1. Growing Customization
Technology and design are paired together in the future to continually make a person better. It is by providing the person with more opportunities and choices that we move into the future.
Data will tailor experience to the single human level, so instead of gathering information about a persona, the product will access data about the individual and adjust accordingly.
Options such as telemedicine become available for those who’d rather visit their doctor via Skype rather than an in office visit for a routine check up.
School lesson plans will be delivered in a format that is most easily scanned by a group of students and then customized for a student with learning disabilities.
With increasing complexity and technological advances, comes more customization.
2. Holistic Outlook
A holistic approach to health will be an emerging trend.
The design concept behind it being more proactive rather than reactive, in terms of addressing a patient’s condition.
Rather than prescribing pills, a doctor could suggest a change in the air quality of your office or more frequent breaks given the nature of your work. The environment where you rest or exercise will be taken into consideration as well as the physical symptoms of your condition.
Hospitals will implement check up routines in your workspace, and put health care centers closer to places of mass congregation. Good healthcare habits will be rewarded, and negative ones taxed in some way to motivate a change in habits.
3. Sustainability
Planned obsolescence will no longer be an option in a world with scarce and limited resources. Products must be long lived, timeliness and functional beyond the life span of their designer.
Designers of the future must care about sustainability and maintain responsibility for the processes, materials and sourcing used.
4. Smarter Machines
Automation and machine learning will play a larger role in your experience with a product. Whether its sensing what tasks are the next steps in a common progression and thus prompting you to do them, it may simply take over the most mundane tasks that are a part of your routine, simply through “learning” that the tasks occur every third week or so.
Our wealth of user data plays a major role in the sense that your products can “speak” to each other to deliver a seamless experience.
For example, the app on your mobile device can track your health data and relay it to your doctor who inputs some instructions that go directly to an inbox for your wife.
Natural language will be understood by more machines and the frustrations related to searching for something that you can succinctly condense into a few lines of text for a search engine, will be replaced by a dialogue.
As machines become more human, in the sense that they can predict our emotional ups and downs as well as our needs and habits, we as humans become more similar to a machine.
Experiences in the cities of the future will flow gracefully and fluidly, as part of a working ecosystem.
Instead of moving from one physical location to another location for different needs, convenience will be king. Multi-faceted building designs will serve the masses, delivering a variety of different goods, products, services and entertainment, as well as healthcare services.
The gap between humanity and technology narrows as we have constant access to the internet at higher speeds and better connections regardless of where we are or whether or not we are actively using a device.