The document discusses the importance of identifying trends, patterns, and cultural shifts by keeping an open mind and observing behaviors. It provides examples of a rural Indian family using mobile phones and how businesses spend millions analyzing cultural trends. Key to understanding users is determining the relevance and impact of trends through a socio-cultural lens. Various tools and websites that can help track emerging trends on social media and elsewhere are also mentioned.

1. Kuliza
Communities
A few years ago, while doing field research
in parts of rural Maharashtra, I realized the
importance of keeping my eyes open. A
family of five wove bamboo baskets and sold
them at the local market and had two mobile
phones. One was used as a landline, the other
as a mobile phone. The ‘landline’ was kept
constantly on charge due to frequent power
cuts and hung low from the plug point. This
is a common pattern I recognized through my
visits to many houses in the village. This simple
image gave rise to many cultural, ergonomic
and design challenges in my head. It had a
defined space as a landline, was a shrine to
technology and something for neighbours to
come, see, and use. Its mobility was not taken
advantage of, its potential hazards, increased
expenses through unintended calls by children
illustrated the need for a serious upheaval of
charger designs. One of which is providing
space for the phone to rest while it charges.
For any problem, working on the pattern of
cause-effect-solution is the most common
one people take up. Similarly, it becomes
critical to discern that these behaviours are
parts of a pattern, even if in outliers.
Understanding the pulse of a country, what
citizens are passionate about, the things they
care about become important. Identifying
these is what large businesses spend millions
of dollars on. It is the starting point of all great
if not successful ideas.
Most organizations value leaders who have
a vision. Business decisions are often based
on predictions – of time, people, behaviours,
resources, economies, amongst others. But,
these predictions are well, predictions, and
there are no sure ways to future-proof ideas.
The idea of keeping one’s eyes open for what
is happening in an attempt to understand
patterns in behaviours, people, resources,
economies, is not new. People are constantly
engaged in identifying these. Be it the stock
market, the weather or fashion; the last
Communities
Learning by
Keeping your
Eyes Open
Identifying trends, fads, and patterns in behaviours
through a socio-cultural perspective is key to
understanding users’ needs. How these are determined
in terms of relevance and impact is important to
businesses.
by Nehal Shah
Photo Credit: Not Another Dinosaur

2. Social Technology Quarterly 06
decade has seen the idea evolve into a
process – as scientific as research can get.
When there is a pattern, one can almost
always predict its path.
Trendspotting is often confused with fads and
fashion. But the concept of trendspotting is
recognizing patterns in their evolution. They
could be nascent, be just ideas or thoughts,
may become a fad, bring in a behavioural
trend, initiate a consumer or lifestyle change,
cause a social shift or spark a generational
trend even. It is essential to not only identify
patterns but also map where they fall on the
evolution continuum. On the other hand, a
fad is usually something that has a very short
life span, affects a few industries but has very
high, almost peaking interest. For example, a
few years ago there was an obsession with
Crocs, the not-so-pretty shoes made of a
surprisingly sturdy material called Croslite. It
started very small until most people owned
either a pair of Crocs or a cheap fake version.
In contrast to a fad, a trend is often a complex,
socio-cultural phenomenon that scans
lifestyles at a particular point in time. While it
would not be right to consider Apple’s iPad as
a trend, it is actually the concept of gestural
multi-point devices that brings the world
to our fingertips, which definitely is a trend.
It would be interesting to note why Psy’s
Gangnam Style video became such a rage
last month. In his article ‘Gangam Style,
Dissected’ in the Atlantic, Max Fisher
dissects the mise-en-scène to understand
the subversive message of this Korean
music video. The kind of social stimuli that
it presents and the number of people that
have paid attention to the song is incredible.
It creates a commentary on contemporary
Korean life and styles. Such videos become
a starting point to understand social shifts
and the pulse of the nation, which could then
snowball, or trickle down to the design of new
products and services or simply die out.
All fads, trends, social shifts and generational
changes have life spans. While technology
and new media trends have the shortest
span, fashion comes next, design and
consumer trends soon after, and cultural and
generational changes being ones with the
highest term. But as people with day jobs,
keeping track of these can get exhausting.
Today, technology and Social Media makes
this much easier. Crowdsourcing ideas help
identify trends. Dell’s IdeaStorm site is an
example of how a company uses a website
as a tool to gauge what ideas are important
and relevant to the user. A detailed analysis
of what people are asking for, reveal what
matters most to them. One is then likely to
create a product or a service that satisfies
latent needs.
One now has a pile of data, sourced from
different areas - looking at magazines,
conversing with people, reading research
reports, tracking newspapers, watching
commercials, deconstructing people’s

3. Kuliza
Article photo,previous page:A Timeline for
Trends and Technology
Credits: RichardWatson at Nowandnext.com,
Benjamin Frazer at Snap,Oliver Freeman,
Mike Jackson and Scott Martin
Not Another Dinosaur
Left: Moodboarding
Credit: lolololori

4. Social Technology Quarterly 06
TrendsMap is a better looking engine for real-
time Twitter trends that one can filter through
proximity or/ and topic. CassandraDaily, is
a site for the lazy trendspotter. It collects
stories and inspirations and categorizes
them into themes. Each theme is supported
by live manifestations of the trend. Similarly,
for some more focused Indian content, JWT
Intelligence produces reports and collects
data on trends therefore “...converting cultural
shifts into opportunities,” is appropriately their
tagline. Springwise is a great resource for
innovators and early adopters looking to tap
early into a trend. It has informative listings
of new and upcoming products and services.
Tracking these help put knowledge into
perspective. They provide a framework or a
lens through which one would base future
decisions. They work across domains and
departments, help lead projects, businesses,
and organisations in appropriate, valuable
directions, and stay ahead of the curve.
fashion sense on the street, and more. Each
one is probably suggesting a different trend.
There are a few simple analysis techniques
that can help consolidate this information
without distilling it. The easiest is to create
moodboards by observing the stimuli until
patterns emerge. If there is no “The Beautiful
Mind” moment happening, one could try
and categorize observations into different,
non-obvious buckets. Alternatively it is
possible to use a moodboard to achieve and
communicate this clarity. Anybody who has a
“Pin It” applet on the bookmarks bar would
already know quite a bit about moodboarding.
These moodboards or themes can be grand,
slightly zoomed out trends, and can be applied
to any product or service or thought, across
any domain. A set of metrics can be used to
determine impact, relevance, and uptake of
these trends on businesses. The process then
is- evaluate, track, and predict it.
While moodboarding and the smell of
Fevicol take one back to craft class, it is the
very nature of childlike curiosity that makes
trendspotting fun. If the smell of Fevicol
makes one gag, there is always an app for
that; websites in this case: WhatTheTrend
collates popular hash tags from Twitter.
Top left: Psy’s Gangnam StyleVideo
Credit: Starcasm
Top right,100 things to watch out for in 2012
Credit: JWT Intelligence