations and caveats of this quantitative phase.

4.1 Survey design Putting the survey together was a rather complex undertaking. Four main tasks had to be managed in a more

or less simultaneous manner:

1. Writing the questionnaire and ensuring that the captured data was as reliable as possible.

2. Choosing and recruiting a relevant sample.

3. Piloting the survey.

4. Choosing a survey engine and making sure technicalities were not in the way of survey completion.

We now look at those tasks with some more detail.

24

4.1.1 Writing the questionnaire

Quantitative questionnaires traditionally require a strong pre-‐specification as well as a substantial amount of

conceptual understanding about a phenomenon before starting the actual data collection (Robson, 2003; Gill

& Johnson, 1991; Collins, 2010; Bell, 2005). For this thesis, some elements were crucial in selecting which

variables could lead to fruitful results: the researcher’s professional experience1, the reviewed literature and

the feedback from pilot phase.

From hypotheses to questions

As Robson states, “the researcher’s central task is to link research questions and survey questions” (Robson,

2003). So a lot of effort was put to find the most relevant variables to answer research questions 01 and 02:

RQ01: How have trend reports been used in NPD?

RQ02: What do users of trend reports think about trend reports?

Robson suggests the use of frameworks to providing descriptions to explanations, but also to prevent survey

questionnaires to be reduced to “a fishing trip where questions are added simply because 'it seemed a good

idea at the idea'” (Robson, 2003). Taking this advice into account the following structure was created, which

would support data collection and analyses throughout the whole research:

Questions from the groups in the upper row would

refer to instances from individuals: their personal

characteristics (group 01), use of trend reports

(group 02) and opinion on trend reports (group 03).

Questions from the groups in the lower row would

refer to what individuals report about the companies

they currently work for: their companies’

characteristics (group 04) and how much they invest

in trend reports (group 05).

All groups would later be correlated in a series of

cross-‐analyses between selected variables in order to

find interesting relationships between variables.

1 The researcher has been working for over seven years with design and trends research at market leader companies in-‐house and design consultancies.

Fig. 08: Relevant questions from survey.

25

For each crossing we would generate an expected outcome (assumptions). A total of 28 assumptions were

created from the crossing between the various dependent and independent variables. Table 02 presents those

assumptions together with the cross-‐analyses:

Table 03: Assumptions and the various cross-‐analyses.

GROUP 01 -‐ Individual GROUP 04 -‐– Company

Yrs of EXPERIENCE DEPARTMENT COMPANY SIZE TYPE OF PRODUCT LOCATION

TIME USING TR A1. More

experienced staff have been using TR for longer than less experienced.

A2. Design depts. have been using TR for longer than non-‐design depts.

A3. Larger companies have been using TR for longer than smaller companies.

A4. People working with durables have been using TR for longer than people working only with non-‐durables.

A5. Wealthier locations have been using TR for longer than less wealthy areas.

GRO

UP 02

– Use of T

R

INTERA

CTION A6. More

experienced staff have less interaction with TR than less experienced.

A7. Design depts. have less interaction with TR than non-‐design depts.

Not relevant. Not relevant. Not relevant.

CREA

TIVE

VALU

E A8. More experienced staff put more creative value to TR than less experienced.

A9. Design depts. put less creative value in TR than non-‐design depts.

A10. Larger companies put more creative value to TR than smaller companies.

Not relevant. Not relevant.

FINANCIAL VA

LUE A11. More

experienced staff put more financial value to TR than less experienced.

A12. Design depts. put less financial value in TR than non-‐design depts.

A13. Larger companies put more financial value to TR than smaller companies.

A14. People working with durables put more financial value to TR than people working only with non-‐durables.

A15. Wealthier locations put more financial value to TR than less wealthy areas.

GRO

UP 03

– Opinion

on TR

NPD

VALU

E

A16. More experienced staff put more NPD value to TR than less experienced.

A17. Design depts. put less NPD value in TR than non-‐design depts.

A18. Larger companies put more NPD value to TR than smaller companies.

A19. People working with durables put more NPD value to TR than people working only with non-‐durables.

A20. Wealthier locations put more NPD value to TR than less wealthy areas.

TR PURC

HASE Not relevant. A21. Design depts.

make less purchases of TR than non-‐design depts.

A22. Larger companies make more purchases of TR than smaller companies.

A23. People working with durables make more purchases of TR than people working only with non-‐durables.

A24. Wealthier locations make more purchases than less wealthy areas.

GRO

UP 05

– Investmen

t in TR

TR CRE

ATION Not relevant. A25. Design depts.

create more TR than non-‐design depts.

A26. Larger companies create more TR than smaller companies.

A27. People working with durables create more TR than people working only with non-‐durables.

A28. Wealthier locations create more TR than less wealthy areas.

26

Controlling the quality of quantitative data

The reasons for choosing an online survey were significantly limited by two important variables: time and

money. We had initially aimed at 300 participants and finding a large number of participants with practically

no costs could be much easily achieved by the use of online tools.

Surveys have commonly been used in non-‐experimental, fixed and descriptive designs (Robson, 2003). They

can provide simple and straightforward information about a group of people and if they are well structured

and properly piloted, they can be a relatively cheap and quick way to obtain objective factual information (Bell,

2005; Bryman, 2004).

However, producing a really engaging and effective questionnaire can be harder than it sounds – choosing the

right wording, for example, is an extremely fiendish task, which requires a lot of testing and peer revision.

In self-‐completed questionnaires in particular there are several issues that could lead to unreliability of data –

some of them are described below. A great deal of attention was given to the way questions could be

understood by the responders. Of course, with any questionnaire-‐based surveys data can be affected by the

characteristics of the respondents – their memory, knowledge, experience, motivation and personality

(Robson, 2003), however some measures can be taken to reduce those risks. Below is the list of some of the

measures used in order to overcome some of the main challenges presented by this type of survey:

1. Language barriers:

• Sample: we sampled users from LinkedIn and Facebook because they usually have some good level of

literacy in the English language;

• No jargons or idiomatic expressions: the questionnaire only employed “every day English”.

2. Responses' accuracy or veracity:

• Real and concrete: questions only related to repliers’ own concrete experiences – no abstract values

or situations.

• Closed questions: questions were mostly closed (single and multiple option). Open questions were

mostly left as an option (repliers could choose to answer it or not).

• Anonymity: by assuring anonymity, respondents could feel more at ease and open to say what they

wanted to.

3. Little interest:

• Credible invitation: both the invitations and the survey intro text were carefully written, so as to

reinforce how relevant, interesting and serious the survey was.

27

• The power of institution: adding the University of Cambridge’s logo to the intro was also felt as key to

attracting relevant respondents.

• Credible interface: one of the main reasons for choosing Qualtrics as a survey tool was because of its

distinguishingly clean and professional looking interface.

• Quick and simple: the invitation and introduction warned repliers that the questionnaire could be

quickly completed in about 5 minutes.

• Information as a point of attraction: repliers were offered the choice of obtaining the results of the

survey if they provided their email by the end of the questionnaire.

• Openness: invitations made clear that everyone's input would be important – even the ones with

little or no experience with Trend Reports or design.

4. Ambiguous terms and possible misunderstandings:

• Who, why, what for: respondents could easily find why that survey was being made, where it would

be used for, who would obtain the results, how to get in touch with the researcher, etc.

• Clear instructions: the questionnaire was clearly and explicitly divided into 7 sections. Each one

contained a title as well as a brief explanation of what was expected from repliers in each section.

• Concrete vs. abstract: The term “Trend Reports” was deliberately chosen to replace the term “Trends

Research”. The term “research” (abstract process) could generate a greater level of ambiguity than

“reports” (concrete documents).

• Explanation of terms: the term “Trend Report” was explained on section C of the questionnaire,

before all questions relating to them. The text clearly explained the main characteristics of a Trends

Report (future approach, most common themes), as well as the important difference they hold with

“user research” reports and competitor analysis reports.

Caveats with generalisability

Quantitative methodologies also bring a considerable amount of concern around the issues of validity,

reliability and generalisability of the data. Validity refers to the accuracy of the results presented. Reliability is

the stability or consistency with which something is measured. Generalisability is about the extent to which a

finding is generally more applicable to other situations, times and persons involved (Bryman, 2004; Robson,

2003). Unfortunately, although a great deal has been done to ensure the reliability of this survey, it is

important to emphasise that the size of our sample cannot be constituted as sufficiently rigorous for statistical

28

analyses. 200 valid responses is indeed a very reasonable number, however considering the very open

sampling strategy we applied, the ideal number of participants would have been closer to 4002.

As mentioned previously, that lack of robustness in statistical validity was a risk the research team was aware

of from the beginning. The outcomes from this phase were therefore taken as not as validation but rather as

insightful pointers to different phenomena.

4.1.2 Selecting and recruiting the sample

Recruiting for this survey was done via the researcher’s personal contact network. In total there were 291

emails sent with Invitations separated into 3 main categories: formal (99 emails), informal (126 emails) and

friends (66 emails). Each category was written with the same content but with subtle differences in tone for

each of them – going from more formal and scripted to less formal and more personal3.

Though very time-‐consuming, making sure that every email was individually sent with some personal remarks,

thus showing that the email sent was not spam, is believed to having been a key element for the success of the

recruiting process. A further well-‐received tactic was the use of professional online communities, such as

LinkedIn and Coroflot – illustrated with more detail on table 03 below:

ONLINE COMMUNITY

NUMBER OF USERS

TYPES OF USERS MOST COMMON ACTIVITIES

LinkedIn 90 million Professionals and students from most different areas.

Coroflot 150,000 Creative professionals and students (industrial, graphic, fashion, interior, textile and interaction designers, architects, illustrators, design managers, etc).

Sharing curriculum vitae, portfolios, business opportunities, etc.

Table 04: Networking websites used for recruiting in the survey.

This time the invitations were sent to the network ‘groups’, which are searchable features that allow users to

establish new business relationships, share opinions about a subject, etc. Although these groups can be

created in any subject by any member of the website, in most cases, there is a great level of specialised

knowledge narrowed down by a domain or industry. That characteristic was particularly interesting for the

recruitment of our web-‐survey. Taking advantage from that, invitations were sent to groups related to relevant

issues to this research -‐ product design, innovation and trends research. A list of the names of the assessed 53

LinkedIn and 11 Coroflot groups can be found in the appendices (App.01 and App.02).

It is important to note that although we have employed a “non-‐probability” or “convenient” sampling, one

could argue that the element of randomness was rather low in our strategy (Robson, 2003). People were

2 Considering a very large population in a situation with 95% confidence level and a 5% margin of error. 3 As the survey was anonymized, it is not possible to say what proportion of each group took part in the research.

29

selected from a specific part of the researcher’s personal network (designers and people who work with

design) and the groups from which we obtained a large part of our sample belonged to groups related to

design and/or product innovation. This ensured that respondents were suitably knowledgeable and thus able

to provide valid responses to the survey.

4.1.3 Piloting the survey

Piloting a questionnaire is essential to the conduction of an efficient survey as it can prevent a series of

mistakes that are hard to see solely by the researcher. As Gray puts it, “It is naïve to believe that standardized

questions will receive standardized, rational, responses” (Gray, 2009).

Such is the case that the survey designed for this study went through seventeen updated versions until it was

finally put online. The updates were the outcome of one-‐to-‐one trials that the researcher carried out with ten

different potential participants. Among them, designers and non-‐designers from relatively different age groups

and company sizes. They answered the questionnaire with the researcher by their side, verbally expressing

how they understood each question.

The piloting phase provided the researcher with a better understanding of which question worked better for

what method (quantitative or qualitative).

4.1.4 Finding the survey engine

The web offers a surprising number of qualitative engines at low or even no cost at all4. The difficult part is

finding which of those are actually serious companies and whom you can trust with such sensitive data.

After careful consideration, the company we have chosen was Qualtrics. Amongst the advantages the

company presented were:

• The researcher interface was easy with ‘point-‐and-‐click’ edit system with the possibility of advanced

options with ‘skip or display logic’ to customize which questions the respondents would see.

• The responders’ interface was also clean and intuitive. The layout of the page looked much more

professional, allowing more choices of customisation in the look-‐and-‐feel of the survey, such as

including the logo of one’s institution.

• Respectable list of clients -‐ many of the Fortune 500 companies and the world's top universities.

• Friendly and efficient customer support.

4 The most popular ones: Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, Zoomerang, SurveyGizmo, GoogleForms and Wufoo.

30

4.2 Data compilation

Compiling the data was done in two sequential phases:

• Filter the sample and answers for increased validity.

• Then, produce cross-‐analysis.

We now examine these two phases in more detail.

4.2.1 Filter from 378 to 200 responders

A satisfactory response was obtained from recruitment: 378 respondents completed the survey either fully or

partially, with response rate of approximately 53%. However, in order to ensure more robustness to the

acquired data, we applied a filtering process to separate the valid responses from unfruitful replies.

Unfortunately, cutting had to be brutal. In order to ensure a more homogenised sample, nearly half of the

initial responders had to be excluded from the analysis phase. The final 200 valid replies5 were from

responders who:

• were practitioners (employed, unemployed and freelancers). Academics and students were excluded

from the 1st question onwards.

• had consumers as their end users – meaning that B2B responders were excluded.

• claimed having used trend reports at least once. Sadly our initial idea of comparing users and non-‐

users of trend reports had to be dropped because of the unexpected low number of responders who

said they had never used trend reports (just 41 respondents).

• have answered all obligatory questions. As predicted, that was the most substantial cut in the survey,

but it was an important measure to simplify data analysis.

• were from Europe, North America and South America. There were indeed a small number of replies

from Asia, Africa and Australia, but they were not enough to represent those groups.

• presented consistent statements. There were only few instances (8 out of 378) in which responders

were excluded because of contradictory replies.

• were users or users/creators of trend reports

5 Having an exact number of replies in the analysis wasn’t a deliberate decision, but a lucky coincidence.

31

Final demographic

For the most part, we had a relatively even distribution of our independent variables (years of experience,

department, product type and company size). Location was the only variable that presented an exceedingly

large discrepancy between groups6:

• Years of experience: less than 5 years (17% or 34 resp.), 6 to 10 years (29% or 57 resp.), 11 to 15 years

(29% or 57 resp.), more than 15 years (26% or 52 resp.)

• Department: design (56% or 112 resp.), non-‐design (44% or 88 resp.)

• Type of product: durables (59% or 118 resp.), non-‐durables (41% or 82 resp.)

• Company size7: micro (38% or 75 resp.), SME (39% or 77 resp.), large (24% or 48 resp.)

• Location: Europe (70% or 140 resp.), North America (16% or 31 resp.), South America (15% or 29 resp.)

In order to make the results more manageable, some categories had to be reclassified into smaller groups.

With ‘department’, for example, seven possible choices (Design, Marketing, Planning, Engineering, Production,

Administrative and Other) were reduced to only two choices in the analysis (‘design’ and ‘non-‐design’). It is

important to note that those changes did not represent any disturbance in the examination of survey results.

The table in appendix 032 (App. 03) describes the final demographic of the survey with more details.

4.2.2 Cross-analysis

Once the data was filtered, we applied a series of simple cross-‐references on Excel using pivot-‐tables. We did a

brief trial with more traditional statistical tools, such as SPSS software, but Excel was considered a simpler and

more straightforward tool since the researcher was already familiar with that particular type of analysis.

In order to ensure the quality of the quantitative analysis, besides referring to related literature, the

researcher has also consulted statisticians and people who were familiar with this type of analysis.

6 Those ‘distortions’ or ‘vices’ in the resulted sample were also carefully considered in the analysis. 7 Definitions are as follows: Micro (less than 10 employees), SME (between 10 and 2,500 employees) and Large (more than 2,500 employees). This classification was created by the researcher, based on the original definition for SMEs, according to the European Commission (2003). A figure of the original document can be found in appendix 04.

32

The analyses were divided in three groups:

Fig. 09: Cross-‐analysis from the web-‐survey.

4.3 Results We now revisit the assumptions one by one bringing out the most interesting results from each category and

the various cross-‐analyses.

4.3.1 Group 02 vs. Groups 1 and 4: how the u s e of trend reports can be affected by the characteristics of person and company.

The participant’s individual use of trend reports were measured by how long they have been using them and

by how intensively they were interacting with them. It was not surprising to see that more experienced

participants rated more highly for the use of trend reports. Design departments also appeared to use them

more intensively than expected.

33

Table 05: Cross-‐analysis from the web-‐survey.

4.3.2 Group 03 vs. Groups 1 and 4: how the o p i n i o n on trend reports can be affected by the characteristics of person and company.

Participant’s individual opinions were measured by ‘creative’, ‘financial’ and ‘NPD’ values of trend reports8.

More experienced participants seem to have higher opinions about trend reports they have worked with,

except for ‘NPD value’. Once again, ‘design departments’ have been more positive than first expected, putting

some more positive ratings in particular to ‘creative’ and ‘NPD values’. ‘South America’ has stood out by a

quite enthusiastic opinion for ‘creative value’.

8 The questions related to each value of trend reports (creative, financial and NPD) can be found in the appendix 03.

GROUP 01 -‐ Individual GROUP 04 -‐– Company


A1. More experienced, more time using TR.

A2. Design, more time using TR.

A3. Larger companies, more time using TR.

A4. Durables, more time using TR.

A5. Wealthier locations, more time using TR.

TIME USING TR

REINFORCED 62% of participants with ‘more than 15 years’ of professional experience have been using trend reports for ‘over 10 years’. Conversely, 59% of participants with ‘5 or less years’ of experience have been using them for ‘1 to 3 years’.

REINFORCED There was barely any difference for how long design and non-‐design departments have been using trend reports, but ‘design’ was using trend reports for a bit longer than ‘non-‐design’

UNEXPECTED No major differences between groups.


REINFORCED ‘North America’ had by far the largest percentage of responders saying they have been working with trend reports for ‘over 10 years’ (39%). By contrast, 59% of ‘South Americans’ said they have been working with trend reports between ‘1 and 3’ years.

A6. More experienced, less interaction.

A7. Design, less interaction.

Not relevant. Not relevant. Not relevant.

GRO

UP 02

– Use of T

rend

rep

orts

INTERA

CTION

UNEXPECTED More experienced designers have more interaction than novice, except for ‘note making’. In ‘reading intensity’, for example, 62% of experienced and 41% of novice said they ‘read trend reports’ carefully.

VERY UNEXPECTED Responders from ‘design’ departments showed some more intensive use of trend reports across most questions, except for ‘note making’ in which both had very similar results. ‘Design’ was particularly higher in ‘referral during and after project’.

No major differences between groups.


VERY UNEXPECTED Responders from ‘South America’ were more positive in all categories. ‘Europe’ had the least interaction in most of them.

34

GROUP 01 -‐ Individual GROUP 04 -‐ Company


A8. More experienced, more creative value.

A9. Design, less creative value.

A10. Larger companies, more creative value.

Not relevant. Not relevant.

CREA

TIVE

VALU

E

REINFORCED No major differences between groups, except for participants with ‘5 or less’ years of professional experience being much less positive with regards to trend reports being ‘ahead-‐of-‐the-‐curve’ -‐ 35% of them ‘disagreed’ that category, while 25% of ‘more than 15 years’ have ‘strongly agreed’ on the same category.

VERY UNEXPECTED Both groups had exceptionally similar results, but for one category: 44% of ‘design’ and 31% of ‘non-‐design’ have ‘strongly agreed' about trend reports having been 'inspiring' to them.

UNEXPECTED Very similar results, except for participants from ‘larger’ companies being a bit less positive with regards to ‘inspiring’ -‐ 17% of them 'disagreed' that trend reports were an on that issue.

UNEXPECTED ‘Durable’ products were a bit less positive with regards to how ‘inspiring’ and ‘ahead-‐of-‐the-‐curve’ the trend reports they have worked with have been for them.

VERY UNEXPECTED 'South American' participants were more positive in all categories, except for ‘reliable’ in which they are all very similar. ‘South Americans’ showed particularly a lot of enthusiasm in with trend reports having been 'inspiring' for them -‐ 66% of them 'strongly agreed' to that issue.

A11. More experienced, more financial value.

A12. Design, less financial value.

A13. Larger companies, more financial value.

A14. Durables, more financial value.

A15. Wealthier locations, more financial value.

FINANCIAL VA

LUE

REINFORCED 73% of participants with ‘more than 15 years’ of experience ‘agreed’ to trend reports being ‘money well spent’. 32% of participants with ‘5 or less years’ of experience have ‘disagreed’ on the same category.


REINFORCED Responders from 'micro' companies were a lot less positive: 27% of them 'disagree' for 'money well spent'.


VERY UNEXPECTED No major differences between groups, but ‘Europe’ this time was the one with less positive replies. ‘South America’ was the most positive.

A16. More experienced, more NPD value.

A17. Design, less NPD value.

A18. Larger companies, more NPD value.

A19. Durables, more NPD value.

A20. Wealthier locations, more NPD value.

GRO

UP 03

– Opinion

on Tren

d repo

rts

NPD

VALU

E

UNEXPECTED Participants with ‘5 or less years’ of experience were more positive than others: only 26% of them think trend reports are 'not essential', while all others show higher figures (about 40% each).

UNEXPECTED No major differences between groups. ‘Design’ was slightly more positive – 36% of them and 43% of ‘non-‐design’ said trend reports are ‘not essential’.

VERY UNEXPECTED Participants from ‘larger’ companies were less positive: 54% of them think trend reports are 'not essential', while others are around 35% in the same issue.

VERY UNEXPECTED Participants working with ‘durables’ saw less NPD value in trend reports: 49% of them said they think of trend reports as 'not essential' (32% for non-‐durables).

REINFORCED No major differences between groups. ‘North America’ was the most positive – 10% of them think trend reports are a ‘must have’ (3% of ‘Europe’ and no one from ‘South America’ in the same category).


35

4.3.3 Group 05 vs. Groups 1 and 4: how the i n v e s t m e n t in trend reports can be affected by the characteristics of person and company.

Participants have given some indication on how much their companies invest in trend reports by the number

of reports they purchase and create a year. Not surprisingly, the larger the financial resources, the bigger the

investment in trend reports. In general, wealthier countries and larger companies have indeed presented

larger numbers for purchase and creation.

GROUP 01 -‐ Individual GROUP 04 -‐ Company


Not relevant. A21. Design, less purchases.

A22. Larger companies, more purchases.

A23. Durables, more purchases.

A24. Wealthier locations, more purchases.

TR PURC

HASE



REINFORCED Responders from 'micro' companies said their companies purchase much less reports than the others. 68% of them don't buy any trend report at all. That number pales in comparison to the ones from responders from 'larger' companies -‐ 29% of them said their companies buy 'more than 5' trend reports a year.


REINFORCED No big differences in ‘location’ but wealthier regions (North America and Europe) seem to purchase a bit more than poorer regions (South America).

Not relevant. A25. Design, more creation.

A26. Larger companies, more creation.

A27. Durables, more creation.

A28. Wealthier locations, more creation.

GRO

UP 05

– Investmen

t in tren

d repo

rts

TR CRE

ATION



REINFORCED Larger companies are the ones who 'create' more trend reports than others -‐ 38% said 'more than 5' and 25% said '3 to 5' reports. That's 29% and 12% for SMEs (respectively).

UNEXPECTED ‘Durables’ showed fewer percentages for their yearly creation of trend reports: 38% of them said 'none' and 21% said 'over 5 reports' (23% and 28% respectively for non-‐durables).

REINFORCED Clear difference -‐ 39% of 'North Americans' said they create 'more than 5' trend reports a year while 48% of 'South Americans' said they create no trend report at all. Answers from 'Europeans' were spread very evenly.


36

4.4 Discussion

Taking the research questions as a starting point, this survey has explored real experiences of how

professionals in general have been using trends reports and what is their opinion about them. It was also

obtained some idea of how much investment companies have been putting into acquiring and creating those

types of reports.

The results from the cross-‐analysis have shown very little difference between most groups in general. The

most surprising result to the researcher was the low level of different opinions between design and non-‐design

departments. From what was previously seen in the literature, it was expected a much less positive position

from the design sector towards trend reports.

The low number of people who said they had never used a trend report before was also surprising. The

researcher speculates some possible explanations for that situation:

• The use of trend reports has indeed become a widespread common practice;

• Despite the explanatory text in the survey, people could have mistaken trend reports for other types

of reports (competitor analysis, user research, etc);

• Participants just completed the questionnaire because they were curious about the results.

There was also a high number of participants who said their companies don’t purchase any reports at all –

that could potentially be an indication for the increasing influence of the internet as main source for trend

forecasting material. That could also potentially reinforce the power of informal research in that scenario.

Something that has also caught our eyes was the relatively negative scores for being ‘ahead-‐of-‐the-‐curve’

across all groups – a characteristic that probably most people would expect from a trend report.

On the whole we observed quite positive results towards the use and opinion of trend reports. It seems like

people do use them fairly frequently and they do see them generally as a good tool. However the very low

level of ‘must have’ and the relatively high number of ‘not essential’ answers in ‘NPD value’ was certainly

intriguing.

This survey was designed to provide an essentially descriptive analysis in the use and opinion of trend reports.

Some of the constructs could be used to explore relationships more statistically. In hindsight, had more

attention been given to the potential statistical analysis, some of the questions might have been phrased

differently. As a result, several questions were not included in the final analysis, but they did provide useful

contextual information.

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Key learnings for next phase

As mentioned previously, the main purpose of the quantitative phase was to inform the design of the central

methodology of this study – the qualitative interviews. Below is a list of those key findings, which will be

explored further in the following chapter:

Fig. 10: Key learnings from the quantitative phase to the qualitative phase.

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CHAPTER 05

Qualitative interviews

5.1 Overview

In the previous section the first sub-‐set of research questions was answered via a quantitative methodology.

As it is common with quantitative approaches (Bell, 2005; Robson, 2003), the survey we designed was

deliberately aimed at more generic and superficial statements about the use of trend reports. This section,

however, discusses the second sub-‐set of research questions, which was approached through a qualitative

methodology, narrowing the scope of this investigation and focusing on issues specifically related to product

design.

In a series of one-‐to-‐one semi-‐structured interviews we asked eleven designers and design managers about:

RQ03: What do they (as designers who work with product design) think about trends research and trend

reports?

RQ04: How do they (as designers who work with product design) see the role of trends research and trend

reports in product design?

The quantitative phase focused solely on getting real, tangible data. However the qualitative phase aims not

only at obtaining data on real experiences (RQ03), but it also includes more open and abstract questions,

discussing what participants would consider to be the ideal version of a trend report for their field (RQ04).

First some considerations are made with regards to the use of a qualitative methodology and its major

benefits and challenges. The design and analysis of the interviews are then discussed, and the chapter ends

with the interpretation of the outcomes from the interviews followed by a discussion of the entire chapter.

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5.2 Some considerations on qualitative interviews

One of the main advantages of semi-‐structured interviews is that they allow for a flexible and more tailored

approach to the investigation. The exact question wording can be changed on the spot, adapting to each

particular interviewee’s understanding (Crilly, 2005).

The more ‘casual’ tone of these types of interviews can give the impression of unscripted conversations, but in

fact the “behind-‐the-‐scenes” of such interviews are very complex and require a certain experience with them

in order to get the best results (Robson, 2003, Mason, 2005). On one side, qualitative researchers have to keep

the interviewee engaged, maintaining spontaneity and encouraging them to talk freely without feeling

pressured or inhibited by the questionnaire. On the other, they have to keep the focus of the research, making

sure that all research issues are systematically covered.

Bias is also a common concern with qualitative research. Interviewers have to take great care in avoiding

leading or biased questions. Some authors, such as Mason (2002), do not even believe ‘neutrality’ is possible.

As a consequence, qualitative researchers have to constantly reflect upon their interference and influence in

the process (Mason, 2002; Flick, 2006; Robson, 2003).

The legitimacy of the research can also be a major concern here. However, since the role of a qualitative

researcher is so prominent, measures of validity and reliability are not as ‘black & white’ as they are in

quantitative approaches. In that case, Mason suggests for example, that “this concern should be expressed in

terms of ensuring – and demonstrating to others – that data generations and analysis have not only been

appropriate to the research questions, but also thorough, careful, honest and accurate” (Mason, 2002).

Robson (2003) suggests a number of techniques to rule out threats to validity in qualitative designs:

• Triangulations of data, observers, methods and theories;

• Peer debriefing and support;

• Post-‐interview verification and returning materials such as transcripts to respondents;

• Negative case analysis or ‘playing devils advocate’;

• Audit trail, keeping track of raw data as well as details of coding and analysis.

In any case, most authors agree that a thorough, rigorous and transparent approach is the key to increase

reliability in qualitative research (Mason, 2002; Robson, 2003; Collins, 2010; Flick, 2006).

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5.3 Designing the interview

5.3.1 Sampling

As stated before, this phase focuses on the realm of product design. Thus unlike the sample from the

quantitative phase, which was more or less open to varied types of professionals, this time the recruiting

strategy was much more targeted. This phase had only participants who were either designing products

themselves or were directly working with product designers.

As seen from the literature review, most studies have aimed at talking to design managers and design

directors, leaving senior and middleweight designers in a more secondary role. As a response to that gap, this

research has made a conscious effort of flipping that situation around. Thus from the eleven interviewees, only

three were in a management position (table 07).

COMPANY INDIVIDUAL Interviewee1

Identifier Industry Size2 / reach

Location Seniority Education Experience with TR

EI-‐03* Mid-‐weight MA, Product Design Use + create3

EI-‐07* Senior MA, Product Design Use

EI-‐20* Mid-‐weight MA, Graphic Design Create

EI-‐99*

Large / Global

London

Manager MA, Graphic Design Create

EI-‐49* Senior MA, Product Design Use

EI-‐42

Consumer electronics

Large / Global

London

Head of studio MA, Product Design Use

EI-‐86 Large / Global

London Senior MA, Product Design Use

EI-‐57

Sportswear

SME / Global


EI-‐78 Jewellery SME / Local

São Paulo Mid-‐weight BA, Product Design Use + create

EI-‐47* SME / Local

São Paulo Manager MA, Product Design Use

EI-‐87

Design Agencies

SME / Global


Table 08: Interviewees’ profiles.

1 Randomly coded for increased measures of confidentiality. 2 As referred in the quantitative phase: Micro (less than 10 employees), SME (between 10 and 2,500 employees) and Large (more than 2,500 employees). 3 This participant used to create trend reports in a previous job. He/she no longer creates them at his/her current job.

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Six out of the eleven participants belonged to the researcher’s personal network (see table 07) and were

contacted individually via email. The other six interviewees were contacted via personal messages on

LinkedIn4.

The emails presented the researcher as an MPhil student from Cambridge University and explained that:

• The researcher was looking for design managers and product designers to take part in interviews on

the use and value of trends research as well as trends reports in product design;

• The main objective of the research was to study the impact of future forecasting in product

development;

• The ultimate goal of the interviews was to point out to some latent problems and possible

improvements in that type of praxis.

• Data would be obtained via audio recording, and its content would be kept anonymous and strictly

confidential. The interviewees would also sign off on all the quotes used in the final work.

• Each interview would take about 1 hour and that although the researcher was suggesting some

specific dates, there was some flexibility on when the interviews could take place.

Once that email was replied to, and before the invitation was accepted, the researcher confirmed with

possible participants if they would be OK with being interviewed at their offices, as we needed to do a quick

analysis on actual trend reports made by or for their companies. They were also told that no pictures would

be taken, but that the researcher did need to make a quick structural analysis of the reports in situ alongside

the interviewee.

Though small and not all-‐encompassing for practical reasons, our sample still presented a very fruitful platform

in terms of qualitative investigation. By including, for example, some participants that belonged to the same

company, we had a good opportunity to analyse different points-‐of-‐view of the same trends research

strategies.

All participants were from well-‐known and leading companies and had been working directly with product

design for at least four years5, with varied levels of experiences with trend reports (see table 07).

4 This time, instead of just sending open invitations, specific LinkedIn groups were used as a means to scout and to get in touch with relevant professionals. 5 There was an average of 8 years of total professional experience among them.

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Although the quantitative results showed no major differences between different group characteristics, it was

also decided to include participants developing products with different lifecycles. In total, seven companies

were assessed: two large consumer electronic companies (mobile phones and home appliances), three

fashion/apparel companies (sportswear and jewellery) and two design agencies designing products for

different brands.

In order to avoid biased propositions, our sampling strategy also included designers who were openly against

or not at all bothered about trends research in their daily process. That kind of information was obtained with

participants usually at the moment of invitation. In all cases, the researcher made sure that no side was being

taken – the researcher didn’t present herself as either against or for trend reports.

A final consideration was made with regards to ‘location’. As the previous phase had shown some interesting

discrepancies from South America, the researcher took the opportunity to interview two designers in São

Paulo, Brazil. The low number of interviewees in this case was mostly due to lack of time and resources.

Considering the type of methodology and specially the lack of major differences between the interviews from

São Paulo and London, the researcher decided to disregard the large discrepancies in this aspect of the

sample.

5.3.2 Visual props and exercises

Props are good conversation starters and they also help to “break the ice”, stimulating interviewees to be

more talkative (Mason, 2002; Bryman, 2004). In our case, since our target was supposedly more visual, we

have also made an effort to bring a set of visual props so to make the 1-‐hour sessions more dynamic and

hopefully more engaging as well.

In total, four visual props were used in the interviews: trend reports, trend map analysis, trends research

‘should/should not’ and the NPD value results from the previous quantitative phase (see Fig. 11).

Apart from some few exceptions, the exercises were followed in that particular order. That arrangement was

done so that the interview would flow from more specific and real examples to more ideal and broader issues

related to trend reports. We now present the main ideas behind each exercise.

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Fig. 11: Exercises from qualitative interviews -‐ trend report analysis, trend map analysis, should/should not and trend reports’ NPD value (clockwise order).

Exercise 1: Trend report analysis

Participants were asked to bring a trend report made by or for their companies. There were no restrictions to

what type or number of reports they could bring, as long as they had actually used it (or them).

The topics related to this exercise were:

• What are considered good and bad practices?

• How did they use that specific report?

• How useful or inspiring was it for them? Why have they brought up that specific report? What do they

like and don’t like about it? How did it compare to others they have used in the past?

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• How do they see the relationship between in-‐house and outsourced reports?

• What processes their companies have? Who creates them? Who commissions them?

• What participants considered being trend reports?

Exercise 2: Trend map analysis

Participants were presented with a ‘trend map’, which was a graphical representation (created by the

researcher for this study) that illustrates the interaction between trends research and the design process (see

Fig. 14).

They were provided with colourful pens and were encouraged to make notes on the sheet. The main objective

for this exercise was to obtain information on good and bad practices, but also to understand:

• Where they are in the process and which activities they usually relate to each phase;

• What is the usual dynamic amongst different stakeholders (researchers, designers, managers,

marketers, sales staff, executives, etc)? Where are the main bottlenecks?

• What is the relationship between formal and informal research?

• Do they think product designers should be involved in trends research? Can product designers make

good trend reports?

• Do they think the background of researchers has any influence in the quality of the reports?

• What is their opinion about the ‘trend map’ presented? Would they like to propose any changes?

Exercise 3: Should/should not analysis

Participants were asked to select three or four verbs from a pre-‐set list of fifteen6. Those verbs would have to

express what they believed trends research should and should not do in a product design environment.

The selection of verbs was based on literature findings on most common uses fore reports and trends

research. The verbs were also chosen by its ambiguous connotations, which were ‘conversation starters’ about

why they have chosen a particular verb to be on the ‘should’ and not on the ‘should not’ side.

Any misunderstandings on what the meaning of each verb were clarified at the spot. Participants were also

encouraged to suggest more words in case they felt there were any missing. Most interviewees however used

the verbs provided, without suggesting changes.

6 The verbs were: inspire, stimulate, open minds, encourage, inform, clarify, keep track, guide, control, force, restrict, constraint, reassure, tranquilise and decrease risks, anticipate, lead to tangible results and simulate and convince.

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Questions related to this exercise would consider:

• What do they believe should be the role of trends research and trend reports in product design?

• What do they think trends research should/could do and what it shouldn’t/couldn’t do?

• What would be the ideal trend report for them as product designers? What kind of content and

layout would better suit their needs?

Exercise 4: The value of trend reports for NPD

Participants were presented with the results of question 19 from the quantitative analysis, which read

“Considering the development of successful products, trend reports are: a must have, nice to have or not

essential”.

The researcher briefly explained the background of those results and then asked the interviewees how they

would answer that question and why they made that specific choice.

Questions related to this exercise would investigate:

• Possible reasons for very low results in the quantitative analysis for trend reports being a “must

have”.

• If participants from design departments presented such positive feedback about trend reports, and if

they were so useful and inspiring to them, how come so many of them have said trend reports are not

essential to the development of new products?

5.3.3 Int erview g uide

An interview guide was sent to all participants before the day of the interviews. The idea was to give a more

detailed idea of what issues the interview would cover, thus making participants feel more relaxed as they

could prepare themselves if they wanted to.

The PDF document also reinforced the confidentiality issues and explained how the quotes would be displayed

in the dissertation, reminding them that all quotes used would be signed-‐off by them.

The guide also explained that the interview would start with more real and specific issues and then move to

more ideal and broader questions.

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5.4 Data compilation and analysis

5.4.1 Transcript ion

All audio was transcribed -‐ eight by the researcher and the remaining three by a certified transcription-‐

company in India7. They were each put into separate Microsoft Word documents and every sentence was

tagged with time stamps – so to make structuring easier.

The transcription was done literally and not in an interpretive manner (Mason, 2002). Some of the text was

edited by the researcher in order to remove unimportant “speech habits” – such as “you know”, “like”, etc.

5.4.2 Coding

The coding was done in an open manner (Flick, 2006; Mason, 2002) according to the following steps:

1. All the transcriptions were compiled together in a single Microsoft Excel file with the following headings:

questions asked, interviewee code, answers, topics and sub-‐topics 1, 2, 3 and 4.

2. The interviewees’ quotes were initially put into that file in order of appearance – from the first person to be

interviewed to the last. Each quote received a number (coding) for later potential data finding.

3. Every quote that caught the researcher’s attention was highlighted in a different colour. Those were the

ones that were considered as potential sources for insights.

4. Then each quote received 1 to 4 keywords that summarised them. These keywords were then later renamed

as ‘sub-‐topics’. Those sub-‐topics were then classified into smaller groups listed by 9 ‘topics’.

5. Those topics were then put in front of the sub-‐topics back in the Excel file. At that stage some ‘judgement

calls’ were needed since some keywords would fit into different topics, thus causing some overlapping. That

situation was overcome by the interpretation of each quote.

6. The appearance of topics and subtopics were counted to see if there was any possible insight coming from

the number of responses to a subject.

7. The distribution of topics and sub-‐topics was once more assessed and topics were then clustered in 4 main

topics: constraints, why not use trend reports, reports and the role of trend reports.

7 The difference in how the transcriptions were made had no relevance in the analysis of that data.

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8. Those new and final categories were distributed into the previously highlighted quotes. That way we went

from 410 to 164 quotes.

9. The quotes were once again checked to see if the topics and sub-‐topics to which they belonged to still made

sense.

Fig. 12: Analysis of interviewees’ quotes (actual results).

11. Also, the number of times each keyword had been voiced and by whom was counted. That was done

through an iterative process of counting the appearances of those keywords in the Excel file. The idea however

was to keep the counting as casual as possible – with no attention paid to statistical relevance. Had we not

done that, we wouldn’t be able, for example, to see that the process of ‘filtering existing trend reports’ was

mentioned 30 times in the various interviews. This was also done to avoid losing perspective on how relevant

each topic was through the filtering process.

This process, although long and complex, was very useful to help build the narrative for understanding and

presenting the results of the data analysis.

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5.4.3 Analysis of exercises

Analysis of exercise 1: Trend reports

Asking participants to bring a report they had worked with to the interview was a good way to make

participants recall past experiences. Most participants brought reports made in-‐house – even the ones that do

not work at companies with in-‐house trend departments.

Fig. 13: Analysis of trend reports in Microsoft Excel. Content is filled here with “Lorem Ipsum” quotes in order to keep anonymity of interviewees.

Analysis of exercise 2: Trend map

To this part of the analysis, quotes from interviewees that referred to “main bottlenecks they see in their

current trends process” were placed on the trends map. The colours are related to the results of exercise 04.

Fig. 14: Analysis from quotes of “trend map” exercise8.

8 EI-‐03 appears three times in the graph because the interviewee has pointed the “decision moments” as the most challenging ones.

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Analysis of exercise 3: Should/should not

As illustrated by the figure 15 below, the verb frequency results were laid out on a bubble chart, where each

circle was proportionate in diameter to the amount of times the verbs from the exercise were chosen by a

participant.

The groups of verbs were then clustered into smaller groups of similar affinity:

• Group A: inspire, stimulate, open minds and encourage9.

• Group B: inform, clarify and keep track.

• Group C: guide, control, force, restrict and constraint10.

• Group D: reassure, tranquilise and decrease risks.

• Group E: anticipate, lead to tangible results and simulate.

• Group F: convince.

Fig. 15: Bubble diagram. “Should” answers are shown in green and “should not” answers in red.

9 Actually suggested by one participant, as “a trend report should not discourage creativity”. 10 Force, restrict and constraint were verbs suggested by participants.

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It is important to note that, although the circles from the graph were originated by numerical correlation –

seven votes, made a 07cm large circle in diameter for example -‐ the purpose of this exercise was by no means

to get an exact or representative opinion from the sample.

Analysis of exercise 4: Trend reports’ NPD value

As interviewees presented opinions more or less favourable towards the “new product development value” of

trend reports, their attitude were illustrated in a spectrum from ‘plus and minus’. Various types of analysis

were tried out (company size, product type), but the collation of those results with the level of seniority from

the interviewees have provided some interesting clusters.

Fig.16: Analysis from trend reports’ NPD value exercise. Interviewee EI-‐42 was not circled, simply because there was no pattern formed around him.

5.5 Interpretation of findings

The exercises were not only used during the interviews as triggers and conversation starters, but also used to

help analyse the outcomes of the interviews. It is important to note however, that although there were

questions attached to each one of them, as we have seen on section 5.2.2, the exercises were not meant to be

rigid. In other words, the outcomes from the interviews were analysed quite freely, not following any scripts.

Below we discuss our findings in detail.

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5.5.1 Trend report s as sources of discoveries

“Tough crowd” to please

Designers are knowingly very close to trendsetters and early adopters, be it in on their social or professional

networks. That means they usually are already aware of much that is being presented in trend reports, which

makes them a very “tough crowd” to please when creating trend reports.

Product designers are naturally interested in new and interesting ideas – as Raymond (2010) puts it, they are

“cultural magpies”. Reading magazines, checking blogs and websites is part of their daily lives. The Internet has

also multiplied the access to all kinds of information. Our interviewees told us about the multitude of

information sources they make constant use of. All our interviewees visited coolhunting blogs and other trends

related websites very frequently. Some even said it was part of a designer’s job to do that (EI-‐07, EI-‐57).

“Designers are already collecting things everywhere they go, when you see a TR, you’ve kind

of already seen most of the stuff.” (EI-‐07/ 02)11

Providing them with something new on a trend report thus can be very difficult. Some participants have, for

example, complained about reports recycling the same imagery and ideas over and over (EI-‐07, EI-‐47).

Preaching to the choir

An interesting insight that came from designers was the acknowledgement that the kind of trend report that

were most useful for them were the ones that presented information beyond colours and materials. Obtaining

that kind of information was not seen as a bad thing per se – they did say it was good having a summary of

what is happening worldwide. But for the product designers we have interviewed, trend reports that just

present colour-‐material information were not engaging or inspiring enough. They need a story and a rationale

behind each colours and materials trend.

“Presenting us that (TR) for 2012, it’s inspiring, it’s nice, but we shouldn’t be looking at that because trends move so fast nowadays, we should be really looking at consumer behaviour,

rather than what colours and graphics are in. We should really be looking at why those specific colour is in, l ike, this colour is coming back because it’s a result from this and that

trend”. (EI-‐78/12)

11 Coding for interviews work the following way: in the case of “EI-‐07/02”, “EI – 07” = expert interview with identifier number 07; and the number after the slash, in this case the number “12”, represents the number of the quote, according to the researcher’s notes. When they come with time stamps, like “19:50”, for example, it means that that particular quote was not part of the highlighted quotes, chosen by the researcher, but they were still interesting enough to appear in the dissertation.

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Also colour-‐material is seen as “their area”, and therefore something they say they already know enough

about. Obtaining that kind of information for them seems very easy since, according to most of participants,

they usually have a good instinct for knowing what is the next colour or a desired functionality.

“I personally found this report more interesting than the design trends one. Somehow, as a designer you know a lot about design. You can somehow in an intuitive way, predict what is

going to happen.” (EI-‐49/ 08:34)

They appreciate the opinion of experts in social-‐cultural shifts because that is the area they are not experts in

(EI-‐78, EI-‐49).

The work of the trends agency The Future Laboratory12 was highly praised. According to many participants,

FutureLab, as it is also known, provided a very good balance between aesthetics and social cultural data. No

reports from that agency however were brought to the interviews. In fact, no one has mentioned specifically

trend reports from FutureLab. Most were referring to FutureLab’s biannual magazine Viewpoint as well as to

their online tool called L:SN and to their biannual presentations, Trend Briefings.

“When you get the briefs from the category managers, their briefs are so heavily based on

what is out there already in the market, but FutureLab just doesn’t get down to that – they go beyond 'people are wearing this or that kind of sneakers'”. (EI-‐57/ 17:15)

It is important to note that some interviewees were not that impressed by the work of outsourced agencies,

such as FutureLab’s. They were considered too “generic” or too “abstract”. Interestingly that kind of opinion

came especially from participants who were very keen in finding out about technological advancements (EI-‐07

and EI-‐49).

“You can’t be too abstract because I know that the presentations from FutureLabs, a lot of

people switched off because they felt it was very pretentious and super 'heady' and had nothing to do with anything.” (EI-‐57/ 18)

12 There is a caveat in this situation, which is that most interviewees, 9 from the 11, worked in London, which is where FutureLab is

based.

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5.5.2 Trend report s as boundary object s

Lack of knowledge

Although our focus was on the designers’ own perspectives and experiences with trend reports, the

interviewees also voiced some important constraints coming from non-‐designers (marketers, business and

sales people).

The lack of knowledge of non-‐designers about how designers work was indeed a widespread complaint, but it

was also noted that those kinds of concerns came especially from interviewees working at smaller companies

with a background of family businesses13.

“Our creative director would go ‘ let’s make our next collection about f lowers because I’ve seen a lot of f lowers in the European fairs’. Sometimes they come with some pictures from

magazines and say ‘we could do something in this style’.” (EI-‐86/ 02 & 03)

That “lack of knowledge” in creative processes seemed also to extend to forecasting practices. Designers have

said they sometimes have to “educate” non-‐designers about trends. There were a lot of comments about how

non-‐designers were misinformed about how trends research “should” work. Some interviewees, for example,

have reported cases of coolhunting material or “poorly done” trends research being used as key elements in

decision-‐making.

“We don’t necessarily pay attention to those generic things, but I think other sectors of our company do. When a trend report comes from a respected consultancy and we paid a lot of money for it, they see value in what’s in there and then they make decision based off of it,

which can be risky.” (EI-‐07/ 01)

There were also reports of decision-‐makers requesting ‘make-‐do’ researches or simply not purchasing or

creating any trend reports because they do not see the value in forecasting for design.

“My boss doesn’t go to their presentations (FutureLab) or really read their reports. I think he

thinks it’s just an expensive service that it’s just a lot of ' intellectual stuff'.” (EI-‐57/ 04)

Interestingly, some relatively negative remarks were made not only towards “non-‐designers”, but also to some

more “old-‐school” designers who were set in their comfort zones and not willing to keep up-‐to-‐date.

“But I imagine this (agency’s trend report) might have been helpful for a lot of people. Maybe for older designers, who have been here a long time and who know how the system works, so

they don’t necessarily feel the need to go out there and see what is going on.” (EI-‐78/ 10)

13 Considering the size of our sample that could also surely be just a matter of chance. Further investigation is encouraged.

54

An “eye for design”

Most of our interviewees thought that trend researchers do not necessarily need to have a solid background in

design, but they do need to be able to articulate well and understand how designers work and think.

“The ideal person to write a brief would be someone who can read a sketch. They don’t have to do a sketch themselves, but they need to at least imagine what this drawing would look

l ike as a f inished product. I think if you have an ‘eye for design’ you can see those things.” (EI-‐57/ 03)

The idea of having two types of reports was frequently mentioned. One for management and business people,

heavy with information, market share data, numbers and graphs; and another one for designers, which should

be more visual and concise.

“They have been looking at things l ike Mintel, WGSN and those reports. Many times they found them too heavy. What we normally do is simplify it; make it easy for them (product

designers) to read. Because that’s more for us (researchers) to read. We need to simplify it and analyse it for these guys; they don’t care about reading tons of things.” (EI-‐20/ 05)

“We realised that something physical is something that people l ike – specially the product managers. It’s something to sign-‐off of. You go l ike ‘You see’. And you need a good book to

make it inspirational. But on the other side, for our internal designers, the book wasn’t really useful, because what we did as designers, we ripped out the pages. I mean, you want to have

collages.” (EI-‐03/ 12)14

Lack of time and even lack of patience were the biggest reasons for their short interest in text-‐heavy reports.

An ideal trend report for them would have bite-‐size, straightforward information with compelling images that

help them understand concepts in seconds.

“Designers are very visual people and once they understand this, they’l l just need to glance at

that. The moment they have to read it, you’re lost.” (EI-‐42/ 19)

The importance of producing not only interesting content, but also a visually engaging report was indeed very

frequently mentioned. Designers are more comfortable expressing themselves either visually or verbally. A

complicated report could mean they would either lose interest and look for some other source themselves or

that they would lose too much time trying to understand what is being said.

Some of them also said that pictures and videos were important since they would “stick in their minds” (EI-‐03,

EI-‐49), making it easier for them to visualise the people they would be designing for.

14 As previously noted, each interviewee received the transcripts from their interviews via email as a form of ‘sign-‐off’ on what was said. It was made sure, that the main idea of the quote was kept. Most changes made for polishing vocabulary and grammar. This quote (EI-‐03/ 12) represents such case.

55

Opinions on “visual aids” were divided though. Diagrams were seen by some as very helpful but they were

sometimes viewed as “too complex and abstract” by others.

“I think of trend reports as being heavy on detailed data points that you have to extract value from – l ike charts, diagrams and stats; whereas design inspiration needs more than just

numbers – they need to connect to real people in context. What people say they do versus what they actually do are usually two different things.” (EI-‐87/ 18)15

Also related to the role of researchers, having “good taste” was also mentioned more than once as a

fundamental characteristic of any trends researcher (EI-‐42 and EI-‐57).

“I think there are people with taste and people without taste. And there are also people who

are able to anticipate taste. I don’t care whether they’ve got any design training or not. I just need them to be articulate and open to new stuff.” (EI-‐42/ 11)

Reports as storytelling helpers

The lack of understanding and indeed trust and respect between internal divisions (specially between research

and development departments) was very often cited during the interviews. As suggested by some

interviewees, trend reports could act as “boundary objects” (Fox, 2011), working as a kind of symbiotic entity,

navigating across those culturally defined boundaries16.

There were numerous occasions in which interviewees reported having used trend reports as a means to

convince non-‐designers about a particular design path. From the data we obtained, it seems that this is

currently the most common use for trend reports.

“A lot of what we’re doing with trends is using it as a framework to justify why we’re doing

things. When we go into our business unit meetings, we have to say this is the right product to do because you see, the design trend, it’s going that way and the consumers are doing this. It’s very much about building a level of reassurance and belief.” (EI-‐42/ 21:54)

It seems like there is an increasing demand in providing more solid background stories and designers are being

asked to provide the rationale behind their aesthetic decisions. As Nathan Crilly noted, “designers are often

not natural writers” (Crilly, 2005), thus having a trend expert, either in-‐house or outsourced, was seen quite in

a positive way by most interviewees.

“I usually spend 3 hours in front of a computer screen, reading books and magazines. If we

had something l ike WGSN, that would be really great because I could be using that time to create and design.” (EI-‐86/ 12)

15 Quote edited by interviewee, as noted on previous footnote. 16 The term “boundary object” was actually suggested a posteriori by a colleague, Burcu Felekoglu, in a feedback section at Institute for Manufacturing (28th March 2011).

56

“I think some designers could do trend reports. I personally consider that I cannot. Probably because I don’t have the patience. And you really have to have the skil ls to do it. Whenever I

try to do just a simple task l ike f inding inspirational images, I found it quite diff icult. Sometimes I see that people that are really into that topic, they find much better images than

I do. I think that is because they know what to search, what topics in particular. I don’t know if it ’s a matter of a skil l . I don’t, it ’s probably just patience.” (EI-‐49/ 09)

According to the interviews, researchers have increasingly gained more ‘power of decision’ in organisations

due to their ability to rationally express reasons behind certain choices and not to just explain things based on

“gut feel”.

“There have been some projects that our product designers have not used trends research and they’ve done reports, they’ve struggled to get direction that creates a story. There were

several projects that had to be restarted because they didn’t have a direction. So when they’ve got the trends, they’ve got that story and they’ve got a way to express it to the top

management.” (EI-‐99/ 16)

However, they also were very quick to point out that this was not necessarily a good thing all the time,

particularly if the researcher does not understand enough about the subject matter or if the design team does

not respect the researcher’s knowledge and background.

“They tried at my previous company putting the trend department to guide the designers, but

it was so diff icult sometimes, especially for some more technical products. They had all these themes that were definitely very fashion and interiors-‐based. Then you tried to apply that to a

running product -‐ even if pastels and muted pastels are big on the runway, it’s not going to work on a running shoe ever.”(EI-‐57/ 31)

Another negative side effect of the seductive power of trend reports was the recognition that they are also

being used backwards: there were some testimonies related to reports being used in ‘retrofits’, or post-‐

justifications of design paths by designers and non-‐designers alike.

“At the end, after the collection has been designed, then our manager wil l put together a mood board of the colour materials. So they don’t actually use it (TR) for creation but mostly

for sales or for justifying a design direction.” (EI-‐57/ 11)

“I’ve seen companies using outsourced reports, just to say they’ve done it. We weren’t following it. It was all for show.” (EI-‐78/ 07)

Trusted partners

Trust was a big issue among participants. It didn’t matter if the reports were coming from in-‐house or being

outsourced; designers were very explicit about their concerns with the source of the data – who was writing it,

researching it and interpreting it.

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Trust was also pointed out as an element needed in order to be confident enough to tell stories. If the

researcher earns the design team’s respect, a good symbiotic relation between researchers and product

designers can lead to experts being trusted and seen as a valuable ally in building up a validated story behind

design concepts.

“Our product designers are usually very open to trend reports. I think they trust us. Our

Trends Manager is an expert and has a good reputation. Normally they never start anything without having our report f irst. And if they do start, they have to start it all over again. They

can’t justify if they have done something if they haven’t followed our reports really.” (EI-‐20/ 02)

Despite the big internal divide among company sectors, which was a complaint that came from all participants,

having an in-‐house trends team was taken very positively. The reasons suggested by the participants were very

closely related to any debate on the benefits of outsourcing – in-‐house would know the company better,

outsourced would have an outsider’s perspective and so on.

When to use them

Interviewees that were not so amazed with the benefits of trend reports were under the impression that they

would only be used in the beginning of the product development cycle.

“Trend reports seem to come generally at the start of a project, but most of them tend to just be fi ltered out throughout the process. On my teams, we prefer to talk with a small sample of

extreme users during the entire project.” (EI-‐87/ 07)17

Trends research was generally seen as an important feature to have in the beginning of the design process,

however a lot of interviewees have said they would like to see trend reports being developed and used all the

way – from the start to finish. That seems to make sense since trends are not a static phenomenon. In fact,

that is an issue very important to product design – especially with products with long lifecycles.

“Having a trend report before you start is useful, because it sets you in the frame to design

for those off the moment issues, but then if you’ve got a 6 months timescale on your project, some of those trends are out of date probably. By the time you get to the conceptualisation

phase it’s almost l ike you need another report, some more data, more updates to see if you’re sti l l al igned or not.” (EI-‐07/ 09)

Many participants mentioned the feeling that “trends move too fast nowadays”. That seemed to be something

that also contributed to mistrust researchers’ competence, unless they really “keep up” with the pace of those

changes.

17 Edited by the interviewee.

58

“That's where trends are going to now, much more fluid, much more evolving on a sort of weekly, monthly basis.” (EI-‐ 42 / 19:50)

5.5.3 Trend report s as brand compasses

Vision unifiers

One interesting use of trend reports was as potential vision unifiers, particularly with large teams. They help

the design team rally around the same set of information and recommendations, therefore increasing the

chance that the team’s output will focus of the right things and not on what each individual thinks is right.

“If there were no trend reports in our brand, imagine, we have a big number of designers

working in our company, how would you all make them design with our brand in mind? Trends research aligns the thinking of the team.” (EI-‐99/ 18)

Trend reports could also potentially prevent personal tastes from designers and managers coming before

brand strategy.

“Part of what I look for trends to do in consumer research is to help designers understand that

their taste is not the only taste and they’re not designing for themselves and their friends in Hoxton. They’re designing for other people and we need to – we constantly need to have that

sort of reference.” (EI-‐42/ 17)

There were indeed many comments about research decisions being made based on personal tastes and not on

hard data.

“At my previous jobs the creative director would set the theme and from there we would do

research. There was a trend director there and sometimes she would make a presentation of a trend concept but he wouldn’t necessarily l isten to her. If he had a creative vision, he would

just make it. So then sometimes trend director would do her trend report presentation after the theme he’d set. We were disconnected, l ike working in a bubble.” (EI-‐57/ 02)

Clarify and help visualise

Another related interesting use for trends was to help designers visualize their end customers in a way that

helps them make better product decisions.

“I want to have the right people in my mind, who I 'm designing for. If people can clar ify to me

how these people wil l l ive their l ives in the future, then it 's easy to picture myself in their shoes and start designing for them.” (EI-‐03/ 08)

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New and old formats

There was a big variety of trend report formats brought to the interviews – books, leaflets, on-‐screen or

printouts from PDFs and on-‐screen websites. Opinions were seemingly diverse – there were praises for both

physical as well as online reports:

“I think it’s much nicer when you have something physical, because you can always have

access to it. Whereas when it’s in digital form you always get too lazy and you just don’t consult it.” (EI-‐49/ 15)

“The nice thing about moving online now with this sort of bible of trends is that we can react quicker to things. We can track trends over time.” (EI-‐42/ 23)

5.5.4 Trend report s as sparks

Exercise creativity

Designers are constantly under pressure by top management for tangible results. That can bring some tension,

especially with regards to trends research, which by its nature can only be based on uncertain information or

“educated guesses”.

The pressure and constraints posed by everyday challenges were also identified as things that could stifle the

imagination in the long run. In that situation designers saw trend reports as a means to help exercise their

creativity. The further they can look into the future, the fewer links with feasibility they need to have.

A great advantage of trend reports is that they can help justify more “blue sky” and complex thinking as

opposed to for example traditional user research reports, which usually focus on more current and direct

issues.

“Usually the shorter term projects don’t challenge technology as much. The t imeframe usually does not allow a large investment, it’s frequently just not possible. You’re usually stuck with

the technology. So the innovation you have is less; it ’ l l be more on usabil ity, on design and styling. Compared to if you’re talking about 5 or 8 years, then you might challenge that

technology as well.”(EI-‐03/ 03)

Anticipating trends not as important

The ability of a trend report to anticipate future behaviour was indeed taken as a given by some designers (4

out of 11), but somewhat surprisingly some participants have said they were not much bothered about a trend

report being right or not (EI-‐42, EI-‐57, EI-‐99). For them the process of following trends and creating an internal

60

culture of always thinking ahead was more important than getting to tangible results. Also according to them,

trend reports should be able to open minds, stimulate creativity and instigate experimentation.

“It’s good if they anticipate, but whether or not WGSN can actually anticipate a trend, is not relevant to me. In the end, it’s really up to you. Everyone who uses this kind of service should

use their own brain and see whether they disagree or agree with it. I don’t think it’s that bad if they try to anticipate -‐ it ’s nice to know what they’re thinking about. It’s actually good

they're trying to anticipate things because otherwise you’re just reporting history -‐ it ’s not relevant for designers then.” (EI-‐57/ 12)

Challenging themselves and taking risks

Businesses need reassurance and numbers, but designers don’t seem to long for that reassurance: they want

to be challenged by trend reports. Designers can live without trend reports, but businesses cannot.

“I don’t really need reassurance. I ’m not scared. My client is. I ’d l ike the TR to reassure my

client.” (EI-‐78/ 11)

According to them, trend reports should not be safe; indeed, they must not be safe.

“There is a big temptation when you get trends research just to use it to f ind the safe path, but trends should provoke a l ittle bit. And if a trend doesn’t make me think, then I don’t need

to read that trend. I need to challenge myself.”(EI-‐42/ 03)

Pressure to be original

The pressure for always bringing original solutions can come both from management but also from designers

themselves. Following trends can thus feel almost like a non-‐starter. We heard from some of them that the

role of designers is to create trends, not follow them (EI-‐47, EI-‐78).

“As designers we don’t want to follow trends – we want to create them. We have to understand where things are going and try to go to the other side before anyone starts doing

the same. We always have to be ahead of those trends.”(EI-‐47 / 35:10)

“If I see a trend going one way, my instinct is to go the other. Everything Apple is doing, for

example, is already consolidated, so it’d make no sense to do that. So I do study trends, but so I can see what I’m not going to do. So, it’s to eliminate things that have already been done.”

(EI-‐47/ 04)

The idea of trend reports ‘killing originality’ or ‘spoiling inspiration’ was a concern found relatively often in our

interviews. Most of our participants have reinforced the importance of designers always being ahead of the

trends – that reason alone would already be enough reason for not referring to trend reports as they could

somehow lead them to imitate other designers.

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5.5.5 Trend report s as recipe books

Ownership

Three different designers mentioned “recipe books” as a metaphor for the trend reports. The analogy backs up

the idea, also very often cited, of trend reports being ‘starting points’ for design.

It was reported by most designers that once they obtain a trend report, they tend to make their own versions

of them – something like a tailored summarized version of the original document. It was noted that that kind

of behaviour would happen regardless of the type of report -‐ colour-‐material or social-‐cultural, in-‐house or

outsourced, etc.

This filtering process also reinforces the importance of ownership for designers.

“This comes from the trend team, which is the big high-‐level view. So we would take some of these trends out and then we wil l draw deeper into them. And I f ind the best way to do that is

with the designers. And then you need the designers to own the vision. If designers don’t own the vision, then they won’t do it because designers are very stubborn people.” (EI-‐42/ 07)

“A trend report is another ingredient for the designer and design teams to work from, however you need to pick what’s relevant and useful to your project and more importantly an

approach that lets you design for your consumer’s needs. If you work solely from a trend report you might miss opportunities to design a solution that genuinely addresses an

emerging need that might sit outside a report’s f indings.” (EI-‐87/ 11 and 59:00)18

‘Control’ was a big issue. In the ‘should/should not’ exercise, for example, a number of participants have

suggested that trend reports should not ‘control’ or ‘guide’ them. Reports have to be open to interpretation

and set loose guidelines.

Interest in trend reports depends heavily in personal interest. Some designers were very keen in knowing more

about trends and trends theory.

“I’d be really interested to know more about trends’ theory. Something l ike a presentation in our work place.”(EI-‐86/ 01)

Conversely, some interviewees19 did not see the need at all for that type of data as they were indeed quite

pleased with the “tools” they had available – either by relying purely on inspiration or by obtaining results

from other types of reports (market and/or research).

18 Edited by the interviewee. 19 Notably the two designers from design agencies (EI-‐47 and EI-‐87) and one senior designer from a consumer electronics manufacturer (EI-‐07).

62

Marking territories

There was a keen sense that forecasting is usually seen as a marketing’s territory or as a business strategy.

“I was interviewing sometime ago with a guy from (a famous jewellery company) and I told him about my interest in trends – I was trying to sell myself – but he was ‘oh… trends

research, leave that to the marketing people’”. (EI-‐78/ 01)

Bigger companies in particular seem to reinforce these very well-‐defined roles, sometimes not even allowing

designers who are genuinely interested in trends to develop that knowledge.

“It depends a bit on what kind of role you’re given. I think in larger companies there is the

tendency, and I don’t know if it ’s only in this office or if it also happens in other companies, but there’s more the tendency to give the people a specific role. I ’m a product designer now,

so you are sort of stuck within that role's description, whereas in my other company (PD agency), I was much more going on these different paths.” (EI-‐03/ 01)20

5.6 Summary

This chapter has presented the design, development and results from the qualitative interviews. We have seen that the outcomes from those interviews lead to the following five categories, which summarise how the

designers we interviewed saw the main roles and values for trend reports:

Fig. 17: Metaphors related to the possible roles of trend reports to product designers.

The next chapter will draw upon those outcomes and see how they interact with what was found in the web-‐survey as well as in the literature review.

20 Edited by the interviewee.

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CHAPTER 06

Synthesis

In the previous two sections we went in detail through both the quantitative and qualitative steps of this

research. In this section we will summarise all the learning from those efforts and attempt to answer our main

research question.

It is important to note that although some of the ideas we are giving here could be immediately applied to

design practice, this research is not intended to be prescriptive. Finding that ‘ultimate recipe’ would require

much more time and resources than we had available for this project.

We will start by revisiting our main research question and then point out to what this research has found as

key implications related to it: divergent expectations and new challenges for trend reports.

6.1 Back to the main question

By collating the results from the literature review, the web-‐survey and the interviews, we put attention to two

main concerns (Fig. 18) that refer to this research’s main question: What is the role and value of trend reports

for product designers?

Fig. 18: Final considerations from the collation of data.

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6.1.1 D iverg ent expect at ions

Probably the richest insight that came out of this study refers to the apparent conflict between what

designers and top management expect from trends reports. That divergence seems to drive many of the

issues raised throughout this research.

If we consider the tone of forecasting in business literature and indeed some comments from our

interviewees, we often encounter words and expressions such as “forecasting”, “predictions” or “competitive

advantage”. Conversely, the ‘should/should not’ exercise carried out in the qualitative phase of this research,

it was really clear that the most popular roles for trends research came in the form of the verbs “inspire”,

“open minds”, “stimulate” and “inform” (Fig. 19).

Fig. 19: Comparing wording between trend reports for designers and trend reports for non-‐designers.

That difference becomes also more apparent when some designers said that the ability of a trend report to

‘get it right’ was in fact not that important for them, but rather the process of exercising their creativity,

stretch their imaginations and consider what could come ahead that seemed to have more appeal.

It is very important to note, however, that the notions this research has obtained about non-‐designers, came

mostly from the interviews with product designers and from a comprehensive though not deep analysis of

available literature. Though the conclusions taken in this study satisfy the purpose to which this research was

set to reach, the researcher recognises the limitations of the study and indeed encourages that those notions

are further investigated and include other professionals that don’t belong to the design field.

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6.1.2 New chal leng es for t rend report s

This research has pointed to the fact that businesses cannot afford to live without both trends research nor

trend reports. That seems to be especially the case with larger companies, which need to maintain brand

coherence amongst a huge number of internal values and interests.

The interviews have shown good indication that designers can indeed live without trend reports, since spotting

patterns is innate to them. Some of them do it formally others only subconsciously -‐ depending (a lot) on what

personal interests they have. In retrospect, it seems quite reasonable that designers have chosen trend reports

as “a nice to have”. It remains to be seen how and if their opinion will change in 2 or 5 years, as we encounter:

• More and more people gaining access to trends knowledge – and indeed to any kinds of information.

• An over-‐inflated volume of information that they have to navigate through, but no “extra time” to do

that.

Would these perhaps make trend reports become “must have” tools for product designers as well?

Furthermore, a big part of a designer’s job is to justify his or her own design choices. Trends experts could act

as resourceful allies in helping them build richer and engaging ‘stories’ for their concepts. For that to happen

however there needs to be a lot of mutual respect and trust. In that sense, one could say that trend reports

could be successful if:

• Design departments feel they help them keep consistency of their company’s objectives and brand

requirements;

• Product designers not only know about them, but are also able to distinguish them from the other set

of tools available – understanding their possibilities and respecting their limitations;

• Product designers not only trust their content, but also see them as invaluable tools for inspiration

because they understand and capitalise in how designers learn and think.

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CHAPTER 07

Conclusion

Having considering the key findings of this study and revisited the research question in the previous section,

this chapter now finalises the research by considering the theoretical and practical contributions of this thesis,

which is then followed by an examination of the limitations of the research and opportunities for future

research.

7.1 Contributions

7.1.1 Contributions to theory

As seen on chapter 02, the literature available in the design field to trends research is very limited. From the

few publications encountered that indeed approached the topic, not much reference was made to the making

of trends reports and none have considered the opinions of designers from their experiences with those types

of reports. This research thus contributes to that gap in knowledge as it provides robust indications of how

trend reports are being used and considered by different professionals dealing with product development.

Further enrichment also comes from the application of a quantitative approach (even if only illustrative) in the

investigation of that topic.

A second contribution to be considered is the inclusion of “low rank” designers to the inquiry – as it was noted

in the literature review that academics and practitioners have mostly preferred to interview CEOs and design

directors for their research.

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7.1.2 Contributions to practice

As pointed in chapter 01, this study is not a prescriptive research, which means that it does not aim at direct

implications to practice, such as providing a list of how to get to a “perfect” trend report for example. This

study has deliberately avoided answering that kind of question since the researcher firmly believes that more

complex and fundamental questions should be asked before any solutions are proposed. Thus a successful

progression of this study would be to:

• Encourage more conversations about the role of designers (not just researchers and strategists) in

futures research, not just “how to do trends research” or “how to get to trends”.

• Make people see trend reports with fresh eyes and understand that trends research is not only

pertinent to marketers and other non-‐design strategists.

• Align interests and expectations, pointing to ways to improve the making and application of trend

reports in design practices.

7.2 Limitations + Future research

This section combines the limitations of the research with some opportunities for future research, as the

researcher believes that some parts from the study that could not be provided by this research do present

fertile ground for further inquiry. These are:

• Retaking the quantitative survey with a larger sample in order to reach statistical robustness. Would

this yield similar results?

• Interview non-‐designers and ask what THEY think about the results? Is there really a divide in the

expectations for trend reports between designers and non-‐designers? Do they really care more about

results than creative processes? How does that shown in actual financial investments in trends

research and trend reports?

• Conduct a more in-‐depth research, aimed at the actual construction of an ideal trend report for

product designers and indeed for all types of designers. What would it look like? What type of content

should it have? What would be the considerations to be made amongst the different disciplines of

design? Would they also differ if they were targeted at more “boutique” designers?

• Work on the metaphors used in qualitative results: what do designers think about them? Would these

metaphors work for other areas of design as well?

Finally, the researcher sincerely hopes this study can be as useful and rich for readers as it was for her.

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Appendices

App. 01: LinkedIn groups to which invitations were sent

360 Trendwatchers, Aiga, British Design Innovation, Consumer Insights, Cool Hunters, Cosmetics and Beauty

Network, Creative Design Pros, Design Council, Design Plus, Design Research, DMI, Enviu, Fashion & Lifestyle,

Fashionista Café, Fuse, Future Trends, Global Foresight, Global Trend Forecasting, IDSA, Include Network,

Industrial Design, Innovation People, Leadership Think Tank, Lift Conference, Luxury & Lifestyle, Market

Research, Mobile phone design, Mobilists, Mudpie, Next Gen Market Research, Product Design, Scenario,

Future & Strategy Group, Social Innovation exchange, Strategic Planning Exchange, StyleCareers, TED, Textile,

Apparel, Footwear and Fashion, The Business of Fashion, The Designers Accord, The Fashion Network, The

Wellness Revolution, Thinking Hotel, Trend Watching, User Experience, Women's Wear Daily,

Zukunftsforschung, TrendsGymnasium, Fashion & Beauty, Designers Talk, The Economist, Retail Industry

Professionals, Retail Industry Professionals Worldwide, Stylesight, Visual Artists and their Advocates.

App. 02: Coroflot groups to which invitations were sent

Patterns, Graphic Designers, furniture, Design -‐ "Made in Germany", CONCEPT designers, Product Design, Core77, Industrial Design, footwear designers of the world, Freelance-‐worldwide, Cool Hunters.

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App. 03: Final demographic of web-survey

METRICS RELATED QUESTIONS POSSIBLE ANSWERS

Experience Q02. Total years of experience? Less than 5 (17%), 6 to 10 (29%), 11 to 15 (29%), More than 15 (26%)

Abo

ut the

respon

der

GROUP 01:

Responder’s profile

Sector Q03. What sector or department are you a part of?

Design (56%)

Non-‐design (44%) -‐ Marketing, Planning, Engineering, Production, Administrative

Type of products

Q06. What are the types of goods/ services your company most works with?

Durables1 (59%) – Automotive, furniture,

consumer electronics, fashion/apparel

Non-‐durables (41%) – Branding/advertising, entertainment, publishing/journalism, service/retail, food/drink, other

Company size Q07. How many permanent employees are there in your entire company?

Micro (38%) – Less than 10 employees

SME (39%) – Between 10 and 2,500 employees

Large (24%) – More than 2,500 employees

Respon

der’s compa

ny

GROUP 04: Responder’s company profile

Location Q26. Country where you currently live: (Open question)

Europe (70%), North America (16%) and South America (15%)

Table 09: Questions from survey used for analysis and final demographics. The last column explains how some categories have been clustered into smaller subgroups.

1 As the question allowed multiple choices, it was decided that the participant would be considered making part of the ‘durable’ category, if he or she had chosen at least one product from the durable category.

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App. 04: Questions from survey used for analysis

METRICS RELATED QUESTIONS POSSIBLE ANSWERS

Time using TR Q11. How long have you been working with Trend Reports?

Less than 1 year, 1 – 3 years, 4 – 8 years, Over 10 years

GROUP 02: Use of trend reports

Interaction with TR

Q17. Which one is closer to how you usually use a Trend Report:

Just give it a glance/ Read it carefully

Read it once and put it somewhere else/ Frequently refer back to it

Use it only during a certain project/ Refer back to it, even when the project is over

Leave it as it is/ Make notes or cut its pages as inspiration

Creative value Q16. In general, the Trend Reports you have worked with have been:

Helpful, Inspiring, Ahead-‐of-‐the-‐curve, Reliable

(Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Agree, Strongly Agree)

Financial value Q18. In your opinion, investing in Trend Reports is:

Money well spent2

(Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Agree, Strongly Agree)

Respon

der’s profile

GROUP 03: Opinion about trend reports

NPD value Q19. Considering the development of successful products, Trend Reports are:

A must have, Nice to have, Not essential

Table 10: Questions from survey used for analysis (individual).

METRICS RELATED QUESTIONS RESULTS

Number of TR purchased yearly

Q13. How many Trend Reports does your department purchase a year?

None 1 to 2 3 to 5 More than 5 I don't know

Respon

der’s compa

ny

GROUP 05: Investment in trends reports

Number of TR created yearly

Q14. How many Trend Reports does your department create a year?

None 1 to 2 3 to 5 More than 5 I don't know

Table 11: Questions from survey used for analysis (company).

2 In the questionnaire there were two other categories for ‘financial value’ -‐ ‘guaranteed return of investment’ and ‘a risky strategy’. Unfortunately those alternatives had to be disregarded in the analysis because of the risk of obtaining ambiguous results.

76

App. 05: Definitions of SME (European Commission, 2003)

Fig. 20: Definitions of SMEs according to the European Commission (2003).