Digital Workplace Group Open Knowledge Exchange Digital Workplace 2030
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Digital Workplace Group Open Knowledge Exchange Digital Workplace 2030
- 1. @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com Digital Workplace 2030 Preparing now for the digital worlds of work to come
- 2. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com Overview of services ConsultingBenchmarkingMembership
- 3. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com Thought Leadership Expert ResearchPodcastsBooks Expert Blogs
- 4. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com DWG Benchmarking: Knowledge Management Maturity
- 5. @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com Digital Workplace 2030 A selection of our clients
- 6. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com DWG Membership: 2017 in numbers 6 6 12 Research Reports Meetings &Visits Digital Workplace Live 15 Knowledge Exchanges 15 Knowledge Base AskDWG Digital Workplace Impact DNG Hangouts 100+ 16 7
- 7. @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com Digital Workplace 2030 Digital Nations Group Icons made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com Data, analytics & measurement Future of work Digital literacy Remote working Intelligent workplace Digital Nations Group (DNG) accelerates the digital transformation of nations, working with public and non-profit sectors globally to transform the way their people work digitally. It operates as a “super-stream” within the broader Digital Workplace Group.
- 8. @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com Digital Workplace 2030 We have 10 focus areas: 0907 01 03 0502 04 06 1008 The digital renaissance of work Platforms, services & technologies Data, analytics & measurement The intelligent workplace Ethical digital workplaces Physical and digital workplaces Digital literacy Employee experience Human and user-centred design Mobile & remote working
- 9. Digital Workplace 2030 Why look so far ahead @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com
- 10. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com What will the world look like in 2030? • Changing demographics • Globalization and future markets • Scarcity of resources • Climate change • Dynamic technology and innovation • Global knowledge society • Sharing global responsibility
- 11. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com First Dimension Space Digital Workplace 2030 is characterized by inclusiveness as it breaks down boundaries of organizations, teams and industries to enable digital and physical spaces for frictionless collaboration, creativity and innovation.
- 12. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com Re-modelling where we work Source: https://thecamp.fr/place
- 13. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com Who is working for you?
- 14. Digital Workplace 2030 Space without boundaries – Heathrow Airport www.digitalworkplacegroup.com @paulmillersays
- 15. Digital Workplace 2030 Space without boundaries – Unilever www.digitalworkplacegroup.com @paulmillersays
- 16. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com Second Dimension Capability Digital Workplace 2030 is both immersive and pervasive, providing augmented workers and managers with on- demand capabilities tailored to their needs and preferences.
- 17. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com BNY Mellon Digital Workplace Source: https://digitalworkplacegroup.com/2017/09/27/bny-mellons-digital-workplace-year-2017-won
- 18. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com IKEA’s digital workplace Source: https://digitalworkplacegroup.com/2017/09/27/bny-mellons-digital-workplace-year-2017-won
- 19. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com Re-mixing reality Source: http://www.businessinsider.sg/meta-ar-startup-employees-replace-computers-with-smartglasses-video- 2017-7
- 20. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com Augmented workers Source: http://wonderfulengineering.com/company-sweden-implants-microchips-employees-hands/
- 21. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com Third Dimension Intelligence Digital Workplace 2030 is the intelligence engine that powers a data-driven, fluid organization which shapes itself around the goals and needs of the market, the organization and its workforce.
- 22. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com AI in the boardroom
- 23. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com Shapeshifting workforce Source: https://qz.com/574729/a-branch-of-the-us-government-is-using-a-chatbot-named-after-mrs-landingham- from-the-west-wing
- 24. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com The enterprise digital assistant – Liberty Mutual Source: https://qz.com/574729/a-branch-of-the-us-government-is-using-a-chatbot-named-after-mrs-landingham-from-the- west-wing
- 25. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com Pervasive measurement Source: https://www.g2crowd.com/products/rant-rave/details
- 26. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com Fourth Dimension Beauty Digital Workplace 2030 is beautiful in its experience, ethical foundation and its purpose of enabling human development, wellbeing and fulfilment at work.
- 29. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com Health, wellbeing, and happiness
- 30. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays Genie @ Deakins University www.digitalworkplacegroup.com
- 31. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com Hyper Digital Hyper Human
- 32. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com Digital ethics What is the potential for AI to result in human deskilling? Are there decisions only humans should be allowed to make? Will leaders and employees still be able to make decisions if they go against the AI recommended route? How will organizations make the most of the IoT without imposing undue surveillance on employees? How will relationships between humans change when intelligent assistants take care of much of their communication? Will exploration, serendipity, reflection, intuition (etc.) still be allowed a place in the fast- moving digital workplace of 2030? How will we identify and evaluate the assumptions, ideas, biases and values that are built into our digital workplace tools by the companies who create them?
- 33. Digital Workplace 2030 @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com Are you on course?
- 34. @paulmillersays www.digitalworkplacegroup.com Digital Workplace 2030 Preparing now for the digital worlds of work to come
Editor's Notes
- Most forecasts for our 2030 world focus in on: major shifts in power between and within nations; the impact of environmental change and scarcity of resources; and, of course, the ongoing changes driven by technological innovations in all areas of our lives. Roland Berger, in one of the most comprehensive outlooks for this period, identifies these 7 key megatrends. Changing demographics – growth in world population to over 8 billion; ageing population; and increasing urbanization. Globalization and future markets – globalization will continue, GDP growing by 4% p.a. to around USD 135 trillion by 2030. Brazil, Russia, India and China are predicted to become the new economic superpowers. Scarcity of resources – energy, water and other commodities will be scarce by 2030 and smart solutions will need to be found. Competition for resources will intensify. Climate change – increasing CO2 emissions will lead to rising temperatures and put the global ecosystem increasingly at risk. Dynamic technology and innovation – increased diffusion of technology as new innovations across robotics, virtual reality (VR) and the internet of things are adopted faster and innovation cycles shorten. Innovation is particularly anticipated in the Life Sciences, with solutions to major health problems flowing from this sector. Global knowledge society – the cross-linking of knowledge is expected to increase and gender gaps in education and employment will continue to narrow. Rising skill shortage/ war for talent. Sharing global responsibility –shift to greater cooperation and responsibility shared among nations caused by international crises and environmental risks. In parallel, it predicts the growing power of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and increasing philanthropy.
- Most forecasts for our 2030 world focus in on: major shifts in power between and within nations; the impact of environmental change and scarcity of resources; and, of course, the ongoing changes driven by technological innovations in all areas of our lives. Roland Berger, in one of the most comprehensive outlooks for this period, identifies these 7 key megatrends. Changing demographics – growth in world population to over 8 billion; ageing population; and increasing urbanization. Globalization and future markets – globalization will continue, GDP growing by 4% p.a. to around USD 135 trillion by 2030. Brazil, Russia, India and China are predicted to become the new economic superpowers. Scarcity of resources – energy, water and other commodities will be scarce by 2030 and smart solutions will need to be found. Competition for resources will intensify. Climate change – increasing CO2 emissions will lead to rising temperatures and put the global ecosystem increasingly at risk. Dynamic technology and innovation – increased diffusion of technology as new innovations across robotics, virtual reality (VR) and the internet of things are adopted faster and innovation cycles shorten. Innovation is particularly anticipated in the Life Sciences, with solutions to major health problems flowing from this sector. Global knowledge society – the cross-linking of knowledge is expected to increase and gender gaps in education and employment will continue to narrow. Rising skill shortage/ war for talent. Sharing global responsibility –shift to greater cooperation and responsibility shared among nations caused by international crises and environmental risks. In parallel, it predicts the growing power of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and increasing philanthropy.
- National Intelligence Council ‘Global Trends 2030’ report: we are at a critical juncture in human history, in the coming decades we will collectively experience a global transformation comparable in breadth and scope to the political and economic revolutions of the late 18th century. It will, however, happen at a much faster pace.
- Most forecasts for our 2030 world focus in on: major shifts in power between and within nations; the impact of environmental change and scarcity of resources; and, of course, the ongoing changes driven by technological innovations in all areas of our lives. Roland Berger, in one of the most comprehensive outlooks for this period, identifies these 7 key megatrends. Changing demographics – growth in world population to over 8 billion; ageing population; and increasing urbanization. Globalization and future markets – globalization will continue, GDP growing by 4% p.a. to around USD 135 trillion by 2030. Brazil, Russia, India and China are predicted to become the new economic superpowers. Scarcity of resources – energy, water and other commodities will be scarce by 2030 and smart solutions will need to be found. Competition for resources will intensify. Climate change – increasing CO2 emissions will lead to rising temperatures and put the global ecosystem increasingly at risk. Dynamic technology and innovation – increased diffusion of technology as new innovations across robotics, virtual reality (VR) and the internet of things are adopted faster and innovation cycles shorten. Innovation is particularly anticipated in the Life Sciences, with solutions to major health problems flowing from this sector. Global knowledge society – the cross-linking of knowledge is expected to increase and gender gaps in education and employment will continue to narrow. Rising skill shortage/ war for talent. Sharing global responsibility –shift to greater cooperation and responsibility shared among nations caused by international crises and environmental risks. In parallel, it predicts the growing power of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and increasing philanthropy.
- Space is a critical dimension of Digital Workplace 2030, which speaks to how it will integrate information and bring people together, as well as disperse and dissolve the traditional boundaries we associate with work today. It will act in such a way that it will fundamentally change our ideas about: the digital and physical spaces we inhabit both at work and at home the familiar boundaries of organizations and teams the nature of collaboration and cooperation the gap between physical and digital reality.
- In 2030, necessity and creativity will have led us to a more optimal set of work spaces. These are adaptable and hybrid spaces in the form of campuses, precincts and hubs that serve a range of purposes and organizations. They are shared rather than owned. Creativity, innovation and community are the watchwords for their design. Not every campus will be a live-in community; different flavours will spring up, many around key population centres, offering a compelling range of facilities for individuals and families. They will represent a hyper local, hyper global mode of living and working that becomes the new norm. The workplace will shift from being a place that workers are forced to attend, to an attractive and inspiring place that is considered a perk and even a privilege. Such places are key to attracting talent amidst a global shortage of qualified employees.
- Hyper collaboration inside and beyond the organisation – boundaries diminish. By 2030, millennials make up around 75% of the workforce. They are relentless collaborators. Practices such as communities, innovation jams, hackathons, idea markets become simply part of a day’s work. Intrapreneuring is highly prized as the digital workplace furnishes opportunities not only to suggest new ideas but also to bring them to fruition. Learning is reinvented as part of this collaborative spirit, with peer learning and massive open online courses (MOOCs) key parts of the picture. Much learning will be delivered in-the-moment as it is needed, an early example of which comes from DAQRI, which can deliver information and learning overlaid on a worker’s environment via augmented reality (AR) devices. Partnerships with other organizations become common, even with competitors – so-called “coopetition”. E.g. Philips and Qualcomm Life collaboration to create a joint connected health offering. Co-creation with customers also critical as consumers seek out ever smarter, more personalized services and products. Boundaries between industries also diminish as companies move into entirely new industries and the boundaries between industries diminish. Tesla is an early adopter in this respect as it extends beyond building electric vehicles into other industries with its energy storage products for the home and fleet of vehicles for self-driving ride-sharing – in other words, competing with incumbents across a range of industries.
- When I see organisations today who are thinking about space in a way which prepares them for Workplace 2030, I look for a mindset which focuses on fluidity and space not the boundaries around it (e.g. not the firewall, not the boundary between physical and digital worlds) For example, I recently spoke to Neil Barnett from Heathrow Airport. He’s in digital communications rather than KM but he’s got an interesting take on space. For example, he was at the UK’s Royal Mail he set up an employee portal which was mainly open to the public to view. Heathrow Airport is a unique place to work – it’s a mini-city with its own place of worship, police force and weather forecaster. It’s also got a predominantly mobile workforce. Heathrow has implemented a digital transformation programme that is digitally enabling the whole “city” – not only with strong wif-fi through every facility, and spaces to collaborate, but ensuring every employee can work from a mobile device anywhere in the airport, as well as outside it. They have launched an excellent mobile-first intranet and are opening up other digital services. But Neil and his team’s concept of space also looks to a more fluid workforce. Although there are only 6,500 staff employed by Heathrow, over 70,000 employees work there every day but they are employed by retailers, airlines and government agencies. He’s already looking to how they can extend the digital workplace to the vibrant community who work at Heathrow every day that aren’t necessarily employees. Perhaps what Heathrow Airport have implemented isn’t revolutionary but it will evolve into something that will make everybody who works at Heathrow , wherever they are, more efficient and engaged.
- Unilever is another organisation who have the right mindset about space. They a forerunner in aligning the digital workplace and physical workplace running a formal, global data-driven agile working and space optimisation programme. They were making sure space was designed and optimised for productivity, flexibility and collaboration a few years back (this photo is five years old). They also have a refreshing take on collaborating beyond the firewall, and that’s seen beyond in various initiatives. Unilever Foundry is a branded innovation and co-creation platform and initiative to attract start-ups, designers, inventors and entrepreneurs to collaborate with Unilever’s brands. It aims to create strategic partnerships for the future and covers pitches, mentoring and investment from Unilever’s in-house venture capital team. The Foundry has even started to create co-working spaces, for example in Singapore, and is also committing to working with more start-ups founded by women. There is also: a Mentorship program offering branding and product advice a Pilot program setting up specific projects in partnership with Unilever occasional opportunities for investment from Unilever Ventures, the in-house venture capital team. Unilever Foundry is headquartered in London with regional representation. A recent innovation in the program has been the development of co-working spaces in Singapore and Dublin. There are also regular events held to drive membership and awareness. c Unilever also collaborates across its supply chain. They have had a formal collaboration program with its supplier network since 2011 known as “Partner to Win”. It encourages collaboration with and among major suppliers across five main areas: Capacity & Capability, Quality & Service, Innovation, Value, and Responsible & Sustainable Living. The program includes specific initiatives and both regional and global networking events, including a two day global summit. There is also a suppler portal called SupplierNet, which serves as “a global collaboration platform between Unilever and its supplier partners. This includes supplying data to improve operational and commercial performance.
- Capabilities that were confined to the most advanced digital workplaces only in the earlier decades of the 21st century become widespread in the 2020s and fundamentally reinvented by the early 2030s. A seamless suite of tools, including apps to support specific roles and jobs, dashboards that integrate business data into meaningful outputs, and chatbots using natural language processing, all simplify interactions with information and people, thereby enabling work to happen more easily.
- IKEA are another organisation who have done some pioneering work in the digital workplace,. They’ve been members of DWG for many years. They’ were one of the first companies to truly think about the digital workplace holistically and strategically. They think in terms of different capabilities and have assigned owners. And they also measure and track the maturity of capability. Here’s a scorecard for their “Meet and Communicate” capability which tracks all the related processes, solutions and projects relating to this area. Having that improvement mindset and putting measurement in place means they have already started to increase the digital workplace capabilities for store workers and they already have a good headstart in preparing for Workplace 2030.
- Capability also extends beyond devices to the human body and a workforce that is augmented with wearable and implantable technologies emerges. While smartphones will have reached 90% of the global population by 2023, by the end of that decade they may increasingly be replaced by mixed reality (MR) and haptic technologies. The shift from devices that we carry to those that we wear will fundamentally change the capabilities available to workers! MR glasses indistinguishable from ordinary glasses may seem far off today but there are already early indications from the likes of Eyefluence (bought by Google) and Magic Leap. Developments in haptic technologies will provide new ways of interacting with the digital workplace beyond the mouse, keyboard or even the touchscreen. Interaction using wearables such as haptic gloves or without any equipment using ultrasonic “hotspots” in the air will enable interaction via gestures. Early iterations such as Oculus Touch controllers, Meta’s Airgrab, Gest Gloves and Walt Disney’s Aireal are already demonstrating how workers might interact with the digital workplace – and each other – in VR and MR environments. The human connection of face-to-face meetings will finally have become replicable in virtual environments. A virtual handshake using haptic gloves may not feel quite like the real thing, but it will bring colleagues and clients closer, along with the facial expressions and body language that enrich communication.
- Augmentation for employees in 2030 will not only involve MR and haptic technologies, but a range of wearable and implantable technologies that make future workers into cyborgs. Some companies are already implanting tiny microchips provided by Swedish startup Epicenter into willing employees in order to facilitate access to buildings and devices, and to make purchases. Other augmentation possibilities are likely to include exoskeletons for heavy lifting, sensors embedded in clothes to monitor key health signals, and co-bots or collaborative robots to enable side-by-side working of humans and robots. Many organizations are likely to use biometrics rather than passwords by 2025. Workers will have access to a range of options for both cognitive and physical personal augmentation. This will raise questions around fairness in the recruitment and treatment of workers, with issues similar to those already seen in academia and sports arising. Workers with more fluid work patterns will increasingly expect to bring their own digital workplace tools and technologies (BYODW) and to plug easily into the organization as they need and want to. The digital workplace as a service that is “on tap” will be common, accessed via a digital ID that workers use for a range of purposes.
- Tesler’s Theorem: artificial intelligence (AI), or machine learning, is usually defined as whatever has not yet been done. However! We already have much AI in our work/life e.g. digital assistants on our smartphones, online recommendation engines, smart home technologies, supermarket inventory systems, Office 365 Delve or HR chatbots. For now, these tools represent only “weak” or “narrow” AI, but “strong” or “general” AI is where the exciting, yet admittedly scary, potential lies. Large tech companies such as Baidu and Google spent between $20–30bn on AI in 2016 (90% on R&D and deployment, and 10% on AI acquisitions). Experts differ on when the first truly artificial intelligence will emerge, some dating it to the 2020s or 30s, while others think the 2050s more likely. Either way, growing AI capabilities will drive a number of key trends in the workplace: smart enterprises with data-driven decision making fluid workforce that reshapes itself as needs change pervasive measurement and insight on all aspects of work and the workplace hyper personalized digital work environments data-driven behaviour change.
- Today it is considered progressive for the C-Suite to include a Chief Digital Officer, with just 1 in 10 organizations laying claim to one in 2017. The World Economic Forum predicts that the first AI machine will join a board of directors by 2026. Decision making for this group will become data-driven, helping to remove bias and support rational choices. For all workers, routine decision making will shift from humans to machines. E.g. voice-enabled virtual analytics assistant Rhizabot is an early example, enabling sales and marketing people to query enterprise data quickly and intuitively. E.g. x.ai, a personal assistant that schedules meetings for you. As AI reshapes and in some cases takes over the functions of managers and workers from the boardroom to the frontline, societal debates about potential measures to address technological unemployment, such as the shorter working week, robot taxes and universal basic income will need to accelerate. McKinsey & Company estimates that 60% of all occupations have at least 30% constituent activities that could be automated. This suggests a more nuanced story than the one told in mainstream media of looming mass technological unemployment; however, at this stage, it seems inconclusive what the exact impacts will be as we move towards the mid century. Organizations and governments need to start planning now for potential impacts.
- At the core of the smart enterprise will be an increasingly fluid workforce. The digital workplace, connected up to the talent marketplace, will enable the recruitment and management of a workforce that is less fixed. HR teams are already starting to be assisted in recruitment and selection processes by AI applications that help to identify and screen potential applicants and reduce unconscious bias. Already, the General Services Administration of the US Government has a chatbot called Mrs Landingham that helps to onboard new employees. Teams that assemble quickly around projects and then disband at the end, in a cost-effective manner, will become commonplace by 2030. Following this rapid recruitment process, digital workplace tools will enable micro projects to be assigned and managed across distributed teams.
- One the DWG members, Liberty Mutual, also recently won our “Digital Workplace of the Year” Award Over the past few years they’ve been evolving a capability which has resulted in a remarkable digital assistant to help employees complete tasks, which is accessed via the intranet, or through a desktop or mobile app If offers you personal notifications, actions and approvals and allows you to summon up HR and other information from multiple systems It has a sophisticated chatbot so you can ask questions and complete tasks Everything is viewed through “microapps” - cards or widgets which contains just the information you need You can target different groups such as new starters for onboarding processes And it’s all delivered via a microservices architecture so its very easy to add new information or the ability to interact with any system with an API. They also have a Software Devevlopment Kit (SDK) to make it easier for developers It’s certainly one of the most intelligent digital workplace tools I’ve seen but it had humble beginning as a modest place in 2013 where it was just a place on the intranet to aggregate manager approvals. But they built it up, built an infrastructure around it and even now tried to turn it into a commercial product. The next phase I believe is the assistant will actually consume the intranet experience with the homepage based on the assistant.
- Pervasive digital workplace measurement will bring both great opportunities for organizations and individuals, as well as related issues around ethical use of monitoring and data. The breadth of data available will mean that performance can be constantly fine-tuned based on real-time analysis of key measures such as customer satisfaction and personalized performance feedback. Questions need to be asked as to whether workers are empowered by these technologies or whether they represent an oppressive programme of control and surveillance. An array of new industry standards, company policies, government regulations and social contracts will be needed. Attempts to encourage behaviour change will be less hit-and-miss than in the early decades of the 21st century as data can be leveraged to drive better practices. An early example of this was Virgin Atlantic’s use of customer and employee data to help drive behaviours that would lower fuel consumption, reportedly saving $5.4 million at the end of the trial and also raising pilot satisfaction by 6.5%. This data will increasingly extend to emotions and sentiments, providing a much richer understanding of employee engagement and happiness than is currently possible, and moving from self-report to actual behavioural measures. As well as revolutionizing HR practices, this will also prove valuable at the intersection of customer and employee experience. Already, sentiments analytics companies, such as Rant & Rave in the UK [shown in screenshot], are helping companies to use real-time feedback to understand customer emotions and reactions, and to enable customer service staff immediately to understand their impact on customers, thereby gamifying customer service.
- One of the core Vitruvian principles of architecture – beauty – encapsulates both the visual attractiveness and the “pleasurableness” of a building, and this holds equally true for digital environments. Humans adapting to poorly designed workplace technology, with the associate cognitive load and friction, will shift progressively towards technology that adapts to humans. As we have already seen in previous dimensions, this will include new, more natural, ways of interacting with it, such as via looking, speaking and gesturing rather than clicking and typing.
- In Deloitte’s 2016 Global Human Capital Trends survey, 79% of executives rated design thinking as an important or very important issue. It will play an increasingly important role in creating the employee experience that people will expect as we move towards 2030. Design is likely to shift from UX designers to AI as it learns what good usability looks like and constantly adapts and tailors the digital environment for workers. It will take into account the particular psychological makeup of the user as well as the type of task being performed in order to optimize the experience. Under the guidance of machine learning, the interfaces we interact with will achieve a level of perfection previously unimaginable. Ironically perhaps, machine-designed UX will make the digital workplace more human than ever before. Poor experiences will be a critical issue for organizations as technology becomes much more integral to the human experience – these will be felt more viscerally, creating a jarring and unpleasant effect far beyond the frustration they cause today. UX professionals, far from becoming redundant, will be the artists and storytellers of the digital age, crafting the narrative behind these tools. As the interfaces and devices we know today disappear, designers will be freed from designing within the limitation of boxes and buttons. Design may become a more holistic discipline as deep understanding of both digital and physical worlds is needed to craft satisfying experiences.
- Accenture predicts that by the mid 2020s screen interfaces will be less important and integral to daily tasks. We will spend less time looking at interfaces and more time interacting with people and objects in the environment. Our digital experience will thereby become inherently more physical as “digital” starts to disappear as a separate notion. This has been described as the post-screen era, in which the user interface becomes ubiquitous. Getting closer to the action, without the limitations imposed by our current interfaces, will enable capabilities we may only dream of now, empowering us to communicate ideas more quickly and vividly. Multiple factors will help drive this shift: a fluid workforce with “on tap” access to multiple digital workplace environments will avoid organizations with poor experiences pervasive measurement will tell an unequivocal story about the impacts of poor experience on productivity and satisfaction the trend towards progressively less visible and intrusive technologies societal level concerns with wellbeing will help make stressful digital work experiences unacceptable.
- Aesthetically beautiful, immersive digital work environments that match and blend with the attractiveness of the new campus or hub environments in the physical world will be the result. These will not only enable workers to get the job done in an optimal way but also help the worker to maintain optimal wellbeing. For a workforce increasingly concerned with health, wellbeing and happiness as measures of a life well lived, this will also be a key employer attractor. This will drive digital workplace innovations that connect up with health and fitness apps to support employees in achieving their health goals. Psychological as well as physical health will be a priority for workers. As humans struggle to psychologically adapt to the vast technological changes since the turn of the century, the negative effects of cognitive overload will force designers to find solutions to deal with attentional issues. The seeds of a movement of mindful or quiet technology have already been sown and are starting to produce technologies that help limit distraction and minimize addiction. Immersive environments will also bring dangers of illusion and potentially losing touch with reality, which will need to be addressed. Such efforts will move from the fringes to the mainstream for digital design teams and could potentially be an area where workplace rather than consumer technology could lead, with productivity goals driving investment in new techniques. Environments that are responsive, not just to emotions, but also to technology habits, patterns of work and stress, will be able to help nudge workers towards healthier and more productive modes of working.
- There’s some interesting work going on at Deakins University in Australia where you can start to see an intelligent workplace come together to deliver health and well-being The University has invested in interesting technology for a while – for example students have been able to interrogate Watson for a few years The latest innovation is to deliver a personal assistant called Genie delivered via an app which not only provides all the information students need but also makes suggestions covering their entire time at University It also has the potential to help with health and well-being, for example helping students to discover about support services for anxiety “Our aim is to make Genie a companion in digital form..it has a carefully curated personality of its own” Lynn Warneke Genie is still in pilot, but it’s already won an Award and in a few years time this type of service may well be the norm
- The way we approach the digital workplace NOW will have profound implications for the future of work for us all. This means designing technology that supports human flourishing, that enables us to become even more human, more empowered, more skillful, more intelligent. It’s about working together in a harmonious and conscious relationship with technology. Beauty in the digital workplace echoes the original renaissance concept whereby beauty entails a rich, pervasive and encompassing approach to life, far beyond the ”mere” superficial modern interpretation of the term. And equally so in this second renaissance – the Digital Renaissance. In our fourth dimension, beauty inhabits and infects all the pores of the experience of work – including what work means, brings and enables in human existence. Beauty here reflects a work ethic, which we called the “digital work ethic” in our book “The Digital Renaissance of Work”. In this ethic, the beauty derives from how we experience work; the pleasure, reward and value it brings to our lives. Work has already in 2017, and will fully by 2030, have transformed itself in most cases and for most humans from drudgery, obligation and suffering to fulfilment, enjoyment and meaning. Perhaps not wholly, but predominantly. As Seth Godin, digital marketing sage, says: We will all have become artists and artisans in our work. This can already seem viable when applied to knowledge work but the shift will pervade most work by 2030. Beauty in this digital world will act as an atmosphere sweeping through work and its role in our diverse societies.
- Beauty goes deeper than the surface and no matter how delightful the digital environment of work, it will not be considered truly beautiful unless its powerful capabilities are applied in an ethical manner. Organizations will need to move to address ethical and moral questions arising from the 2030 digital workplace with its capacity for monitoring, measuring and influencing workers. Roles will be established and industry bodies will help organizations to navigate difficult areas. Teams leading on the future digital workplace need to start considering a range of ethical questions
- Understanding trends/ potential developments Connecting back to present and emerging needs Having conversations internally about DW2030 Experimenting and learning Developing the strategy.