Forecasting trends starts with a thorough assessment of society’s long-term direction and the implications across multiple industries. A common direction in several factors—emerging socio-cultural, economic, political, environmental, and socio-psychological trend drivers; unexpected events; and developments in science and technology—indicates megatrends that affect multiple industries. Once such a megatrend is identified, the next step is to focus on its meaning for users in the context of a specific industry, and to determine its applications in competition and in industry-specific shows and publications. The final step is to interpret and synthesize this data into new product attributes such as function, style, color, materials, and textures for future product design and development.

To research and interpret future trends, forecasters need a fusion of objective and subjective skills. Objective and analytical skills are required for systematic data sourcing, data analysis, and interpretation. More subjective and artistic skills and characteristics, such as awareness and intuition, help forecasters sense newly emerging directions and make predictions about their future implications. Subjective skills do not exist at birth or appear suddenly, but are built over time through experiences such as methodological research and interaction with the constant information flow from networks. Forecasting trends thus requires rational research, a well-established network, and intuition to predict where, when, and why new things happen.

This chapter introduces methods of conducting research to discover trend drivers and megatrends and to interpret their effect on a specific industry so as to guide design decisions. It focuses on desk research and building an online trend network to ensure and up-to-date, constant flow of information, as well as on formal methods of conducting field research to gather original data about the specifics of a trend for different user groups and geographical locations.

Desk Research

The work of forecasting trends starts with desk research, where forecasters use online and offline platforms to scan and review emerging shifts in economics, politics, science and technology, arts, entertainment, and new ideas across industries, attempting to capture how trend drivers coalesce and to identify emerging megatrends. Desk research is essential in identifying potential innovators and early adopters of an emerging trend, and in defining the general target user population, to whom, during the field research stage, the forecaster will reach out to gather in-depth understanding of needs and motivations related to the specific emerging trends. Trend forecasters also use desk research to identify experts and professionals—academic researchers, futurists, trendsetters, and many others—with specialist knowledge about a component of a detected emerging trend, who can validate the information and insights they develop.

Desk research is a scanning phase, an ongoing, continuous process in which forecasters constantly look for “the new” across many different sources—ranging from digital platforms such as websites (including online magazines, newspapers, company sites, and industry-specific sites) and social media to TV programs, radio shows, industry-specific expos, fashion shows, art and music festivals, and global street styles and fashions. Although there are many online tools to help you research and store ideas and inspirations about future trends, it is still important to include traditional ways of conducting this research. Following news from physical newspapers and magazines, reading books, and following influential TV shows and radio shows, are still effective in understanding the spirit of times. As trend forecasters employ online and offline resources to detect and track changes in the way people live, the following questions help build insight (Raymond, 2010).

• Who: Who started the trend? Who are its innovators and potential early adopters?
• What: What would you name the trend?
• Where: Where is the physical or virtual space in which the trend emerges?
• Why: Why is the trend emerging now?
• When: When was the trend first noted?

It’s very useful to have a physical trend notebook for documenting your research findings and ideas. You may not be online when you have an idea or when you see or read something interesting. Use a robust notebook and keep it with you at all times to sketch ideas, take notes, make diagrams, and attach images and materials. Trend notebooks do not have rules set in stone; they’re completely personal, like a personal diary of the new things you have detected.

Building a Trend Information Network

A tremendous amount of existing research is available on the internet to guide the trend forecasting process. Some is paid for, while some is freely available. When we consider the number of online daily newspapers and magazines, blogs, social media platforms, and websites dedicated to sharing new ideas, the amount of readily available data can be overwhelming. The first step it is to establish a library of favored information sources and build a personal online trend information network, a hub which constantly harnesses data from multiple resources, and in which you can store, record, and access material. This network can help you scan new ideas, products, services, and cultural shifts on a regular basis. To manage this daily information flow you can use an online bookmarking services like Google Bookmarks (google.com/bookmarks), where you can create a personal rack of your favorite blogs and websites, or a more focused tool such as pearltrees.com, a visual curation tool that allows users to organize, explore, and share any URL they find online.

Trends do not take place independently or exclusively in a single industry. All industries respond to major cultural shifts and to the zeitgeist. A strong trend shows signs of existence across multiple industries (e.g., architecture, interior design, product design, food, entertainment, and cosmetics). It is vital, therefore, not to to limit yourself to the fashion industry or build a trend information network composed only of similar interest groups. People who share similar interests generally know similar things, so the more diverse your trend information network the greater the diversity of ideas you can reach. Below are examples of online resources you can use to start your personal trend information network.

1. Collaborative Websites That Scan New Trends Globally

Most of today’s trend-spotting websites benefit from crowdsourcing—obtaining ideas and content from a large online community. Often these communities are global, with members helping to spot new and hot ideas and happenings in their localities. Instead of relying on guru trendsetters, these websites build a collaborative hive where thousands of people around the world share these new concepts. Their information is usually reviewed by an editorial team and then published in a blog format, often as free daily, weekly or monthly newsletters. Resources you can monitor include—but are not limited to—the following:

springwise.com publishes information on new business ideas, technologies, and products from a wide range of industries, with free daily and weekly newsletters.

trendwatching.com publishes free monthly trend briefings addressing megatrends, with product and business examples from a variety of industries around the world. The website offers free tools—“consumer trend canvas” and “consumer trend radar”—that can be used to analyze any detected trend in depth.

trendhunter.com crowdsources new ideas about fashion, technology, design, business, and culture, publishing yearly trend reports specific to each industry. The website allows users to filter trends for each industry; lists top-20 trends of the day, week, and month; and provides interviews with influential professionals.

jwtintelligence.com publishes trend research and analysis across industries and geographies as well as through in-depth yearly trend reports.

PSFK.com is a content network that leverages its broad community and research methodology to create inspiring editorials, videos, and events for readers.

NOTCOT Inc is a network of design sites: notcot.com visually displays editorial ideas and products in fashion, design, technology, home décor, and food and drink; notcot.org displays ideas submitted by trend spotters; and notcouture.com focuses solely on the latest fashion and beauty trends.

Cassandra Daily, at trendcentral.com, is a free daily email newsletter and website featuring lifestyle, fashion, entertainment and technology trends and social happenings of the day. It uses the research and insights of the global trendsetter network The Intelligence Group.

CoolBusinessIdeas.com, based in Singapore, shares editorial and informer/trend spotter ideas on emerging trends and new innovations at global and local scales. It covers a wide range of topics from fashion and design to music, automobiles, retailing, and health and beauty, and offers a free weekly newsletter.

2. Websites and Online Magazines

The number of websites available to trend forecasters is almost endless, and can change based on the forecaster’s specific focus. The list below provides general resources that report on new products, services, fashions, and technologies.

coolhunting.com covers innovations in design, technology, style, culture, food, and and travel in a categorized format, along with weekly videos and interviews.

davidreport.com is an online magazine and blog that explores everything from art, architecture, culture, design, and fashion to food, innovation, music, sustainability, and travel.

trendtablet.com is a free social media platform designed and curated by Lidewij Edelkoort, on which you can see examples of her recent works for clients.

trendland.com is a highly visual online magazine covering new ideas in fashion, design, lifestyle, music, art, and architecture.

refinery29.com is an independent fashion and style website in the U.S., covering everything from shopping and beauty to wellness and celebrities.

designboom.com is a digital magazine for architecture and design culture.

futurism.com is a website that covers future of science and technology.

mocoloco.com is a web magazine dedicated to modern contemporary design and architecture.

thedieline.com is a creative platform for packaging design and sustainability through innovation and design.

design-milk.com focuses on interior design, architecture, modern furniture, and home decor.

fastcompany.com is a business site with a focus on innovation in technology, leadership, and design.

3. Trend Forecasting Agencies

Trend forecasting is a cyclical and on-going process that requires constant research and analysis of new ideas and socio-cultural happenings. It takes a great deal of time, effort, and financial investment to forecast trends, and many companies fully or partially outsource this type of research and analysis. Professional trend-forecasting agencies operate at many different levels. The World Future Society and the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, for example, systematically analyze future trends that will shape humanity. Studio Edelkoort and BrainReserve, companies owned by leading global trend spotters Li Edelkoort and Faith Popcorn, operate at a macro level and offer trend forecasting services to many different industries. Companies like WGSN and Stylesight, in contrast, focus solely on the fashion industry; they have staff travelling around the world looking at street fashions and lifestyles, and they monitor all sorts of online and offline sources to identify the new and the next. Fashion forecasting agencies visit trade shows to look at colors and textiles, scan fashion merchandise around the globe, and attend designer shows during fashion weeks. While some forecasting agencies share parts of their information online, full access to their projective reports usually requires paid membership.

The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies (cifs.dk/en) identifies and analyzes trends that influence the future, using statistical analysis and research by interdisciplinary staff in economics, political science, ethnography, psychology, engineering, PR, and sociology. Most of the content requires membership.

The World Future Society (worldfuture.org) investigates how social, economic, and technological developments are shaping the future.

StudioEdelkoort (edelkoort.com), headed by trend guru Lidewij Edellcoort, offers consultation on trends and product identity to a wide range of industries, from automotive to home environments and fashion. The firm publishes limited quantity trend books targeting fashion, interior design, and cosmetics. Edelkoort creates audio-visual presentations about upcoming trends, and gives seminars around the world.

BrainReserve (faithpopcorn.com), led by American futurist Faith Popcorn, offers predictions of megatrends that will shape society. The company provides consultation at many levels, with publications, seminars, and future-focused discussions.

WGSN (wgsn.com/en) was launched in 1998 as a trend forecasting service for the fashion industry. Today it employs over 300 editorial and design staff in its offices throughout Europe, Asia, North and South America, and the Middle East. WGSN provides seasonal coverage and analysis on key looks, colours, and fabrics from all significant Fashion Week shows, and offers specialized insight to an international clientele that includes Marks & Spencer and Target. The company partners with Vogue to offer a digitized repository of every issue of American Vogue since 1892, and with the technology company Lectra to offer a starter pack filled with sketches, patterns, and prints to create 3D virtual prototypes.

Trendstop.com, Trendbuero.de, and Japanconsuming.com are other agencies that offer localized and global trend forecasting services for their clients.

4. Social Media

The more people you are involved with, the more interesting the ideas you are likely to receive. Many social media platforms can be utilized for trend forecasting research. But when you consider the amount of information available in these networks, the number of people with whom you need to interact may be overwhelming. Taking advantage of social media for trend forecasting research requires careful management for the effective use of time and effort. According to Vanston (2011), the first step in managing a social network is to select the general areas of interest. These should be broad enough to allow you to uncover promising ideas, but narrow enough to prevent the need for excessive effort. The next step is to identify subject-matter experts who can provide new insights, and then engage and maintain relationships with these people.

Instagram and TikTok can be especially useful in following experts, influencers, companies, and organizations on a regular basis. Instagram is a web-based social media platform where original photos are shared on a daily basis, while TikTok is a social media platform containing millions of personalized short videos. These platforms resonate with Millennial consumers more than any other age bracket, and can thus be effectively utilized to receive up-to-date visual information on their lifestyles.

Pinterest is a significant social media channel on which millions of consumers interact with millions of websites on a daily basis, extracting ideas and sharing them with others. Pinterest is useful not only for building a social network for receiving ideas, but for storing and organizing visual information.

All of the websites, blogs, and companies listed in this chapter, including those that require a subscription, publish on one or several different types of social media. Using social media to follow new ideas from a selected set of companies is a useful way of staying up-to-date and of conducting continuous desk research.

5. Other Online Tools

Google Zeitgeist reveals the spirit of times by aggregating millions of search queries received every day. The site statistically displays searches done during one year, and shows the top ten searches of the year to illustrate the current worldwide zeitgeist.

Google Trends, another statistical tool that can be helpful when examining megatrends across industries, provides data on the frequency of searches for a specific term over time; data can be limited to different geographic areas.

You can set up Google Alerts to monitor a query of your interest. When there are new results, Google Alerts sends them to you in an email format. Your query can be a topic as wide as fashion itself, or very focused.

A blog is a personal website where an individual records personal opinion on a regular basis. Fashion blogs fall into two main categories: independent blogs, which are personal postings of an individual or group of people, and corporate blogs, which are run by a magazine, brand, or store (Rocamora, 2013). Fashion blogs have gained mainstream presence and influence in the fashion industry. Independent fashion bloggers are invited to fashion events, sell advertisement space to fashion retailers on their blogs, and review and promote fashion products. Numerous fashion blogs are dedicated to sharing new trends, ideas, and street fashions in trend-forward places around the world. You can use Google Blog Search to search for blogs and blogposts. Some well-known blogs that can guide desk research are listed below:

thesartorialist.com was launched in 2005 by Scott Schuman, who was listed in Time magazine’s Top 100 design influencers. The blog captures street styles throughout New York and Europe as well as in fashion shows. Similar blogs for street fashion around the world include streetpeeper.com.

tavigevinson.world was started in 2008 as thestylerookie.com by 11-year-old Tavi Gavinson, whose blog on teen style became very popular. She was invited to fashion weeks, styled looks for well-known companies, and gave talks. Opopular personal style blogs on women and men’s fashion include theblondesalad.com, cupcakesandcashmere.com, and bryanboy.com.

Analyzing Desk Research Results

While gathering data from different online and offline resources and networks will provide you with insights about what is new and hot, it is not enough to predict future trends. You will need to start analyzing this data in order for it to make sense and carry you to the next stage of field research.

Analyzing any sort of data requires editing, selecting, and categorizing findings into a logical and coherent framework. Storing findings from desk research in a methodological way can make the data analysis phase a lot easier. As discussed earlier, you can use online bookmarking or organization tools, or you can capture data captured physically on a large surface such as a wall. The data at this stage can include images, articles, quotes, and statistical facts from online resources, along with your reflections about them.

Affinity Diagramming

Affinity diagraming is a method of organizing a large amount of visual and textual information into clusters according to affinity or similarity, and determining relationships among the clusters. Looking at the raw data from your desk research on a digital platform or a physical space such as a wall, a large table, or the floor, you can start forming groups of similar findings, and title them with descriptive and short statements. Once the data is sorted into groups and titles, you can rearrange the groups into parent and sub groups, and mark relationships among groups with arrows.

In forming affinity diagrams, refer to the who / what / where / why / when questions (Raymond, 2010) to categorize your data. Findings about the emerging trend’s innovators, early adopters, and experts, including their common characteristics, can form a group answering the “who?” question. Examples of products, new technologies, materials, or services that represent how the trend is manifesting itself across different industries can be grouped as an answer to the “what?” question, while global and local locations in which the trend is emerging can answer the “where?” question. To answer “why?,” refer to the trend drivers leading to the creation of the trend, validating your findings with statistics and quotes. And to answer “when?” you can categorize your data in terms of the timeline of the emergence of the trend and its status in the diffusion of the adoption process.

Three Times Rule

The “three times rule” is a method to help you decide whether the emerging threads of commonality in your desk research could lead to a substantial megatrend. It involves spotting three applications or examples of a trend with noticeable characteristics in three unrelated industries (Raymond, 2010). Once you have identified three products with common characteristics pertaining to a trend, you need to detect three examples of the same trend in three other industries; these could include retail, interior design, automotive, product design, beauty, technology, food, or packaging. If you find common examples, you may have identified a megatrend.

Innovators, Early Adopters

Once you have identified innovators and early adopters of a detected emerging megatrend, the field research stage allows you to focus your research on a specific target population. Based on your desk research so far, you can create a list of demographic, geographic, and psychographic characteristics of the megatrend’s innovators and early adopters. Demographics include characteristics such as age, sex, income, marital status, family size, education, religion, race, and nationality; geographics are about where people live, including information about which country, state, or city, and the population in each area, and psychographics include attitudes, tastes, values, and fears.

Experts

During desk research you will also develop a list of experts related to the emerging megatrend—knowledgeable professionals who can provide in-depth knowledge or coherent insights. They can be academicians, journalists, economists, editors, psychologists, or industry professionals like marketers, designers, and retailers. Interviewing these experts in the field research phase adds credibility, a depth of understanding, and validation to your trend forecast.

Field Research

After an emerging megatrend is identified through desk research, the next step is a deep dive that focuses on the specifics of the trend by researching its potential impact on users for a specific industry. As we’ve discussed, for example, the aging population is a megatrend, and it may contain less obvious, industry-specific trends, such as new sizing systems and materials in clothing that are sensible and aesthetically pleasing to older adults.

The main goal of the field research is to discover and/or validate the specifics of an emerging trend within a specific industry by developing an in-depth understanding of target users and of the state of the trend in the marketplace. Innovators, early adopters, and experts identified during the desk research phase are primary sources of information during field research, as are physical environments such as streets, malls, stores, campuses, bazaars, concerts, festivals, theaters, bars, pubs, and many others.

Field research yields valuable original data. Understanding the human component of a trend is a vital part of understanding the trend’s impact and importance within an industry. Today there is a deeper collaboration between creators and individuals. Individuals see themselves as active participants in the creation process rather than as consumers, customers, or users of products. Understanding behavioral and attitudinal needs, expectations, and aspirations of individuals in the context of a megatrend is thus crucial in forecasting industry-specific trends and developing new products. But because understanding people, and what they will want in the future, is not straightforward, conducting field research is much more ambiguous than desk research. If you ask people what type of garments they would like to wear next season, for example, they will probably mention the things they see around them. This won’t lead to anything new, but only to a repetition of what is already available. It is your job to discover unarticulated aspirations and needs. Field research requires you to work like a lifestyle detective, using observations, interviews, and surveys. You will extract knowledge first by observing what people do, then asking questions and listening to the answers.

1. Observation: Sensing vs. Looking

Trends have social, cultural, and lifestyle aspects that can be observed more effectively than they can be articulated or described. Observation involves seeing and understanding the world through images and senses, then articulating this understanding with words. As we’ve discussed, “cultural brailing” is a term popularized by influential American trend forecaster Faith Popcorn and her trend forecasting agency BrainReserve. It can be defined as being open to anything new with all your senses, wherever you are and whomever you are with. Susan Choi, Trend Track director at BrainReserve, describes this process:

“Brailing is a way of communicating language through bumps on a page. We take that same technique here and feel the bumps in culture. The bumps are everything. Again, it is about using all of your senses: things that you see, things that you taste, things that you hear. For example, it could be a matter of walking into a retail store and noticing the lighting, the music, feeling the different textures, just fully immersing yourself into whatever environment that you are in.”

Like cultural brailing, observation is a transformative experience and requires immersing ourselves with all of our senses to see, listen, and feel new things and form impressions about them. When we observe something, we see not only the big picture but all of the elements that unite to create it. As the observer, we should be able to briefly take ourselves out of the story, seeing the patterns we miss when we are too close to the subject. Observation requires seeing the parts as well as the sum of the parts. Think of it as zooming in and zooming out—zooming in to see the details, the leaves and branches of the trees, and zooming out to see the bigger picture, the forest as a whole.

Observation also requires freeing ourselves from the biases and prejudices we hold towards people and things. Observation involves feeling, thinking, and responding to something without passing judgments, in contrast to just passively looking at something. When all we do is to look at something, meaning is lost. We look at the screen of our phone or at a penny, and we don’t consider the context beyond this simple act. This applies to most of the objects we see around us. If asked right now to draw a quick sketch of a bicycle, you would probably have hard time remembering all the details. When we look at something, although our mind may be active, we are not fully engaged in creating and embedding every detail to memory. On the other hand, seeing something means to “understand” it in a deeper way. The combination of seeing something and understanding it at a level on which you can identify its details and surrounding context is the process of observation.

There are two formal ways of conducting observations. Non-participant observation involves collecting data by observing behavior; it does not include interaction with people or the environment. The observer is quiet, watching and trying to understand people’s lives, behaviors, and environment. This type of observation helps you develop a preliminary understanding of the social and cultural context.

Participant observation involves interacting with people and their environments, experiencing the phenomenon studied. Observers actively experience and feel people’s way of life by shadowing them. This type of observation can be conducted in two ways. In covert observations, the viewer blends in and their identity as the observer is not revealed. In overt observations, the researcher reveals their identity as the observer. While covert observation has the advantage of allowing you to see how people behave naturally, it is open to many ethical concerns, as you are covering your identity, actively engaging in an activity, and not telling others that you are conducting an observation.

Additional environments for observing fashion trends are fashion weeks, trade shows, and street fashion in world fashion capitals. Some of the influential trade shows for fashion include:

Premiere Vision: Textile and fabric shows that bring around 700 weavers from 28 countries; held in Paris and NY.

Pitti Immagine Filati: Knitwear for men and women, held in Florence, Italy.

Bread & Butter: Latest trends in street and urban wear, held in Berlin, Germany.

Interstoff Asia: Textile and apparel show held in Hong Kong.

In conducting observations, it’s important to never rely on memory, as it is very easy to forget details. It is best practice to use notebooks, pens and pencils, sketchbooks, video cameras, and voice recorders to record your observation data. It is also helpful to rely on multiple methods to capture observations, and to include both visual data and written notes. When you physically take notes in addition to digital recording, you not only record what you see but reflect on it. When taking notes, it is very important to be descriptive about what you observe rather than prescriptive or judgmental. Use descriptive adjectives and nouns that help you visualize the subject and the context of you observation. For example, describing a shoe by saying “a navy sneaker” is being prescriptive. Being descriptive, however, can be like this: “Navy color ankle sneaker with large logo on the side, white thick sole and checkered print behind ankle.” Such descriptions not only help you remember, but might trigger subconscious insights and associations.

Raymond (2010) describes several techniques for building a visual memory and recalling things effectively when observing a person or an environment. When looking at what a person is wearing, including jewelry and body adornments, note items by placing the person in a north, east, south and west axis. You can also note items from head to toe and from inner layers to outer layers. While observing an environment, you can place it in an imaginary 3×3 grid, noting characteristics in a clockwise direction from top to bottom and left to right.

2. Interviews

An interview can be described as a conversation with a purpose. Interviews are very useful tools for gathering information from innovators and early adopters of an emerging trend, and from experts. In situations where we can’t observe, we have to ask people questions. We can’t, for instance, observe thoughts, feelings, or intentions. We can’t observe behaviors or things that took place in the past. Private situations might preclude the presence of an observer. In these situations, interviews will provide the best opportunities for gathering information.

Traditional methods of interviewing empower the interviewer, as they are the person in control of the discussion content and the time spent. Interviewers should purposefully develop and plan their interview strategy, bringing individuals into the partnership and avoiding researcher/respondent or expert/novice perceptions (Beyer & Holtzblatt, 1998). Host/guest perception is another obstacle in building rapport (Beyer & Holtzblatt, 1998). The presence of interviewers as strangers in the interviewee’s environment may result in the host role for the interviewee and the guest role for the interviewer. In this type of relationship, people may try to please the person conducting the interviews and make them comfortable.

Building a relaxed rapport is key for a successful interview, as is creating a mutual relationship where both parties are equal, honest, and open. People usually are not aware of the reasons for their actions, as these actions are based on years of experience or may have simply become habits. Build rapport through listening and empathizing, being quiet and letting the participant talk, using encouraging probes to trigger more stories, and mirroring participants by nodding when they nod or smiling when they smile.

Creating interview questions is the most important step of gathering rich data from your interviews. Descriptive questions are especially useful for starting A conversation and keeping a participant talking freely. Descriptive questions might start as follows:

• Could you describe a typical…?
• Could you tell me how you usually make…?
• Could you describe what happened from the moment…until …?
• Could you show me…?
• Could you give me an example of…?
• Could you tell me about some experiences you have…?
• If…, what would you do/say/think?
• Imagine yourself…; what would you…?

In asking questions, avoid interrupting, and avoid putting forward your own idea by asking leading questions. “Do you follow the latest fashion trends?” is a leading question that might imply that your interviewee doesn’t seem to like following fashion trends. And questions such as “What do you mean by that?” contain a hidden judgmental component. Such questions imply that the interviewee isn’t clear, hasn’t adequately explained something, or is hiding the true reasons behind what they’ve said. (Spadley, 1979). Instead, it’s best to ask questions such as:

• What are some other ways you could talk about…?
• Can you think you think of some other examples of…?

It is very important to avoid asking multiple questions at once, and asking yes/no questions. Asking a question like “Do you like simplicity trend in fashion?” will not elicit much other than a yes or no. During interviews, make repeated explanations and restate your goal help to put the conversation in context (Spradley, 1979).

• As I said earlier, I’m interested in finding out….
• I want to understand…from your point of view.

During the interview, you can also select key phrases and terms used by the individuals and restate them. This reinforces what has been said, and demonstrates your interest in learning the interviewee’s language and culture. Restatement must be distinguished from reinterpreting, a process in which the interviewer states in different words what the other person said. Reinterpreting prompts interviewees to translate, while restating prompts them to speak in their own ordinary, everyday language (Spradley, 1979).

People tend to summarize their experiences by abstracting from a number of concrete experiences. It is human nature to provide a general impression instead of focusing on the details that formed it. You can overcome this tendency by using probes in addition to supportive and encouraging manners (Chambers, 1992). The use of cultural probes is a technique for gathering data about people, lives, values, and thoughts (Gaver et al., 1999).The probes are small packages that can include any sort of artifact (e.g., a map, postcard, camera, or diary), along with evocative tasks, which are given to participants to allow them to record specific events, feelings, or interactions. For example, you can ask people to keep diaries or record photos that capture a sense of their day or a specific activity like dressing up; to record places they visit for fashion shopping on a map; to upload visuals or texts to a social networking site about favorites items they own, things they aspire to, technology they use. You can then use this information as a guide during your interviews and as a referral point for deeper questions. By sharing data this way, the information becomes public, with both the researcher and user able to point out, manipulate, and discuss the information.

Focus groups are group interviews where the overlapping spread of knowledge is examined at once. They are useful for understanding some sensitive topics that may be discussed in a group more easily than individually, and for eliminating the dominance of single voice. One significant disadvantage of focus groups, however, is that participants influence each other. Participants may be affected by others’ ideas or intimidated about answering questions in a group. Focus groups are rarely successful where one person has the power card and is in charge of the whole process. For focus groups to be successful, they should be done with mutual relaxed rapport, in an environment where people can freely share ideas.

As with observation, you should record your interview data in physical and digital mediums. Notetaking should be always supported with voice and/or video recording. Having multiple interviewers in the field can help you better focus on the process, as one person can ask questions while another takes notes and is in charge of video recording. But as the number of interviewers increases, participants can become intimidated; it is therefore very important to balance the number. After you complete your interviews, transcribe your notes and recordings. This will help you validate your prior findings, develop new insights, or discover new veins of research, which may require additional online or face-to-face follow-up interviews.

3. Surveys

Once you have fully established a clear understating of your topic using interviews and observations, you may want to move onto quantitative research. Using surveys in addition to interviews and observations helps you triangulate your research results. Triangulation, or cross-examination, is the use of more than two methods in a study (Beebe, 1995). The idea is that one can be more confident in a result if different methods lead to the same result.

Observations and interviews are qualitative in nature, promoting understanding of needs, aspirations, and limitations, while surveys allow you to statistical and numerical data. Interviews and observations are about things that are hard to measure with numbers; surveys are about things you can easily measure using numerical scales. Surveys are helpful in identifying some general facts about people involved in a trend and for creating typologies. You might gather generalizable data about the demographics of your target population—age, gender, ethnicity, income levels, geographic regions, and so on. You can also gather psychographic data by using a scale to ask people how they value something. When surveys are carried over time, it is possible to determine the status of a trend—whether, for instance, it is at the beginning of the adoption curve or moving from innovators to the mainstream.

Using surveys requires careful identification of target populations. People who are not part of the target population skew the data when they are surveyed (Raymond, 2011). For example, if you are forecasting children’s trends, you probably want to target people who have children and exclude people who do not. How can you do this? You can use a screener or trick question that will help you identify people who are not part of the target population. A screener question is asked as the first question in a survey, and should be asked so that the respondent can’t guess the correct answer in order to proceed to the next question (Raymond, 2011). If you’re working on activewear trends, for instance, you will want to exclude people who do not exercise by using a screener question such as:

How many times do you exercise a week?

• I do not exercise
• Once a week
• Twice a week
• Three times a week

In this case, a person who answers “I do not exercise” can be excluded from the sample.

Developing survey questions that will lead to meaningful data requires very careful planning and understanding of the types of questions you can ask and the types of answers they can elicit.

Demographic Questions

Demographic information describes a person. Demographic questions ask about age, gender, occupation, education, family, nationality, income, and so on. These types of questions help you compare results across categories. For example, you can compare female respondents’ answers with male respondents’ answers.

Behavioral Questions

These questions are about how a person behaves and about certain actions. For example:

How many pairs of jeans have you bought in the last three months?

• In the last three months I bought
  • one pair of blue jeans
  • more than two pairs of blue jeans
  • no blue jeans

Attitudinal Questions

These questions are about how a person thinks and feels about something rather than what a person does. For example:

On a scale of 1 to 5, how do you feel about simplicity in fashion?

1. Very dissatisfied
2. Dissatisfied
3. Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied
4. Satisfied
5. Very satisfied

There are different ways of asking demographic, behavioral, and attitudinal questions. You can ask participants to choose from set of answers, you can ask them order things, or you can have them use a scale to determine their position on a subject matter.

Multiple-Choice Questions

Multiple-choice questions consist of three or more mutually exclusive answers. These types of questions are widely used for demographic and behavioral questions. For example:

What is the highest degree or level of school you have completed?

• No schooling completed
• High school degree
• College degree
• Graduate degree

Rank-Order Questions

Rank-order questions allow things to be ranked based upon a specific attribute or characteristic. You can also use images of products and compare products, tastes, aesthetics preferences, or mainstream and emerging trends. These questions are especially useful in attitudinal surveys. For example:

Please rank the following brands according to their aesthetic appeal. Place a “1” next to the brand that is most aesthetically pleasing to you, and so on.

__ GAP
__ Abercrombie
__ H&M
__ Urban outfitters

Rating Scale Questions

A rating scale question requires a person to rate something along a well-defined, evenly spaced continuum. Because rating scales are often used to measure the direction and intensity of attitudes, they are good for attitudinal surveys. For example:

Which of the following categories best describes your last experience with …?

• Very pleasant
• Somewhat pleasant
• Neither pleasant nor unpleasant
• Somewhat unpleasant
• Very unpleasant

The Semantic Differential Scale (Likert Scale) Questions

You can ask people to choose where their position lies on a scale between two bipolar adjectives. The semantic differential scale asks a person to rate a trend, product, brand, or company based upon a five-point or seven-point rating scale that has two bipolar adjectives at each end. For example:

Would you say simplicity in fashion is:

(5) Very attractive

(4) Attractive

(3) Neither attractive not unattractive

(2) Unattractive

(1) Very unattractive

Common rules applicable to all survey question types include avoiding yes/no questions similar to interviews and developing first response statement answers, which are more emotional and subjective.

Many organizations, companies, and governmental agencies conduct surveys and build databases, including Mori, Mintel, YouGov, Harris Research, and Pew Global. Such firms base the number of people who should take a survey on the population of the geographic area. For example, 1,000 is the minimum standard requirement for most European countries, while in the U.S. this can reach 10,000 (Raymond, 2011). How many participants should you have when you conduct surveys? The minimum number for statistical significance is 30. With at least 30 participants, you can generalize for those results.

In addition to physical surveys, you can use free online tools like surveymonkey.com or limesurvey.org to conduct online surveys. You can also use social media and platforms like Facebook to reach out to your target population and conduct your survey.

Analyzing Field Research Results

Interviews and Observations

As with desk research, analyzing qualitative data from interviews and observations requires strategic documentation of field notes, transcripts, photos, and recordings, and organization of the data into key concepts. You can add these concepts to the affinity diagram you developed from your desk research as extensions of existing groups or as new groups. You can also extend the affinity diagram with new relationships that show how new and old concepts, subgroups, and groups are connected. The process of editing, assessing, and arranging is a an iterative one; you must repeat it until you can concisely communicate the specific trend.

Surveys

In analyzing survey results, your first step is to list your key findings. Survey results can show common threads, but they can also display anomalies, and you need to detect these anomalies. Once you’ve listed all of your findings, analyze them in relation to the findings from your desk research and qualitative research (observation and interview). As stated earlier, one of the benefits of combining desk research and methods of field research is data triangulation—verifying a finding with multiple research methods. This adds to your credibility and strengthens your findings and predictions about future trends.

Competitive Research

In addition to desk and field research, competitive research monitors the activities of competing companies with similar consumer bracket and product categories. Competitive research should be used to identify the offerings of competing companies and to predict their responses to future trends and market conditions. It offers potential benefits for understanding the market in which a company operates, targeting users, and finding niche user segments. It is also highly beneficial in determining pricing strategies.

Competitive research can, however, be a dangerous tool, as companies may replicate their competitor’s strategies. What is happening in the marketplace today is obvious to everyone and does not create new opportunities. Trend forecasting should be about finding out what’s going to be big and unique tomorrow. Competitive research should be used as a tool to differentiate brands and products from those of competing companies in the context of future trends.

Many designers and merchandisers shop the marketplace locally and globally to benchmark and also to collect inspiration from innovative companies. Visiting competition first hand, and experiencing competitors’ products and pricing as users, provides valuable insight for gaining an understanding of the marketplace and positioning trend forecasting efforts within the competition.

References

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