Name: Brainstorm Design 2024: ‘Social Rewilding’
Uploaded: 2024-12-05
Duration: 15 min 26 s
Description: Olof Schybergson, Chief Design and Product Officer, Accenture Song ; Founder, Fjord In conversation with Wang Fang, Fortune China

Olof Schybergson, Chief Design and Product Officer, Accenture Song  ; Founder, Fjord In conversation with Wang Fang, Fortune China

Brainstorm Design 2024: ‘Social Rewilding’

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So Olaf at Accenture Song, you published this annual Life Trend report for 17 years. That's right. 17 years. Yeah. So when I read your 2025 report, my feeling is uh this report eloquently articulates a lot of like various concerns that we had sensed for a long time but have struggled to, to uh to express. So it's nicely put. Um So just tell us a little bit more about the report. Why do you do this? How do you do do this and your feedback uh you get so the the background to it is essentially a design trends report. So that's how it started 17 years ago. And you know, work now, pretty much every client project is sort of a fusion of business needs technology and then humans. So really the trend report sits in the intersection of those and what the song, the sort of uniquely brings that other parts of accenture doesn't necessarily bring is that focus on the human. So, so, so, so that's kind of where it comes from what it focuses on and it, it, it's meant they meant to sort of inspire and inform our clients, but also challenge our teams in their projects and so on to take it into. Right? So it's very interesting. Yesterday, you gave a speech that speech was more about how enabling technology can become, for example, it makes space more sensible, more responsible. But uh today we're going to delve into the report, uh which sort of you spotted five trends for the next year and collectively, they sort of paint a darker side of technology. Uh They look at the sort of often very stressful relationship. Um It has become between human beings and technology. So uh let's have a look uh into the report and perhaps talk about the themes one by one. So I'm really struck by this. Um This is the first uh trend he spotted um which is called the cost of hesitation. It's about the loss of trust um that we have, I mean with, I mean, in any digital interactions um and brands have lost authenticity um with all the message they sent out sometimes becomes confusing. So, um how do business regain that authenticity and regain people's trust? Yeah. So, I mean, it's interesting that you interpret the trends as kind of dark because for me, they expose some of the tensions, the tensions between an increasingly digitally mediated life of people and some of the opportunities but also challenges within it. So this one in particular cost of hesitations, that's, that's very much about the evolution of digital media and, and the reaction that people are having when they don't necessarily know whether they can trust the content, the brand, the communication, the promotion and so on. So it sort of gives rise to this sort of question mark which leads to hesitation and there's a real, um and there's a real sort of underlying pattern that's been going for a while of what some people might call the shit education of the internet. And, and slop is another kind of term that started to be used for essentially either untrustworthy or poor content. And people feel like there's a lot of stuff coming at them in digital because people want to monetize digital. So there's just a lot of information, a lot of promotion, a lot of marketing coming at them. So that's, that's already, you know, demanding and then over 50% of people, the majority of people in the last year according to the research that we've done have experienced both content that's kind of false or fake and been subject to some sort of fraud. So people are personally starting to question, you know, is this real? And is it not? So then there's a cost for them both a sort of cognitive load of trying to figure out, is it real? Is it trustworthy? Can I go for this ami going to fall victim to something? But also they might be missing out because they hesitate. And this has happened to me and my co author of the report as well. His daughter sent him a link to this New Oasis concert and he didn't trust the link. So he didn't click and they didn't get tickets. So there might be a cost for the individual, but there's also a cost for businesses. So if you don't trust whether this website is actually real, is this product description and this product review, are they real and so on, you might not follow through with the purchase. So that's becoming a real business problem. One of one big consumer electronics manufacturer that we're working with discovered just recently that the drop off in purchases was was very much to do with people asking, am I actually on the real.com site or am I somewhere else? Yeah, so A I can enable business to know their customers better, that's for sure. But A I technology can also create a barrier between companies and their customers because it just makes um less, I mean necessary for uh companies to have human to human real interactions. Uh One example is um Starbucks in China, they're having problems. They got so caught up in trying to match their local competitors in enabling uh the customer to order digitally. So they piss off some of their loyal uh customers uh who are really interested and curious about their third uh space um idea. So another example I want to use is um you know, in China, this live stream ecommerce becomes really popular so you have like people can uh on screen, they can see hosts selling their stuff. Um But some companies are using a I generated host these days. So um as a customer, you can just look at the screen thinking, OK, this person is talking to me selling this stuff and even answer my questions. But once you find out they are actually fake ones, it can be really off putting. So um so technologies can be, can create this barrier. So how is accenture Song helping business to sort of prevent this from happening? Um So specific to sort of gen gen A I, you know, is this incredible tool that allows us to do all sorts of things that we couldn't do a few years ago, but it can be, it can be used of course for good, but also for bad. So those who want to spam people, those who want to defraud people and so on, they readily can, can, can use gen A I. Um And, and, and that is leading to the sort of pollution in a way of the content and, and, and therefore cost of hesitation, that sort of phenomenon. Um And, and from our perspective, we have a big focus and have had for years on responsible A I and, and that's about ethics. It's about reliability, it's about building trust, et cetera. So, so, so it's core to how we think about A I and gen A I but then there's also very much of the human and design consideration there. So you can use H AN A I to simplify, make it more seamless, identify the human. So it feels natural to me, I can follow it through. I trust it and so on. But it can also get in the way it can get in the way if it's implemented poorly. And then I'm like, am I actually speaking to a real person? Do I really trust the information that's provided here and so on? So it's a nuanced answer. It's not, it's not an easy, yes or no, good or bad, easy or hard. You think as technology gets better, it will become even more difficult for us to deserve. I mean, discern which will and what I mean, fake, that's probably, I mean, make things a little bit easier for companies. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And you know, the sort of agent space is also evolving quite quickly that we've seen sort of actually just recently a move away from the humanized digital agents because there's been a little bit of a reaction against it that, you know, these sort of fake humans that aren't real humans. So I think that the space is evolving really, really fast as well. Let's have a look at the next trend which is really self promoting. I mean, as a parent of a young boy, I'm in this trap at the moment. So tell us a bit more about this. So we're fearful about all the interactions our Children have online. Yeah. So, so um it was talked about in some of the men, at least by some of the previous speakers, the challenges around mental health, the challenges around a feeling of anxiety. There's an interesting book that came out this year called The Anxious Generation Talking About young people and the effects of in particular social media on them and, and harmful content, but also overuse of digital, etc, it's a real thing. And I don't, you know, I have, I have two teenage kids and I don't know any other parent of similar age kids who don't struggle with, with that sort of interplay. So it, it's, it's a tough trap for parents. How do you give safety? How do you get social connection? How do you get give uh learning and education and so on to your kids um without exposing to the, exposing them to the sort of harmful nature of social media and digital. So, so it is a tough trap for parents. But uh it's also a trap because um adults, their lives are also mediated through social media and digital and so on. And you want the role model for your kids. So it's not easy to just say no and then you kind of behave badly yourself. It's also a tricky balance. Yes, we have to behave ourselves as well, right? So the third theme is in patients economy this is interesting. Basically, customers are not waiting for companies to feed them information, they reach out and they sometimes seek quick solutions. So this is about how business businesses should supply their customers with quicker solutions. But without compromising on quality. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right and in it affects lots, lots of different aspects of life. So for example, in health care, self diagnosis, you know, with the help of you might watch youtube videos. So you might learn in other ways through digital and you listen to, to influencers etc. So it might be diagnosis, it might be and things like money matters, et cetera. So people might not wait for their hospital appointment or doctor's appointment, they might not want to go and talk to the bank manager or speak to them or whatever, but they look for other shortcuts essentially to accomplish the things that they want to do in their lives. Well, I want to go through this quickly because I want to really focus on the fifth trend, which is social rewilding. This is an interesting concept really interesting to me and appealing to me. So could you just define this concept to us? What is social rewilding about? Yeah. And the trend, I mean, the force is behind this trend. Yeah, I'm glad you want to focus on it because it's actually my favorite of the five trends as well. So I find it absolutely fascinating and rewilding as a word has usually been used for rewilding, for example, manufacturer like farms and so on, back into the natural habitat and so on. So this trend is all about humans kind of rewilding. So reconnecting with the real world looking for more textured social interactions, emotional experiences and so on. And you could say it's an, it's a counter trend to what happened through COVID. It's also a counter trend to this sort of what felt even recently as, as, as a sort of unstoppable uh increase of digital in, in our lives. Um So it's super interesting, you see things like people falling out of love with, with um digital dating solutions and instead um you know, going back to old school forms of dating and unplug. That's right. Yeah. Unplug. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and meet people in real life. So things like in China, for example, um uh city walking tours are a big thing, running clubs are a big thing all over the world. So people um have, have these sort of in person ways of social and so on and the natural world plays a huge role. So when you ask people, what was the best experience in the last week or month, the majority talk about a real world experience. And it's multiple times that of people mentioning digital experiences, right? So specifically how would you help businesses to create such textures uh uh interaction uh regain the human to human kind of feeling. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's now about kind of we're at the stage where we're starting to sort of civilize some of these technologies where it's not an either or, and people don't get locked just into a virtual world, but to use the digital experience to augment and amplify uh real world interactions and so on. But you also see, see people themselves kind of reorganizing around it and, and um you know, kids, kids are choosing to put their phones away, kids are choosing to do other things and, and you, you look at young kids and what are they into? There's actually a nostalgia for the pre digital age in the digital generation. So people kind of fall in love with these music videos from the nineties, the music of the nineties and the games and yeah, and this sort of like the nostalgic for like they look, they look like they're really in the moment and they look so unaffected and so on and so forth. You know, I discovered my kid has LPS vinyls at home. It's like what's going on. So this is an amazing uh report. I really encourage everybody to uh have a look on accenture songs website. It's really thought promoting and um thank you so much and uh for sharing with us. Um Basically, it just tells us, I mean, how designers these days are challenged when everybody wants to unplug to how to design digital experiences that coexist with our desire for real human to human interaction. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you.