With the prospect of us soon being able to roam outside of the four walls of our home again, it is important for us to explore which new consumption patterns this recent extreme home-focus will create, and which ones will last. For almost a decade IS IT A BIRD has specialized in gaining insights into people’s lives in their homes and translating this knowledge into new opportunities for developing products and services. More than 1000 visits to people’s homes all over the world, through collaborations with companies like VELUX, Nike, Novo Nordisk, Danske Bank and Ørsted, have provided us with a solid understanding of what is at stake in the setting of the home in terms of usage, behaviour, attitudes and emotion. In this article we give you our take on 7 business areas where the early indicators of lasting change are currently forming within the confined space of our homes.
#1 From clean and cosy to sanitised and safe
In the future we will see a boom of new products and services to guide us in objectively verifying that there is no dangerous dirt in our own home and the homes we visit, borrow and rent.
The corona-crisis has changed our perception of what clean and dirty mean, and new norms in the public sphere are affecting our perception of cleanliness in the home as well. Previously we have trusted our senses to guide us in assessing a home – our own and the homes of others – as either clean or dirty. A clean home has been a matter of wellbeing and comfort, associated with a sensuous experience and – as we saw in our research for VELUX – can be enhanced through incense sticks, good lighting and air quality. Their viral commercial “The indoor generation”, brings that point to life. The current pandemic has made cleanliness in our homes a matter of safety. Previously, feeling safe in our homes revolved around security measures against burglary and neighbours looking out for us. In the past weeks we have become aware of a whole new threat to our home as a safe space: invisible dirt. As our understanding of dirt extends to the invisible, our senses are falling short.
#2 From home bound DIY to Virtual DIT
The home maker’s DIY (Do-It-Yourself) has evolved into virtual DIT (Do-it-Together) with potential for new types of hobby communities, platforms and services.
The new life at home has invited the hobby industry to translate products and services into new formats that make sense in the new reality, where we meet apart, at home. DIY-projects have brought about new kinds of social communities and rituals, with the important potential of creating new kinds of presence among people at a distance, combating loneliness and social isolation. Digital tools already allow for communities to ignite and thrive at a distance as we see with the gaming community, however, as we are not all gamers, where can we go to share our hobbies together in a greater community than the typical Pinterest, YouTube and blogs? Hobbies and crafts will tie social bonds and create a new gateway to community and cohesion.
#3 From exclusive institutions to inclusive interaction
Rethinking platforms for cultural experiences enables not only new ways of engaging with culture, but also an outreach to new target groups with new, relevant formats and content.
With concert halls, museums and theatres temporarily forced to close, our consumption of culture has moved in with us. We are consuming culture from the couch, and what might right now be a survival strategy for cultural institutions, reveals a longer lasting potential to think in new formats and boost inclusivity by including new target groups in cultural consumption. An example is the Paul Getty museum in Los Angeles that quite early in the quarantine period encouraged people to remake famous paintings with items they could find at home. The initiative went viral and made the museum’s art visible for people who probably had never visited the museum. During this lock-down we have experienced culture as something that can be shared across formats and be consumed detached from time, space and cost. The accessibility of arts is no longer limited to certain locations within opening hours. Quarantine has made us realise that we need culture. We need perspectives that offer to widen our horizon beyond Netflix.
#4 From passive patients to health care agents
Health care providers who successfully establish the necessary trust and give citizens the ability to diagnose and treat themselves at home, will win in the long run.
The corona-crisis has accelerated digitalisation across sectors, not least within healthcare. COVID-19 has spurred new motives for individuals to communicate with the healthcare system without leaving the home. Each of us would like to avoid putting ourselves at risk in a hospital and prefer to not further burden the healthcare system with our perceived-smaller infirmities. Video consultations with doctors, psychologists, physiotherapists and other health care professionals have within a very short time gone from a debated future scenario to a new normal. In the future, we will to an even greater extent request the option to diagnose, monitor and treat ourselves without leaving our home. However, crucial for an effective transition to digital telehealth solutions will be the organisation’s ability to design services which suit the everyday needs of the people and patients’ lives at home.
#5 From every day household habits to conscious household choices
Companies and organisations who advocate a more sustainable consumer culture now have a unique opportunity to address our new found consumption habits in a limited corona-economy.
The experience economy has suffered greatly from the crisis. We don’t travel, visit amusement parks, buy cars or new clothes. On the contrary the household economy is flourishing, and numbers from grocery stores testify that not only do we cook more food at home, we are also more conscious about the ingredients themselves. Across the world supermarket chains are reporting an increase in sales of organic foods, as a recent report from the U.S. market shows. The consumer behaviour that we have been forced to practice in our homes these past weeks is contributing to a more sustainable lifestyle, whether we are aware of it or not. Our everyday consumption and routines have been put on hold. The individual learnings each of us are gathering right now hold a potential to nudge us to a more sustainable behaviour in the future. Our current attention to what is essential and what is luxury serves as food for thought on our priorities post-corona.
#6 From crowds and communities to solitude and sunlight
Seeing the urban space as one of private solitude over public crowds enables city planners to bridge the home and the city in new and exciting ways, creating greater value for its citizens.
When we are forced to spend the majority of our time at home, our demands for what is accessible outside the home changes. We seek out the places in our outdoor surroundings where we can find peace and tranquillity, and where nature can help maintain and nurse our mental health. Therefore, in this time we see new qualities - and deficiencies – in the public spaces of our cities, and such new insights should guide city planning going forward. City governments across the world have spent this time of quarantine to rethink infrastructure, mobility and behaviour in the city spaces. Milan is an example of an urban region where the temporary lockdown is being utilised for more permanent mobility changes. It is common to assess the quality of an urban space based on the activity and ‘life’ it generates as well as how physically active it allows people to be, as the boom of outdoor fitness facilities exemplifies. The question that should be on the minds of city planners, politicians and municipalities these days is, which urban spaces will create human value in the new reality?
#7 From work-life balance to flexible work-life
Our future desirable work-life places home into the equation for job satisfaction and work culture, and companies that bridge the two will get a competitive edge when attracting the best talent.
Working from home is not a new phenomenon, but it is new that we are in it together, having a shared experience of dealing with our work from our home. As individuals we are now learning to balance our work-life with our private life without changing the scenery. We are collectively experiencing how a more flexible work-life can be. What is going on now is an experiment that reaches beyond each individual office. It is a prototype for how our future flexible work-life could look. For example, an increased flexible work life enables new possibilities for us to settle outside the cities. This change in working culture will put new demands on managers and HR-departments.
Thick data on what is happening behind the curtains will be crucial for driving business in the new normal.
There is no doubt that the corona-crisis has led to changes in our lifestyle, habits and consumption. Companies and organisations that understand the motivations behind these changes and act upon them, will be one step ahead when the crisis subsides. But the changes that are happening inside homes all over the world cannot be captured through big data only. We need thick data to grasp the nuances and motivations underlying the immediate actions revealed by the big data. A place to start is to explore which of your assumptions about your customers are still true and which must die. False assumptions will be especially toxic when restabilising business. When the pandemic loosens its grip on our world, it will be vital to get behind the curtains, to see, feel and experience how we make, understand and live in our homes in the new normal. The joint qualities of big and thick data can guide the decisions we make in a changed world. That is where you can create new and real value for people.
