Timo Viekkola Of Nokia On Trend Analysis

Timo, who recently spoke at the PSFK Conference London, has penned a piece for UI Garden about trend analysis and future watching. Here’s an extract:

The endless question: “Why Trend analysis?” Over the past years, the term trend has experienced inflation and is used in various ways to describe fads, cool hunting, the latest thing, what is fashionable and much more. In truth, a trend is a tendency, a means of describing changes and evolutions basically in any topic. We particularly focus on researching changes in the values, attitudes and behaviors of people. Consumer trend research is an extensive process that encapsulates many facets from ethnography, observation and analysis to academic research on changes in existing and emerging trends. Trends do not change on the last day of the year and we don’t pull new trends out of our sleeves. All trends can be tracked for extensive periods of time to uncover slight or rapid changes which provide new visions on the direction in which the world/societies/people’s behavior may be heading. Albeit, not rocket science, but a social science on which the validity of the future hypothesis hold true.

uiGarden.net - Weaving Usability and Cultures: A View of the Future – Trends Research, Ethnography and Design