There are many fantastic trend agencies globally that provide color reports. So, you might ask, why do we create a new service?

We want to achieve a revolution of color reports – to go beyond the traditional mediums. Compared to traditional color reports with 2-dimensional color data, the 7SEC. CMF Futures is serving the technology industry with actionable CMF tools linked to actual material technologies.

We started the work with a mindset to learn from you, the users. We tested the accuracy of our own strategy with global surveys to industry experts. We asked amongst other topics, what was generally working for them and where they felt was space for improvement with the current services they were commissioning to. One of the hypotheses in our strategy was that traditional format of a physical book was constraining to the space and time. E-learning is growing in importance and we want to create tools that provide flexibility in where and how you learn. Digital learning is the quickest growing market in the education industry, with a whopping 900% growth since 2000 by KPMG (https://e-student.org/e-learning-statistics/).

An ongoing strategic direction for us is to continuously improve the interactivity level and improve on the inspiration of the future reports. Our volume I, Utopia e-book, is answering also to the trend of CMF industry going towards phygital– holistic physical and digital product and service design – and how we as CMF designers need to master both aspects.

If you want to be invited to be part of the co-creation journey, send us a note and you will receive the future surveys too.

In the survey we asked what the industry experts consider as a priority of all the trends. 87.5% answered: sustainability with futuristic twist. The report is based on our extensive 7SEC. Material library with over 12 000 material samples from our network of material suppliers. The global pandemic has accelerated some of the mega trends, with lasting impact in consumer behavior and we are exploring the implications to the brands and to the CMF design in the report.

When we started the research for the volume I, we had to acknowledge the sheer fact that we only see the beginning of the changes driven by the aftermath of global pandemic to the material technologies and to the CMF design. This crisis demands strategic thinking, creativity and co-creation to come up with innovative solutions that support the global consumers.

These CMF directions reflect general insight, current material technologies and best practises based on the information available now, and cannot contain all the information needed to determine the future for specific brand strategies. Yet we are sure these directions cannot simply be ignored.

As a method for the 7SEC. CMF Futures© we research wide amount of data, analyzing into technology industry specific CMF trends and translating this with global material supplier’s solutions. Our trend reports will aim to deliver interactive CMF samples for multisensorial experience and easy implementation to your product portfolio. The CMF directions are created with material technology specific colors through the science of Applied Color Psychology to match technology industry.

Utopia e-book: sustainability with future twist

In a world of climate change, technology break throughs, demographic changes and shifts on many fronts, the concept of utopias has become a life line of hope for us today because it gives us something to strive towards. It motivates us to rethink the structures and methods of the last century and find entirely new, better solutions.

We can see today the return of Utopianism through the concept of sustainability that becomes the utopian horizon itself. The global drivers for theme Utopia are the growing consumer attitudes towards sustainability and safety due to the pandemic. Along with the consumer behavior, corporate attitudes and regulations around the world are driving sustainable strategies. The CMF trend report is created celebrating this mindset, with actionable tools for sustainable materials for technology industry. You can access the report here.

Content of the e-book:

– Mega, macro and micro level trends

– Supportive data

– Industry benchmarking

– Mood boards

– Inspirational videos

– Digital 3D CMF

– Material directions

– CMF color directions fit to technology industry

– Language variants: English & Chinese

If you need Chinese language variant, please contact our China team at WeChat omuus_China

Utopia CMF Collection.

The CMF report is supported by limited edition CMF Collection, to be released August 2020. Since this is a novelty service for which we are collaborating with the suppliers means that the physical CMF Collection is under development. You can preorder the collection here.

The 1^stvolume of Utopia focus on the sustainable bio-materials, composites and transparent materials, sourced globally from our 7SEC. Material Library supplier base.

Content of the CMF Collection:

– Curated collection of physical CMF samples: unique custom-made reference CMF samples and supplier material samples

– CMF coding with material supplier information

– Material technology information

– Language variants: English & Chinese

If you need Chinese language variant, please contact our China team at WeChat omuus_China

A final thank you: with gratitude to the industry experts for answering the surveys and helping to form the volume 1 directions. Thank you Business Finland for supporting our digital mission, and enabling long dream to come true. Cheers to Omuus global team for yet again talented team work. We are in awe of all the brands and suppliers that has been highlighted in this report of the strategic work towards sustainable future. Let’s work together for better tomorrow.

Stay safe!

Annina Verkkomäki

Chief Creative Director

7SEC. FUTURES ©

7sec-cmf.com

OMUUS is a CMF design agency (Colors, Materials and Finishes). The volume 1 of our article covered impacts to the China market and how the situation has affected the product and service design.  

In the volume 2 we have a look into how has the epidemic changed the emotional and psychological behavioural aspects of people’s lives, and how the color design can have profound comforting, soothing and relieving impact to consumers that are in the search for new rituals for their everyday lives. We also share about the impacts to the material technologies, what are the winning recipes, what should companies invest to their future material portfolio, and what materials are perfect for product development. 

How does the situation affect to colors in design?

Grace Boicel, Omuus creative Director & Applied Colour Psychology specialist

 ‘Colours have a profound psychological influence on human emotions and behaviour.

Most of us can remember looking at a rainbow appearing on the sky filling us with hope and wonder. We can also remember a day where everything isgrey and the sun seems to be far away.

In these difficult times many are looking for comfort and safety. Not all of us can enjoy looking at the sky and even be outdoors as much as we want anymore.

Did you know that colors can make us more active or calm us down?

Colors help us feel uplifted or calm down anxiety by positively influencing our mental wellbeing. Whether it is in the way of surrounding ourselves, visualising or dress in colors. Colors can be stimulating or smoothing depending on the intensity and saturation of the color. The stronger stimuli the stronger effect on us.

In Omuus we use colour psychology as the foundation of our work. Color is an incredibly powerful phenomenon used to influence us every day of our lives. It can influence our mood, behaviour and feelings; making us move quickly, feel relaxed, take action, eat more and spend more.

Simple changes in colors, can lead to big changes in sales, conversion rates and much more. If you are working with colors within your business it is important to get this right. We are happy to help if you would like to know more.’

How materials are changing and developing due current situation?

Anne Taitto, Omuus Materials Director

Certain type of materials have had increase in the demand due to the virus impact to product expectations from consumer or businesses. For example materials used in medical equipment, protective clothing and gear, as well as materials that are being used for leisure activities and hobbies. In addition to these, the production of plastic sheets for the protective shield has massive increase in demand.

Many companies have transformed their production to answer to the demand, and now produce above mentioned along with their original products. From OMUUS supplier network some of the fabric suppliers and sewing factories have started the protective clothing production and chemical producers have started to produce hand disinfectant under the emergency conditions. It is great to see companies being able to be flexible to meet the demand, and also new collaborations emerging, working together to find solutions.

The demand for easy to clean, anti-bacterial and anti-viral material has risen. Beside health care, the request for these health promoting materials is for high traffic locations to protect passersby and shoppers in public transportation and market places. Due to the virus impact globally, I believe this direction in materials will have long term impact and become an expected hygiene factor across industries.

Another material and supply chain impact with the lock down has been that production has moved from the world back to country of origin. For consumer electronics this will increase the need for suppliers to be able to produce high quality specialty finishes to be able to meet the standards.

We want to thank Grace & Anne for sharing their thoughts about current situation and how it has affected to their world.

Interested of future market specific trends? Contact us and let’s discuss more of your needs!

Annina Verkkomäki +358 40 7680127

annina.verkkomaki@omuus.com

We at OMUUS believe design has an important role to solve challenges globally. The impact of Covid-19 has changed our daily lives for good, only time will tell what are the most successful scenarios. The virus has accelerated the trends that we have predicted – digitalization – this is the largest digital education program the world has ever seen. The acceleration of the need to design with empathy – the importance of supporting your community and find innovation that is truly helping in saving lives. We believe in the creative community to work together, to keep inspiring each other and creating new ways of working with the possibilities that these changes brings. WHO and The United Nations are asking design community to join to find solutions.

People are seeking for safety and hyper hygienic material solutions to promote public health to stop the pandemic from spreading. We gathered thoughts from our specialists for two articles, their insights to our new ways of working and the market changes.  In this first part we will talk about the impacts in China market and how this situation has affected to product and service design.

How has the COVID-19 changed China market?

Jenny Cui,OMUUS China CEO:

‘The impact for China & Chinese market is huge:

China as the first place of virus outbreak, we were shocked suddenly. The most terrible period was right during the Chinese New Year, which made people’s mood over sad compared with previous peaceful & happy new year atmosphere. The original hopeful New Year felt hopeless, which lead to an overall emotional impact of all local people.

From daily life perspective, everything online like teaching, working and shopping are blooming, while offline economy has had a terrible hit. Especially for restaurants, who had to start finding ways to delivery rather than eat-in options. This caused a huge request on the food packages. Also, many super markets had to start selling semi-finished food rather than raw materials, which creates need for packaging. The material needs behind the increased consumption are huge for both for anti-bacterial & eco friendly materials.

As long as the virus keeps spreading worldwide many local companies, especially the manufacture & foreign trade companies businesses dropped terribly. Many of them quickly changed their business from original into Medical supply manufacturing & trading to ensure their business. A large number of new mask production lines has been built up shortly, and the “Melt-blown fabric” and “Tyvek” materials for mask and medical protective clothes are urgently needed. At the same time the price of these materials is getting higher and higher.

The intent to buy clothes & accessories for regular consumer has changed into materials, that can provide protection, like TPU jacket & PVC gloves for their daily commuting protecting, as well as the resins for goggles.Since people are having more time to stay at home, the pajamas & slippers needs are raising increasingly, as well as the in-house fitness equipment, such as yoga mats. From daily necessities perspective, since people keep washing hands, liquid soap & hand creams needs growth significantly as well as masks & room fragrances.’

How the situation affects to product or service design?

Jarkko Saunamäki, OMUUS Principal Designer:

‘Coronavirus is a dark horse expected to affect on megatrends. Health and wellness were already a strong trend, and in the crisis aftermath it will likely intensify further. A demand for related products and services is expected to continue the growth.

Physical products may approach the requirements of clinical products in materials, cleanability and use cases. Remains to see, if this will affect on the trend of sharing economy, due the fact that social caring has increased. Cleanability and antimicrobialwill become a marketing argument, such as ergonomics, usability and sustainability were.

The usage of digital services boomed in the crisis, and revealed the bottlenecks in usability and reliability. New virus specific applications and services are already launched.

The economy moves in cycles. Research and Development often predicts the upcoming change and budgets are cut down in the economic downturn. The product development may take years, and investing only in the economic upswing may lead to wrong timing with the market entry. In a crisis some freeze, others see opportunities for new products and services. ‘

We want to thank Jenny & Jarkko for sharing their thoughts about current situation and how it has affected to their work. In the second article we will cover the topics of CMF in this changed situation, and material technologies answered by our specialists. Stay safe & tuned!

To get to know how Team OMUUS work during the quarantine, we will share some home office inspiration to our Instagram stories in upcoming days, go check it out!

First time in Shanghai last November TrendWatching was there as a part of trend tour to provide insights, how to win the hearts and minds of Chinese consumers. Presented by Acacia and Leroy, Asia head of trends and insights, and Nathania Christy, head of global insight network. Trendwatching is a half day deep dive into the best-in-class innovations from all over Asia, that are setting consumer expectations in the region.

“China plans to launch its very own artificial moon to replace street lights in urban areas this year.”

“Apple became the first trillion dollar US company.”

Retail is not dead; “Alibaba singles day 2018 achieved a record breaking 213.5-billion-yuan gross merchandise value, a nearly 27 percent increase from last year.”

First of all, what is a consumer trend? According to TrendWatching, it is a new manifestation of a fundamental human need. Even though the world is changing fast the truth is, people don’t change that much. We are still the same old humans with the same old human needs. As change unlocks new ways of serving basic human needs, trends emerge. One way of spotting such trends is to watch innovations that are happening around, as these are indicators of new ways people are satisfying their basic needs and wants. More importantly, innovations rise from emerging expectations. Expectation gaps emerge when there are no products or services that responds to these expectations. All in all, trends are simply patterns in changing expectations.

An interesting example that reflect a combination of drivers of change creating innovations that meet basic needs is homeworkgods – a Singapore WhatsApp hotline that literally helps with homework on demand. This might seem ridiculous or “frivolous” at first glance, but the trick is to focus on what that innovation could signal about future customer expectations.

Most relevant trends for 2019

Let’s now dive into consumer trends that TrendWatching identifies as being most relevant for 2019. First of all, they pointed out that customers are getting more demanding of experiences to be designed and they have to be easily sharable. The opportunity here is to design your product or service to give customers a story worth telling. Notable examples like the Tokyo-Shimbun, a micro newspaper that implies the voice of the marginalized, and Fortune Pharmacal, a light-hearted campaign in Hong Kong that aimed to remind people that finding their own happiness is the greatest fortune in life.

Second trend point, how consumers will increasingly expect to engage with brands beyond the traditional screens and channels. Case in point is the IKEA Place App that allows customers to “see” furniture in their own home. Also an app called Inkhunter, lets users preview tattoos on their own body before actually getting inked.

Think beyond convenience – how can you delight consumers with magical touchpoints?

As media grows ever-more participatory, people are expecting deeper engagement. And as boundaries between real and imagined worlds are fading, an opportunity for fantasy IRL (in real life) emerges. For example, the Louvre museum launched a tour that is based on Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s music video. Nike embedded a virtual queue for their limited-edition sneakers on Instagram, so fans can create avatars to queue for virtual sneakers drop.

What worlds do your consumers escape to, and how can you blur the boundaries even more?

Third trend point: retail. Truly a big deal in China, currently being the largest retail market in the world. In 2017, e-commerce in China grew three times faster than physical retail did. Interestingly, 80% of retail in China is still dominated by offline, street-side, family-run kiosks. Alibaba has stated that their goal is not to increase the 20% online pie, but to radically transform the 80% physical retail. New retail is about using online data and digital technology to deliver a new model of experience.

What does the best of offline and online look like for your customer experience design?

Last but not least, we are told that in 2019, consumers will embrace the test and fix experimental approach, to fix their way to an optimum experience in all kinds of ways. This includes health, wellness, beauty and perhaps even more unexpected industries like travel. For example, one airline is already offering access to Timeshifter, an app that provides personalized plans to help people recover effectively from jet lag.

What can you offer to self-improvement obsessed customers as they embrace a precise, engineered approach to improving their lives in all aspects?

Bio Design or Synthetic biology, also called bio-engineering, is an expanding market. It is expected to exceed $13.4 billion by 2019.

This field is increasingly relevant to designers and everyone working in the field of design today should at least be aware of what it is.

Bio design is an emerging design movement involving scientists, artists, and designers that integrate organic processes and materials into the creation of buildings, products, as well as clothing.

The integration of design with biological systems incorporates or imitates living organisms into design as material sources. In this sense biologists become a new type of designer, working with a very powerful substrate: life.

Image Omuus from BIO-ID

The integration of design with biological systems can mean usage of living materia, such as fungi, algae, yeast and bacteria. This can mean for example; growing a chair out of mycelium, the mushroom fungus that makes for a surprisingly durable material for furniture.

Images by Eric Klarenbeek and Omuus from Chemarts and Biohm.

The idea is to create a product whose natural functions are enhanced as a result of the use of (these) living materials.

For centuries, people have been designing, controlling, and altering microorganisms—think pasteurization, selective breeding, and the history of Penicillin is a great example.

WHAT IS NOT BIO-DESIGN?

Biomimicry looks to nature as a source of inspiration for engineering but design without nature integration. To give a clearer example: Imitating a design from nature but not using environmentally friendly material in its production.

First Image Omuus: Jun Kamei Amphibio Gill Garment Biomimmicry. Second image Jun Kamei Amphibio.

WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN FOR DESIGNERS?

The rise of bio design puts designers in a unique position. Industrial designers will be swapping plastic, metal and other materials that take energy to produce with living materials, like fungi or bacteria.

Artists and designers need the scientific know-how of biologists, while biologists benefit from the big-picture thinking and outside perspective of artists and designers.

WHO ARE SOME OF THE BIG PLAYERS?

The Biofabricate conference is coming up with pioneering companies like Nike and Microsoft getting involved.

Ginkgo Bioworks working with French perfumer Robertet to make a rose-scented perfume from genetically modified baker’s yeast.

New Harvest pioneers in the cultured meat movement, the company is best known for growing a hamburger in a petri dish.

Modern Meadow grows leather in a lab.

Suzanne Lee is the chief creative officer for Modern Meadow and a fashion designer by training. She is best known for making clothing out of a kombucha-like bacterium.

Terreform One: Terreform is a leader in building with living, self-generating, and sustainable materials.

WHAT CAN WE EXPECT IN THE NEXT 10 YEARS?

At this point, we haven’t seen bio-designed materials make a significant impact on buildings or industrial design so far – we believe that will change in the next 10 years.

WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES AND CONCERNS?

Growing meat in a lab brings up its own set of moral dilemmas, like the ethics of eating it as a vegetarian. Biological weapons are also another concern that shouldn’t be overlooked.

We want to thank Per Boicel for his time and opening the door into the fascinating world of Bio Design.

‘The need of simplification in technology means that there is a demand for technology to be more filtering, distilling and abstracting. This would contribute to increased focus and efficiency through clarity.’

OMUUS interviewed Yannis Paniaras, a principal design director at Microsoft. He brings 18 years of experience in design, product development and management across markets and cultures.

In 2002 Yannis relocated himself to China for an intergovernmental cooperation between the European Union and the Chinese government. Between 2003 and 2015 he has worked in various senior level roles in design management for Microsoft and Nokia in China. He has successfully led design driven transformation initiatives, establishing user experience design capabilities through incubation of design studios, and directing initiatives across people, process, and product creation areas. Today Yannis collaborates with Microsoft’s new corporate design studio to create design systems that enable the digital and experiential transformation for the company’s business processes and tools that 130,000 employees experience globally every day.

OMUUS asked Yannis:

Why people are asking for hidden technology and simplification?

Remove the noise.

I think technology is in great need for simplification and clarity. The way digital experiences are woven into our lives today are affecting us not always in our best interest. Most importantly technology needs to be in a level that feels both natural and human.

Avoid information overload.

Many of the information and communication systems today have evolved to include capabilities that give users control over the density of their personal communications, but there is a lot more what could be done.

For example, in the IOT domain and the home environment, the current state is this type of emerging ecosystem of hardware and software – but it doesn’t always conform to the natural human based balance we have evolved in our home lives. In a few years from now, this constantly expanding physical and digital fabric that surround us will be more regulated, and constantly informed by our output and input. Through this process a state of elevated personalization and simplification will emerge.

From single products to systems

There have been a lot of improvements already in creating products and experiences that are focused on understanding and serving customer needs. This evolution is mostly occurring at a singular product level, or across a range of similar products. However, the scale of tomorrow will require that coherency and simplicity in experiences will be achieved through much broader ‘meta-environments’. These will govern how such systems function and take under consideration a more holistic spectrum of values and regulations.

For example, there are different standards of privacy across different parts of the world. When we traverse such environments, we can imagine how our devices and our digital profiles can adjust to the changes. This is already happening in some cases. An environment is not only a physical one. We have a variety of environments today that affect products and experiences; digital, legal, cultural, political, economic etc.

Shifting our focus to more familiar home environment, the orchestration of smart devices and the meta-environments. They can create additional convenience, safety, and better environmental standards. However, this needs to be done through a holistic framework and proper design. We will also see an increased emphasis on customer experiences that improve our physiological and physical well-being.

Value of what we do.

When it comes to the basic input and output capabilities for the most commonly used devices at present, laptops, tablets, smartphones, we still primarily rely on displays (screens) to interact with these devices. Due information density conveyed through visual means has a much higher sensory bandwidth than let’s say auditory or tactile channels.

Sound, and thus voice, does not have the same density as visual channels, yet increasingly voice mediated interactions are taking over graphical user interfaces. Voice commands are simpler to use for certain tasks, like short and repetitive transactional interactions. However, we can’t do complex things with voice, so we intersperse these new technologies across the more established interactive landscape. When voice commands start to feel more natural, we will continue to see voice UX expanding because of its simplicity.

Voice is just another interface, it is the voice recognition technology on the background that made it possible to create the conversational interactions and experiences that power the pod and the assistant.

If something becomes hidden, something else needs to become visible. This also applies when interacting without a display. What possibly can become more visible is the realization of the value of our activities achieved through such new systems. We used to allocate a disproportionate degree of value on the user interface of a product to the extent it defined its identity and value. We are getting away from that type of thinking. The virtualization of products and services shifts focus on task completion and efficiencies, no matter if they are practical, emotional or human.

Give to humanity.

Technology will become more transparent helping us to re-focus on what we really want to do. If technology is just an assistive layer in our everyday lives, we would not be dealing with a mobile phone all the time. It’s all about getting our attention back 100% on achieving a more human balance in our daily activities, the ordinary things that the current noise around us is obstructing. It’s about being more human. We should change the focus from technology taking away from humanity to giving back, empowering us to achieve more.

We thank Yannis Paniaras for the interview and for opening a window of what future beholds in the field of customer experience.

‘People are not interested in your company, your brand, your product.
They really aren’t, sad as that may be, and even if you get through with the message they’re sceptical.
– Along come stories. They’re more impactful than facts. They get attention.
They get remembered. They change perceptions.’

Branding pioneer Dr. David Aaker (Forbes 15.2.2018)

‘A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is – it is what consumers tell each other it is.’

Intuit’s co-founder, Scott Cook

Throughout history men have been storytellers. We easily forget facts and figures but can retell stories once we have heard them once. We at Omuus are advocates to the power of storytelling as strong part of our design.

In the collaboration with brands and marketing it is important to deliver sensorial stories that are promoting the connection between products and people, eventually leading to strong brand identity and recognisability – and sales. In our portfolio works brands have invited us to help tell a story how art and technology can work together to push the boundary of product making.

The designer role overall is changing – today we have a responsibility to be part of solving problems our world is facing. We need to think about the relationship between technology and people’s needs.

SENSORIAL STORIES

Looking at what consumers want today many things are changing. The value perception has changed. In the past it was about owning statement products and wealth symbols but present day and future it is all about owning less things and investing to sustainable future – experiences over things. Wellbeing is the new luxury and brands need to support fluid lifestyles and create emotional connection to the values they promote.

Therefore, storytelling is a big part of design thinking that allows designers to create unique experiences. By defining what is the real problem, we can design real innovation, and create evoking stories while doing it.

So – you ask, what are the mediums in design storytelling? Designers need to have presentation skills to sell the ideas with the stories first to the brands and eventually to their end consumers. In the end, product development is an investment, so we need to provide the proof points that there is the return on investment (ROI).

EMPATHIC MARKETING

We at Omuus have our own Design Data Matrix. We always start with the research information, market and consumer studies, infographics and analytics. With the research we can define if there is a gap in the market, or a product opportunity that answers to specific need – and with our analysis to define the market readiness for the idea. It is a strategic decision to take: is there a novelty value for a brand to be first in the market, product targeted to early adopters, or is the product position already in the mass market stage. This analysis tool gives us the ability to define brand identity – whether your brand is seen as a leader or a follower in the market, combining the consumer insights and the skill to look five or even ten years to the future to gain a competitive edge in the rapidly changing market.

This is where design-thinking is placed in successful strategy creation. Since every product will be sold commercially, it is mandatory for designers to understand the business side of product creation. Secondly the concept visualizations can vary from a user experience animation to a multisensorial presentation that help to define who is the real-life customer, their real life needs and desires in order to connect in more personal level.

Design as part of marketing automatically puts marketers in customer shoes to understand their problems, needs and desires better. Marketing should be more emphatic rather than selling with strict facts – crafting the message around customer needs that helps companies to be more empathetic, personal and have a dialogue with their consumers. Long gone are the days that products are sold with only technology information.

Coming back to the point by Dr. Aaker, that people are not interested in your company, the brand or the products? Across industries the role of design has changed, and the leading brands have design-thinking as part of successful strategy creation, part of their business strategy and part of the storytelling. Designers are part of the story creation behind brands and products – part of creating profitable new products, services and experiences.

Milan Design Week is so much more than the Salon del Mobile furniture exhibition. We spent a lot of time walking in the city that is full of interesting pop-up events, showrooms and spots to see inspirational set ups along the fair. In this article we will give some highlights from our generic Milan report. You can order the full report here.

CMF (colors, materials & finishes) was on every one’s lips this year. CMF is the core of our company and it is enchanting to see the growing awareness. We have been talking a lot about mood management and a common trend around the exhibitions, that we saw was the retrieving of objects narrative value and the ability for objects to live in spaces.

REPORT BITS & PIECES

We looked the whole week through the CMF and overall design lenses. There was a lot of attention towards CMF, material processes and ideas about the more sustainable future of design and manufacturing. ​

A few exciting themes that we saw during the week:

Milan design week 2018 was all about color, color and more color. Warm and earthy colours such as burned orange, burgundy red, turmeric & mustard yellow and papaya orange made their boisterous presence felt amidst.

Sony created the most multisensorial experience by letting their objects to live in spaces. Creating a connection between human behavior and technology. Technology that informs your everyday life – that tells its own story.

If you would like to know everything you need to know from Milan design week, the generic report is still available for order. Order here.

The link to our Instagram to see more inspiration pics.

We at Omuus have had an exciting winter. Our Shanghai office made a breakthrough on China market, with our two China Specialists Minna Qiang and Ruth Ng, along with Yone Lee! Thanks to these three, today OMUUS is a specialist agency also when it come to market specific design for China and South Korea market.

For some companies it is a challenge to enter the Asian market. Lucky for these companies, we have the knowledge and network to help them succeed. Today we talk with our CMF and China specialist Minna Qiang about entering Asian markets. This an introduction for one of our new productized services 7SEC. MARKET FOCUS©.

View offer.

COMMON CHALLENGES

How can I understand the local market and customers better?

Minna: The key to understand any market is research. It is important to tell the difference between a trend and a fad. Trends don’t appear and disappear yearly, they develop, mature and modulate. Your company needs to understand which trends are the ones you could benefit from in your product development.

To help our clients we paint the picture of consumer and design trends, competitor benchmarking and interpreted those information into crucial insights for clients’ business. Based on upcoming trends, we help clients to build their own brand and lead the market.

Maybe the most challenging part of entering Asian market is the language barrier. To get a seamless contact in any Asian market, it would be helpful to have a local onboard. Then your company would have the access to first-hand information from the local markets.

Can you help us to create product design suitable for Asian market?

Minna: Yes, sure. First, we can make sure that the design of your product is designed for the specific market. With the help of market study, local competition analyses and end user research, we make sure that your product has the right fit to the market. Secondly, we can help you to get in touch with local supplier network. We have a wide supplier network from our previous work history working for Nokia and Microsoft, that can speed the time to market with sourcing capable suppliers with scalable production.

THE SERVICE

Omuus 7SEC. MARKET FOCUS© helps to steer your brand through the key trends and market insights from Finland to Asian market. Our service provides you concrete tools to succeed in Asia market.

The service is suitable for companies suffering from market specific low sales or companies entering the market. For both B2C and B2B products. Tailored design and product quality are the key amongst networks to succeed in different markets. Our key local experts can provide you all of that to increase consumer appeal of your product.

If we got your interest, here you can find the full-service info and offer. We would love to help you to enter Asian market!