Dan Sumner at Microsoft seemed quite intrigued by a presentation I made the other day on a couple of trends that came through our friends at the Future Laboratory.
The Slash/Slash Generation was one. More on this another day, but the one that captured his imagination was "The Design of Womenomics".
What The Future Laboratory were saying is that what was a trend on the rise (womenomics) has finally settled into the mainstream of design.
The power of women in the economy is essentially what 'womenomics' is, and it's a trend that has obviously been growing since suffragette-ism and feminism, and demonstrates that although equality and parity between men and women still has a long way to go, it is now a major influence on commerce.
Womenomics is about the fact that women are involved in about 80% of purchasing decisions in the retail universe. They're also looking for different things; but make no mistake, this is not about pink and fluffy. It's instead about simplicity, clean lines, efficiency and what the psychologists call 'whole brain thinking'.
"The Design of Womenomics" is about how the trend of womenomics is now concretely influencing product design, retail design and other commercial areas.
What is interesting about "The Design of Womenomics" is that it's a trend that is completing the loop. We use trends analysis a lot to help us plan and set strategies for customers like Virgin Atlantic and Tesco - and often the feedback on seeing a trend on the rise is initially "very nice, but how do I use that to my advantage". So what we do with those, is stretch them forward and map them on to our clients' businesses. This is a lot more practical approach and helps those companies see the potential impact of a trend, and how they go about planning to take advantage of it.
What you see in "The Design of Womenomics" is how companies like Electrolux, Halfords and HiQ have shifted their attitude to design in order to better cater to an ecommerce and retail marketplace that is increasingly dominated by the power of a trend that was only previously "on the rise" as they say in "trend-y" circles.
In other words, it was good planning. Something we at Conchango do under the "Experience Planning" umbrella, with a philosophy of "Total Experience Design", which is about consideration of all channels and touchpoints regardless of whether or not Conchango has the ability to execute in them, and with a focus on the emotional state of the customer before, during and after their interaction with the brand we are working with.
I posted a few of the things I used to illustrate "The Design of Womenomics" this on a Flickr set here.
Thanks again to our partners at The Future Laboratory for being out there to pick this stuff up for us so we can translate it into actionable strategies for our clients.