A Resource for Analyzing Trends Impacting Health and Healthy Lifestyle Brands

From Parsons the New School for Design, an insightful and useful presentation (actually a lecture) that can serve as a resource for analyzing trends impacting health and healthy lifestyle brands.

Key takeaways:

1. Think of trends as stories (big ones, e.g. future of healthcare, and small ones, e.g. botox) about what's moving, where it's moving and by what force
2. Study them to understand consumer insight (how culture shapes behavior), to develop ideas and to develop products
3. Trends take on life much the way germs spread (passed from one person/community to another)
3. Involves understanding currency (defined in terms of value and social)
4. To understand the structure of trends - identify the forces at work (economics, technology, society), which lead to perceptions that result in behavior (work, play, create/consumer) which lead to micro (personal) trends, e.g. recycling, plant-based skin care products
5. Realize (and learn from the fact) that there are always (us vs. them) counter-forces and behaviors at play (e.g. mini-advocates vs. hummer-advocates) and (then vs. now) historical perspectives, (e.g. skin deep beauty vs. real beauty)

View The Structure of Trends presentation