Velkommen til LØRN.Tech - en læringsdugnad om teknologi og samfunn med Silvija Seres og venner.

Silvija Seres: Hello and welcome to LØRN, a series we are making with NKI. This is a series with four conversations that are meant to inspire and educate related to designing of our homes, offices and interiordesign the future. Mye guests are Sølvi Marie Fjellstad from NKI, and Anja Bisgår from Spott. Welcome. 

Anja Gaede Bisgaard: Thank you. 

Silvija: This is our fourth and final conversation and it's really sort of a wrap up of what we talked about. We talked a lot about subtrends driven especially by technology, sustainability and big changes in biographics. We live longer, we have lots of new needs that we didn't have some years ago. We also talked about how it affects humans as a separate part of interior design and society. And then how to think about materials purchasing, process value, chains and ecosystems as we build. And now, in this final one, I would like to ask Anja first to help us understand how to follow trends? What are the trend tools? There's a jungle in trends as well, so how to prioritize and apply? 

Anja: I think to wrap a lot of these things that we've talked about in turning trends into business. There is a lot of focus on understanding who are you actually making trends for? Who is the end consumer? Who is the end client for an interior designer for example. And how do we then understand the trend and who will actually purchase those trends? And who are the those trends right for. And there are different tools and different aspects to that, and there's also different approaches. In the start of me becoming a trend researcher, that's like 15 years ago. It was very much about gathering a lot of information. It was actually very exhausting to be an intern or a trend researcher at that point. Because it was a little bit special. But when digitalization and social media came out, we kind of released all visual images there is. So you can just sit down now and and be your own trend researcher and look into different things and find trends. You know trends are something that happens and changes away of the normality or the societal norm right now and it changes into something else. So you need to find different perspectives of where this trend is all of a sudden is coming in and where it comes and. You need a lot of those different points and put them kind down into a funnel, and then at the end you kind of materialize a trend that goes into, for example, both interiors and in fashion. So of course you still need to do a lot of ground research. You need to follow a lot of boring things actually as well as creative things. But you need to follow societal rules. You need to follow economics. You need to follow politics in terms of understanding where the societal turns are going on. As well as the creative turns, but that's to me not not enough anymore. And that's also what the foundation for my line of work is. It's not just enough to say, hey, I've found a trend. Look at all the materials and look at the fine moodboards that I can make. You need to understand who will actually purchase this trend. And I think this comes really good in hand with also being a good interior designer. If an interior designer really can understand its client and really understand what kind of taste, what kind of setting and what kind of surroundings they would really like, then they are becoming exceptionally good. And that has to do with what different kind of emotional preference that we have for purchasing things. Those are actually kind of fine-tuned and lined up within our identity and within our personality. So I use a lot of theories from psychology, from neurophysiology in understanding emotional preferences in buying behavior from consumers. So it's actually very much of a brain perspective that I also apply into economics and creatives and stuff like that in understanding what actually goes on in our brain when we purchase things. And we purchase things that we like. It sounds so simple, but we like different things. To me of course I would also have to work with clients of whose products that I don't like personally. And resemble that to an interior designer, you would also have clients whom you don't like their personal taste, but you have to make something fabulous for them. So it's really about understanding both your own emotional preferences and understanding the different kinds of segments that goes into different trends and into different consumers and really understand their perspectives. It can also seem simple that it's just different tastes. But it is more than that. It's really how you can then say, OK, this new trend. I'm spotting something here that has a resemblant of some kind of aesthetic, some kind of characteristic, and this will be relevant for these people with these kinds of emotional segment. And that is how I navigate these new trends into saying, oh, these are the kind of consumers who would like this coming trend. And these are the consumers that like these other coming trends. And I've developed a model that goes into emotional segmentation and lifestyle concepts where you can look into what is characterizing the persona, what is characterizing the emotional segments and what is then characterizing that lifestyle concept of what it is that they would have a preferability of liking. And then you add the new layers and that is different. When you started Silvija saying, that sometimes interior design goes very slow in development and that's not really true. Because some consumers don't change that much. They only like small tiny bits of changes. I usually compare it to fashion, where suit people only want a little bit of a change of the collar. Either it's this narrow or wider or it's double breasted or single breast? It's really a small change. But we have other consumers that really love everything to be completely opposite of what they've just had before. They would be the ones going for minimalism to maximalism for example. And then you have other consumers that just want to update their style. They just want a new pillow, they just want a new color, but they contain and stay within a certain style concept because that's theirs and that's what they love and that's what they will purchase things into. And then there are those who are just really looking into comfort, stability and loyalty who doesn't change that much. And it maybe takes them ten years or a whole life to never even change and there's also products for them if you just understand making what it is that they love. So I really use this emotional segmentation in lifestyle concepts, in terms of taking trends into business and understand what kind of consumer would buy what, and I think that's also very relevant for interior design. 

Silvija: Thank you. I'm just thinking that no matter how stability loving you are, sometimes life changes. Both unexpectedly and sometimes expectedly. I have a house with four children, teenagers all of them. I had to build this space that works for us as a family now, but that is going to change in 10 years, quite dramatically. And not doing any changes or updates would probably be very counterproductive. So sometimes people also need some help to understand how their needs have changed. 

Anja: Ofcourse. There are different life stages. So in those changes there are different needs within your house and interior is ultimate. That's why we had to renovate our house. I have two teenage sons in a minute, and I definitely want to be in the other part of the house than they are so that they can be noisy and have their friends over and do everything they want to do. And I can still slack on the couch. So when you go into different life stages, of course, things change. The whole theory behind this is that through your life, you have a core direction of where your emotional preferences are in relation to aesthetics. Two things, two products that goes into lifestyle. So whether it's a couch or a jacket or something in the kitchen, then you have a certain area that you work within a certain line of characteristics that you prefer and like. So maybe if you were changing you would love to have your really durable classic Danish design chair with you, because it really has a lot of meaning. And it is something that you really appreciate or other consumers would prefer to just have that new thing or build that upcycled chair because that's what they prefer. And this direction is also why we don't have enough people with emotional preferences for sustainability. That's also one of the reasons why we don't have that big enough push from the consumer side because it's not enough consumers who have it top of mind, it's other aesthetics and other emotional preferences that are more important to the majority. 

Silvija: Thank you, Anja. Solvi, I would like to ask you for the final five minutes of this mini course, in four parts to say, if you were to choose a few points that you would want to make sure your students remember. What would it be? 

Solvi Marie Fjeldstad: Well. There's a lot because we've been touching into a lot of different things, but definitely that they should ask questions, raise their awareness around the products that they want to apply into their design projects, and do research. And we've talked about bringing nature in. Some of our students are living in the outskirts and some are living in the city. What does that? Are you designing for the same kind of people? Know your demographics and know your target group. We haven't touched much into it, but digitalization and combining it. I think research and asking questions is most important. Be curious and try to learn as much as you can. Because the world is small and the digital world is big and everyone can get information if they want to, and even your clients. So you need to be ahead and you also need to find the tools that Anja is talking about. Listen to the experts and educate yourself on how to look at trends and why you should do. And then you can be in force of influence to your clients and make the world better. Not just beautiful. 

Silvija: Make the world better, not just more beautiful, I love that. Anja, you talked a lot about trends, you helped us understand how you research them and gave us some tools for our students as well. There are some specific trends maybe given that we are based in Scandinavia. We have a certain set of historical and cultural preferences to the way we live, but also the materials we use, etc. Uhm. What do you think students should do for them to make their coherent story based on all of these trends that they understand. How do they build their own set of principles for good interior design? 

Anja: Wow, yeah that was a big one at the end here. 

Silvija: You see hundreds of trends and you read lots of channels and everything from design to the economist et cetera and and you still have a coherent story in your head. You know where you believe this is going. So how can the students start weaving their own thing? 

Anja: They also have to be in line of what kind of concept or what kind of profile they would want to have as an interior designer. What is their UPS? That's what you have to do all the time as running your own company. What is your unique selling point and try to find that within interiors. How do you want your existence to matter in the world? Whether it being that you push for sustainability or you're really strong on color or something like that. I would advise them to do that. But what I also thought about was in line with what Solvi said. I think looking at all the trends and the 20 years I've been working with this. What stands as a big thing, going through Corona and all of the places that we are right now, home matters extremely much. And I think really well-being in terms of what we also talked about, in terms of how we can increase well-being and well-being as an interior designer is like the key point for me looking into the coming years. Well-being from many different perspectives, how can well-being be at the forefront of the spaces that they create? Because we need that. Mental health is on the rise and with anxiety comes that digitalization has a darker side. So I really think that human well-being is extremely important in the spaces that we surround ourselves with. 

Solvi: I also think that a tip to the students is, if you like Anya said, try to choose your direction as an interior designer or stylist, but if you do not know your direction and you're kind of an all rounder, then you can ask questions. It's all communication. You communicate your designs out to your clients. You can ask your clients what was the beat that I did for you? And then maybe that can be an analysis later, so they can figure out. I'm really strong at this so you guys can come along after working a little while. 

Silvija: But the center point of what both of you say is you have to eventually realize who you are and be true to that. And this is going to be an expression of your strong points and your driving forces as well. 

Anja: At least in direction. 

Silvjia: Thank you both very much for a really interesting set of conversations about the future of interior design, styling of our homes and our offices, and sustainability. 

Solvi: Thank you. 

Anja: Thank you.  

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