Still not convinced that trends research can be trusted? Here are some answers to frequently asked questions about trends and forecasting
You don't think you can really predict the future, do you?
Of course one cannot predict accurately every aspect of the future. But one can reduce the role of intuition about it – by eliminating unlikely scenarios, and by knowing just when to extrapolate a trend and when to anticipate its reversal.
Isn’t the future just history repeating itself?
The future of society is a social affair. It is not a pendulum, a wheel, a roller-coaster, an undulating wave or a simple business cycle. It is not subject to the random mutation and natural selection that obtain in the world of biology. Because it is an accumulated synthesis of past trends, the future always contains elements of both continuity and discontinuity.
Surely human nature never changes?
To be 50 years old in 2014 will be different from being 50 today, and indeed to being 50 a hundred years ago. The ageing and increased longevity of the population is just one example of how what it is to be human is changing. Children are physically and mentally stronger today than they were in the past. The age of puberty is falling, but the zone of youthful and sometimes infantile consumption and behaviour now extends way beyond the teenage years.
Isn’t design more intuitive than you suggest?
Design is not alone in dealing with aesthetics: even aesthetic trends can be forecast to some extent, as fashion industry forecasters insist. But the intuition upon which art and even design rely is no match for the structured methods that exist in trends and futures research.
Don’t forecasters just use management-speak and distorted statistics to put their biased point of view?
That depends on the forecaster. Many sources are hard to understand, expensive and mendacious. Others fail to provide statistics, or their sources. In the selection of authorities on the future, one must be discriminating.
How do you integrate technology forecasts for my industry with social and economic ones?
Not everyone can perform this integration, but it can be done. It's best to situate technology and even economics in the social context of experiences and perceptions. Of course future economic growth, market segments, competitor behaviour and technological advance will have an impact on product specification and price. However, in the emotionally charged context that we face for some years to come, tomorrow's feelings, sensations and sensibilities will shape the world of artefacts profoundly.
Surely, by their nature, the unintended consequences of new designs are hard to forecast?
That's true, but consequences can be foreseen a lot of the time. No pilot test can truly approximate to the full-scale implementation of design, but studying what users do with prototypes yields revealing results. Design without experimentation cannot be innovative.
Because of their influence, forecasters are in a position not just to predict trends, but also to create them. So they are not genuine populists but elitists, manipulating consumers?
Trends and futures research has become quite a competitive market, and certainly an international one. No single forecaster or forecasting consultancy can really claim that its influence over major corporations has been decisive in terms of moulding consumer behaviour. By contrast, advisers to governments on trends and futures are undeniably influential.