How Will Design Change Our Lives in the Next 5 Years?

The creative director of one of the world's best design companies and several other designers lay out 25 design trends for the years ahead.

Plenty of companies now list "a Herman Miller chair" in their job ads as a reason to apply. It takes a remarkable chair to earn that. Herman Miller began as a maker of traditional furniture, founded in 1905. It grew into a designer and manufacturer of modern furniture because it has always put design first: the company sees design as an organic part of its business. To make outstanding furniture, it works with world-famous designers and also keeps its own design team. Recently its design director spoke to Fast Company and, with designers from several other firms, imagined 25 trends that will shape design over the next five years.

Design can open new markets

Executives and managers increasingly see that designers can use their talent to create opportunities, solve problems and even open new markets. So in our shop, designers are people who get to work outside the company's rules.

—— Robert Brunner, founder of Ammunition Group

The boundaries of design will disappear

Over the next five years, the lines between traditional graphic designers, UI designers and technologists will blur and then vanish. Jony Ive has taken over product design at Apple, and crossovers like that will become more common. It also means that designing across platforms matters more and more. Finding where the disciplines meet becomes critical.

—— Mike Treff, member of the product design team at Code and Theory

Product design will shape users' sense of space

When people think of smart devices, they think of Fitbit, which makes activity trackers, or Nest, which makes smart thermostats. We all know that wiring a circuit board to the internet does not make a product "smart." How you design your product will directly shape the user's experience, and even the user's sense of space.

—— James R. Wisniewski, architect at Michael Graves Architecture & Design

More designers will be self-taught

Self-taught designers will come to outnumber design students at the major universities. Taste and technology keep moving, and university courses can't keep up. Remember to keep updating yourself.

Visit starter league and codecademy often and learn something new. Keep with the pace of learning.

—— John Maeda, designer at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

HELLO, CEO

More and more people trained in design are becoming CEOs. It is close to a trend, but not every designer succeeds. A design education gives them good judgment about products, but they also need a precise, thorough grasp of business.

—— Robert Brunner, founder of Ammunition Group

More buildings will serve people with disabilities

Designing homes for able-bodied people is nothing new, but people with disabilities and the elderly also need comfortable, convenient homes. Over the next five years, more designers will turn to this field.

—— Patrick Burke, Principal and architect at Michael Graves Architecture & Design

Smart things will get smarter

If a thermostat can talk, why can't the chair we sit in, or the meeting room? Sensors everywhere, mechanical automation and new materials will get us there. Soon a pillow will adjust itself to the firmness we want, and a meeting room will tell you whether the meeting went well and adjust the light and temperature on the spot.

—— Ben Watson, creative director at Herman Miller

Browsers will get smarter

Google is already iterating on its product constantly. Browsers will grow more powerful. Most apps will live in the cloud, yet they will feel as handy as if they sat on your hard drive.

—— Mike Treff, product designer at Code and Theory

Design will become essential for every company

Big tech companies care more and more about design, and they are making moves. After its update, the Files app in Chrome OS Beta will be the first Chrome app to adopt Material Design; the team behind it is led by Matias Duarte. John Donahoe leads eBay's design team. IBM is pushing too: it has set up a new design team under Phil Gilbert, hoping to win back its old glory in design.

—— John Maeda, designer at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Products matter more than ever

Products are more complex than they used to be, and only good design will draw people to use them. The look and feel of a product, the details of interaction... these are what bring users back again and again.

—— Robert Brunner, founder of Ammunition Group

Offices need to become cathedrals or recording studios

Work is less and less tied to a place. With the internet this developed, you can work anywhere, so why make employees come to the office? Bosses should take the hint: make the office like a cathedral or a recording studio. A cathedral's space and reverberation not only shape a single voice but blend many voices together, releasing greater energy. A recording studio exists to make high-quality tracks. If you require employees to come in, you have to give them a working experience they can't get anywhere else.

—— Ben Watson, executive creative director at Herman Miller

Design needs more empathy

You have to truly, deeply feel what users need. Say you are building a smart wristband that monitors elderly people's health and alerts them. They may need it, but they won't necessarily pay for it, because no one wants to wear a sign that says "I'm old" around the clock. Understanding users by putting yourself in their place is truly necessary.

—— Donald Strum, product designer at Michael Graves Architecture & Design

Advertising and marketing will become part of design

You used to make the product first and think about marketing afterwards. Not anymore: marketing has to be treated as part of design. For a product to succeed, everything has to be utterly consistent.

—— Mike Treff, marketing and operations at Code and Theory

Design will draw more on how "people" work as a system

The Human Genome Project and other research have given scientists a deeper understanding of how "people" work. These breakthroughs will feed into design too. Whether planning a city or designing a chair, designers can use them to ask: what design sparks creativity? How do we create a stronger sense of belonging? How do we truly remove distractions and bring on deeper relaxation?

—— Ben Watson, executive creative director at Herman Miller

More engineers will become designers

More and more engineers are making their mark in design, something almost unthinkable ten years ago. Examples include Peter Cho of Inkling, Deena Rosen of Opower and Marcos Weskamp of Flipboard.

—— John Maeda, designer at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

"Strong design" will raise company valuations

Understanding and using the language of design will become a key measure of a company. "Design sense" will be ranked as highly as operating skill.

—— Robert Brunner, founder of Ammunition Group

Tell stories in fragments

The traditional linear story no longer works. People now take in information in fragments, and no one will sit through your brand-story video from start to finish. So you have to learn to tell stories in fragments too. Marketing campaigns need to become finer-grained and more intricate, like a subway map.

—— Steve Bear, Brand Design Group at Code and Theory

Designers will have to become psychologists

There are ever more products, and startups, apps and interactions are everywhere. Consumers are buried in new things. If you happen to be a designer, you have to think about your product from many angles: psychohistory, ethnology, the social sciences and more.

—— Vijay Chakravarthy, senior product designer at Michael Graves Architecture & Design

Custom design VS. design for the masses?

Designing a product to meet the needs of individual users is custom design, and many designers work in this area; some, for example, use 3D technology to realize their designs. The designers who want to meet the needs of the masses stand where social science meets big data.

—— John Maeda, designer at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

A focus on sustainability and regeneration

Take our own company: over the next 10 years, Herman Miller is committed to zero waste. We will cut water use by 50% and energy use by 50%. We will also refine our design process to protect the health of the people who use our products.

—— Ben Watson, executive creative director at Herman Miller

Meeting emotional needs, not just functional ones

Future products will seek a balance between function and emotion. What design brings is comfort, familiarity and the user's sense of identity.

—— Robert Van Varick, product designer at Michael Graves Architecture & Design

Design tools will keep evolving, and not only into 4D

Most of today's design tools are rooted in tradition: two-dimensional and static. Future tools will be more varied, such as Koen Bok's Framerjs, Ben Fry and Casey Reas's Processing, and Evelyn Eastmond's DesignBlocks.

—— John Maeda, designer at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Designers need to learn to play with data

Design has to do with experience, and also with data analysis. Designers need to learn to play with data, using it to redefine everyday objects and make products smarter and more effective.

—— Robert Brunner, founder of Ammunition Group

Companies need to be more reliable and think longer term

Companies need to build new systems that can handle long-term change. On such a system they can modify, refine and reshape their products without designing a system from scratch every time.

—— Steve Bear, Brand Design Group at Code and Theory

Design never stops

Everything becomes available everywhere. In the modern world you can get anything, anytime, anywhere, whether an object or an idea. People will care less and less about what you can take out of the box. What they care about is this: over time, what can your design keep delivering?

—— Ben Watson, executive creative director at Herman Miller

Cover image source: citiworldedu