THE DIGITAL CULTURE GUIDE 2012/2013

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FOREWORDIn his well regarded 2007 essay Considering Principal Components of a Digital Culture, Mark Deuze described digital culture as “an emerging set of values, practices, and expectations regarding the way people (should) act and interact within the contemporary network society”. Five years later, in a world flooded with buzz words, platforms, tools, insights and information, the importance of understanding digital culture has never been so clear.

At TrendJar, we’re dedicated to helping you to navigate through the cluttered digital landscape, by helping you to understand the underlying values, attitudes, practices and expectations that govern the behaviour of today’s digital natives. Through our Digital Culture Guides (which often cost nothing but a tweet) and our comprehensive custom reports, we help businesses like yours to understand, interpret, prioritise and even predict digital trends in an effective and meaningful way; saving time, money and manpower.

If you’re looking for the latest tools, buzz words, platforms or loads of talk about tech then this report is probably not for you. If you’re looking for an insight into how digital culture is effecting the way that real people think, behave, live, work and play in this digitally connected world, then welcome! I hope you enjoy the guide.

Tayo Medupin (Founder and Digital Butterfly of TrendJar)

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A GUIDE TO THE GUIDE

Spotlights: In each report, TrendJar selects six digital culture trends to spotlight and briefly explores how each trend impacts the behaviour and expectations of digital natives.

Predictions: After each brief spotlight, TrendJar predicts where each trend will lead.

Links: Next to each spotlight there is a QR code which links to an article, infographic or product relevant to the theme. This link is just indicative of something that caught our eye, if you’d like pointers towards more relevant content just give us a shout. Use a QR scanner or click to view.

Share: If you ever have the urge to share anything from this document with friends or colleagues, just hit the tweet button below the heading.

Contact Us: If you’d like to contact us about anything in this report or even just have a chat about digital, click on the URL link at the bottom of each page or email tayo@trendjar.com.

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INSIDE THIS GUIDESpotlights

Digital Dependence

Digital Curiosity

Digital Individuality

Digital Impatience

Digital Polygamy

Digital Memory

Our Take: The Outlook for 2012/2013

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We predict that this will fuel trends such as:

Inline Surfing: the tendency to merge our real and digital worlds by being ‘always connected’.

Open Cloud: helping us to take our digital data, info and applications with us, wherever we go without friction into, out of or between.

Ubiquitous Connectivity: frictionless movement between access routes to the internet enabling us to be connected constantly via any device.

SPOTLIGHT ON DIGITAL DEPENDENCE

According to statistics from Stanford University’s School of Medicine 1 out of 8 adults show signs of problematic Internet use, with 83% of Americans admitting to sleeping with their mobile phones. The age of total, immersive digital dependence is upon us and with over 1 in every 5 digital minutes spent socialising it appears that even our most base cultural functions are being augmented by this digital shift.

As more human functions migrate into the digital landscape, we’re shifting towards a state where we not only expect digital touch points and experiences but actively depend upon them. This trait, twinned with the pervasive expectation of digital accessibility and availability, appears to be growing aggressively every year.

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SPOTLIGHT ON DIGITAL CURIOSITY

We predict this will fuel trends such as:

Discovery Mode: expecting constant access to information on all people, objects and places.

Digital Salvage: an interest in accessing and repurposing data to unearth new insights.

Self Discovery: an interest in learning more about ourselves through our digital behaviours with the help of big (and more importantly, small) data

2012 it seems, is shaping up to be the year of insatiable curiosity. Perhaps triggered by the mammoth amount of digital data that we have created over the past decade, or perhaps the constant access to facts, information and knowledge we’ve become accustomed to. What ever the cause, or causes, that have led us here it is undeniable that we are now a hyper curious tribe of digital natives who want to (and more to the point expect to) know everything about everything at every moment. And with the increase in technological capabilities, the rise of geo location, social networking and the wide penetration of smart, mobile devices it is safe to say that these expectations are not entirely unfounded.

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SPOTLIGHT ON DIGITAL INDIVIDUALITY

We predict this will fuel trends such as:

Hyper-Personal: the rise in digital experiences that are highly responsive and tailored to our individual nuances e.g. auto-tailored e-commerce journeys and interfaces adjusted to suit.

Vitalcasting, Small Data & Broadcasting: the rise in self publishing on a manual and automatic level where we will increasingly broadcast everything from intent to sleeping patterns.

MicroNetworks, Data Repositories and Digital Homes: an increase in owned, personal, private spaces on the web where we set personalised rules for engagement and access.

In 2012, individuality is becoming a norm in digital culture. People’s attitudes and expectations dictate that generic, one-size-fits-all, cookie cutter experiences be rejected in favour of experiences tailored enough to be meaningful, relevant and interesting on an individual level.

The irony of speaking on the topic of individuality in a generalised guide to digital culture is not lost on us, however this doesn’t negate the fact that individuality remains a widely accepted and expected ideal for digital natives everywhere.

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SPOTLIGHT ON DIGITAL IMPATIENCE

In 2012, our demand for minimal effort in the shortest possible time is reaching an all time high. Fuelled by an increase in technological prowess, perceived time poverty and increased expectation of all things instant, digital natives are no longer able to even comprehend of anything sluggish or slow. Further, with both users and creators in a race to whittle down every unnecessary click, activity and page load it isn’t a surprise that we’re seeing a move toward impatient natives. This is impacting upon almost every aspect of our lives. It effects the way that we remember things, the way that we search, socialise, protest, discover and share.

We predict this will fuel trends such as:

Visualism and Digital Cues: focus on normalised and codified digital shortcuts, particularly visual ones across the digital web, merging into a new digital language

Ambient Connectivity: embedded, context aware, personalised and anticipatory services which take intelligent action at a users behest without additional involvement

Single Act Multiple Action (SAMA): a rise in preprogrammed triggers which spark multiple additional related events autonomously i.e. one click to purchase may trigger delivery date added to calendar and invoice document added to personal cloud etc.

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SPOTLIGHT ON DIGITAL POLYGAMY

We predict this will fuel trends such as:

Digital Mashups: not content with having our favourite features spread across multiple competing entities we will increasingly seek to mash together the bits that we love the most

Web of Things: increasingly, we will seek minimum friction as we switch between tools and services within our basket of goods

Portability: fuelled by our moderate but shaky tolerance of failure, we increasingly demand that data held within services be ours and free to move when we chose.

Loyalty is a fragile concept in today’s digital world. Today’s digital natives are much more inclined to hold loose and polygamous relationships with their favourite brands, having and often actively engaging with a wide suite of services often times containing traditional competitors such as Dropbox and Google Docs, Tweet Deck and HootSuite, Digital Camera and Instagram. This form of brand switching still comes with a degree of loyalty, where we are often fiercely passionate about many of the products that make it inside of our basket of digital goods, however despite a moderate level of tolerance, natives are not shy about adding or removing products from the mix.

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SPOTLIGHT ON DIGITAL MEMORY

According to physiologist Betsy Sparrow of Columbia University, digital technology and the internet are having a huge impact on the way that people perceive and handle the function of memory.

In her 2011 research published in ‘Science’, Sparrow states that the majority of people now prioritise where to find things over those things themselves. She emphasises that this does not indicated that people are becoming ‘dumb’ but rather that, akin to the traditional reference books, diaries, friend or village historian we are now using the internet as a fluid and constantly accessible knowledge repository or memory bank.

We predict this will fuel trends such as:

Lazy Web: the ability to easily tap into collective and personal knowledge and memories where ever we are and on any device - tagged to events, locations and people

EGC and EVC: focus and premium placed on expert generated and/or validated knowledge

Contextual Bookmarking: move towards intuitive bookmarking and memory systems which provide contextually relevant search and recall for digital ‘events’ such as ‘website where I read that Michael Jackson had died’ or ‘websites I clicked on via Mashable yesterday’.

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SHIFT FIVE: DIGITAL ETIQUETTE

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When I sat down to write our take on the digital culture of 2012/13 (and it’s influence on our view of the future), one word kept coming to mind over and over again. Ownership. Digging beneath the mandatory level of digital hygiene expected with our impatient curiosity, it feels - from where we sit - that the entire zeitgeist of 2012 is based on an underlying belief that we are the owners of our own digital experiences. While we are looking towards automated, ambient, autonomous processes to make our digital journeys easier to bare - we want these to happen at our command and in a way that is most meaningful to us.

This is a significant statement, and one that often stands in stark contrast to a race towards external ownership of experiences, eyeballs, data....but it’s something that we feel lit would not be prudent to ignore or dismiss.

To us it seems, ownership works on multiple levels but each boils down to the balance between insight and assumptions. While we expect businesses and service providers to provide us with a minimum level of service quality, we also often want to distinguish and define what this means, provide our own benchmarks and define our own remedies.

We want constant access, at considerable speed, shortcuts, cues and automation but unfortunately for businesses, easy generic and centralised design of services and experiences will no longer cut it in the digital world.

OUR TAKE

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Increasingly, it seems - tools and services that enable people to define, tailor and edit not only mail alert preferences and gravatars but also entire digital experiences, digital journeys and digital mashups will win the race.

Imagine being able to use Amazon one click in Tesco’s or removing all interface elements relating to advertising, or accessing live flight data through a calendar app. These, we feel, are all experiences that digital natives will begin to demand more and more as our passion for easy, personalised, intuitive, data rich experiences grows, and it seems that companies like IFTTT and Rapportive amongst many others are paving the way.

Also worth noting here that it is likely that personalised experiences i.e. the way we bookmark, the way we search, the way we purchase and the way we present our selves on line will increasingly move out of the remit of commercial business. With more and more tools enabling people to rip apart, repurpose and redesign workflows and behaviours in the digital worlds, it is likely that no two Facebooks, Googles or Twitters will ever look the same though interaction between them will not be harmed.

Companies that understand how to facilitate personalisation (or ownership) of experience on a less superficial level will be able to forge a solid space in the future of digital. Brands who are not afraid to increase access to decentralised tools that allow people to disrupt, innovate and mashup services will be well placed to become pervasive and build strong, vital relationships that last.

OUR TAKE

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TrendJar is home to the digital trend and behavioural insight guides created and commissioned by digital strategist Tayo Medupin, a behavioural insight expert and proud owner of the last Macbook’s ever sold.

For around 3 and a half years, Tayo has worked as a digital marketing strategist and insight analyst and in her short career she has already worked on projects for the likes of Nokia Siemens Networks, Alcatel Lucent and Nuffield Health. She also worked for 14 months to develop a patent pending behavioural economic algorithm for mobile advertising....long story! Out of a frustration about the focus and bias on tech and geekery in digital, Tayo created TrendJar - purveyor of behavioural insight guides for digital businesses.

TrendJar focuses on the attitudes and behaviours of digital natives to help businesses to understand these people a better understand their expectation, needs, attitudes and whims. By understanding this, we believe that businesses will not only be able to navigate the current digital landscape but also to predict it and look towards developing products and processes that have a place in our future.

The first publication by TrendJar is this Digital Culture Guide, a short guide to cultural and behavioural norms for 2012/13. The guide costs a tweet. You can contact us for more info, a chat or for more insight into the trends, culture and behaviour discussed in this guide.

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