3 things that design needs to do better in 2021.
Here it is, my view of what is coming in 2021. These views are my collection and synthesis of experience, conversations, and data collected up to 2020 ( a little part of 2021). My perspective is skewed more towards South East Asia, but it is applicable anywhere globally, mainly with design ethics.
We have seen facebook take to congress and questioned their stand-in data privacy; we see data leaks from Apple, Huawei, and others alike. Netflix released a documentary titled The Great Hack and Social Dilemma about how our data mined and manipulated by the behemoth tech companies to make profits beyond necessary.
Here are 3 things that Design needs to do better in 2021:
Be more Ethical in making design decisions.
- If used with the right intention, Design can make life better, and the opposite is also true. The dark arts are powerful — with data collection and manipulating behaviors through behavioral sciences can apply Design to trap the users into committing to something that they don’t fully understand.
- 2020 and 2021 have impacted the income of millions of people globally, with countries providing stimulus packages to help with the economy. Businesses will need to balance between profit and the debt gap of society to avoid a debt crisis.
- Business and design leaders across all sizes and types of organizations will need to set boundaries, rules, and ethical checks & balances to ensure that the decision-making is not just profit-driven but an ethical one.
- Being more ethical will be a journey, with what is going on in this world — 2021 is the best year to start if you have not started it at all. Trust is still a valid currency.
Privacy top of mind
- There is no doubt that AI is evolving fast in the next decade than in the last decade. Billions of data are collected daily, and the machine is continuously fine-tuning to understand better, adapt, and serve.
- We have all experienced the creepy product recommendation of Facebook and Instagram. Siri is consistently improving at telling jokes, and Amazon/Alibaba is happy to extend to you the credit line that you think you need to buy that new shiny PS5. Yes, they are listening, and we are letting them listen to our conversations.
- Once uploaded onto the internet, it will be on the internet forever; as businesses and design practitioners — it is our duty to pay attention to our society’s causality as much as it is to create the penultimate experience.
Increase adoption of Design Thinking & Service Design in transformation efforts
- The pandemic is hitting hard non-digital base companies. The majority of the SMEs and Corporations are not ready for a fully remote organization. Those with brick and mortars are facing a rise in operational cost. Digital Transformation or adoption is now in the national interest (which is valid for Malaysia)
- With the sharp drop in customer footfall, the traditional service model is obsolete. Companies will need to relook at how they operate and the new behavior of how the customers want the service to be delivered.
- We have seen quick fix solutions by F&B outlets are redesigning their outlets to include holding areas for GRAB/Foodpanda riders; menus are now QR codes, which integrates with the kitchen and their POS.
- Businesses will need to rethink their service approach further and consider the customer and end-to-end operational journey.
The design community must do better today than we did yesterday for tomorrow.
If in 2019 you thought the digital transformation was just a way of services providers making money of your business, then you are partly right but also very wrong. Fast forward to 2020, we have gone in and out of lockdowns, and businesses that have been around decades closed overnight.
Customers are looking for companies that they can trust to do business with; personal data protection is the right of every human being. Customers are willing to switch services when they feel that another provider will give them better accessibility, experience, and protect them from malice. They need businesses to provide them sustenance as much as businesses needs them to sustain operation.
Design leaders will need to set up proper governance, be the advisor to the business leaders, and be accountable when presenting data, findings, insights, and recommendations to our business partners. We have to speak business and translate them into visual and emotional experiences.
In 2021 the business value of Design should not be solely about profit but the collective good of our society.
This article was original posted on my LinkedIn page
