BYTESIZED

TRENDS

2016

2015 has been a landmark year for Innovation. The Cannes Lions Festival launched the first ever event of its kind focused

entirely on this rapidly expanding field. Brands are waking up to the fact that it's better to out-think rather than outspend, and

that technology can offer innovative ways of doing things differently. Despite this, there is still a lot of tech for tech's sake, with

Gartner's Emerging Technology Hype Cycle giving an indication of what is and what isn't likely to stick.

For those unfamiliar, the Hype Cycle provides a graphic representation of the maturity and adoption of technologies and

applications, and how they are potentially relevant to solving real business problems and exploiting new opportunities. From

this graph, we can see that Brain-Computer Interaction is starting to gain traction, the IOT (Internet of Things) is still very

immature and that VR (Virtual Reality) is starting to stick on the 'Slope of Enlightenment'… while consumer 3D printing enters

the 'Trough of Disillusionment'.

We've picked out nine trends that have come from reviewing a wide range of communications and tech innovations throughout

the year, and which should serve as guidance for the areas to focus on in 2016.

12 MONTHS OF INNOVATION

INFORMATION

OVERLOAD

We now consume five times as much

information every day as we did 30 years ago.

And although our brains have adapted

somewhat to this change (as we covered in our

SXSW talk this year – Neuroplasticity and Tech),

they haven't kept pace sufficiently. So, this year

was all about the 'Digital Detox' – with countless

brands creating 'No phone or Wi-Fi zones' in an

effort to get us to look up and be more engaged

in the world around us.

Going one step further, digital design studio

ustwo (maker of Monument Valley) created

Pause, an app for relaxation and meditation

aimed at combating the stress of our

technological multi-tasking, always-on lives.

Likewise, BrainPal – a project that came out of

the Disrupt Hackathon in San Francisco –

combines data from consumer EEG headbands

and the Cloudbrain API to show you how your

favourite apps really make you feel.

In the future, devices such as Phylter may help

us to manage our digital dopamine addictions.

Still a software project, the idea here is that it

monitors the user's brain activity to read when

they are overloaded with information. If so,

notifications for texts and emails are turned off

until they're in a better state to deal with them.

EASY

PROCESSING

In order to deal with this information overload, brands

need to make communications that are easy to

process and don't disrupt people's flow. Programmatic

formats such as auto-play videos and banners that

expand without warning are unpopular – and have led

to a tenfold increase in the number of people who use

ad blockers – from 21m of us in 2010 to 198m by mid-

2015. A poll from the IAB UK and YouGov supports

this opinion, with 48% saying that they would be less

likely to use an ad blocker if brand messages did not

impinge on their experience.

GIFs are becoming an increasingly popular way to

communicate simple concepts quickly. Channel 4

unveiled a new website that aims to repackage online

news in a format more appealing to our shorter

attention spans. Called 4NewsWall, it is aimed at 16-

to 34-year-olds. In an similar vein, emojis can be an

incredibly simple way to get a message across, but

only when it makes sense to do so – for example,

Domino's popular one-click pizza ordering emoji.

Another brand deliberately making its communications

easy is Kit Kat, which launched a simple but

innovative TV ad featuring… well, nothing – as an

antidote to the Christmas chaos. The 30-second spot

featured only a grey screen as an accompanying

voiceover asked if 'just absolutely nothing' is nice for a

change?

VIDEO KILLED

EVERYTHING

Online video now accounts for 50% of all mobile

traffic. By 2018, it is believed that 79% of all

consumer internet traffic will be video. Speaking

at SXSW in Texas this year, Mashable's Pete

Cashmore said that it's only a matter of time until

most of its content will be video – similar to the

video-exclusive site Nowness. Facebook has

also already started to test a video-only

newsfeed.

Brands are finally starting to step up to the five-

second pre-roll challenge, demonstrating their

creative prowess to catch people's attention in

five seconds. MINI's YouTube Race, challenges

viewers to 'Take on the most powerful MINI

ever'; the pre-roll visually counts down '3-2-1' in

time with the ad-skip button and the user then

has to try to hit it before the MINI blasts off!

Another innovative use of video this year was

The Last Hours of Laura K, a pioneering BBC

online drama that placed the onus on the viewer

to solve a murder mystery set in London. The

story unfolded through 24 hours of CCTV

footage playing on a loop on a website, with

viewers invited to use it – along with Laura K's

online presence – to piece the puzzle together.

90% of all the data ever produced has been in

the last two years. Data is the oil of the 21st

century; many companies and states don't know

what to do with it, but are storing it up just in

case. Creativity is the key to making sense of all

the noise – as many panels at SXSW this year

professed.

Brazilian architect and designer Guto Requena

was behind two standout data visualisation

projects this year, namely the Love Project,

which measured people's biometric data while

they were telling love stories, then turned it into

3D printed 'snowflakes', and Light Creature,

which saw a 30-storey hotel façade respond to

environmental stimuli (such as noise pollution

and air quality).

MoodLens is a tool from Glade's Museum of

Feelings that alters your online profile photo

according to your mood – based on biometrics,

the weather and your social sentiment. Another

project based on self-portraits is SelfieCity,

which analyses selfies across different locations

using a mix of theoretic, artistic and quantitative

methods, discovering insights, such as: older

men post more selfies than older women on

Instagram.

CREATIVE DATA

Futurist and science fiction author Bruce Sterling

suggests that we should put Siri, Cortana and

Alexa – the respective artificially intelligent

assistants for Apple, Microsoft and Amazon – in

a room and get them to talk. He suggests that

The Singularity – the dystopian theory that one

day computer intelligence could exceed human

intelligence and control – should be called 'The

Singularious' and shouldn't be taken seriously…

Scepticism aside, 2015 has seen AI slowly make

its way into the mainstream and become a useful

part of our lives. Watson, IBM's AI platform, saw

many useful applications this year, such as the

Tone Analyser – which uses linguistic analysis to

detect emotional states, social propensities and

writing styles in written communication, to help

avoid email aggression. And recently IBM has

launched the Trend app – which analyses

conversations on social media and review sites

to forecast trends and help users choose gifts.

AI also has the capability to be creative, from

Ava the AI girl on Tinder who tricked many keen

matchers (a stunt to promote the film Ex

Machina) to Jukedeck a platform that uses AI to

create customised royalty-free music.

GETTING USED

TO AI

Since Facebook bought Oculus for $2bn, people

have started to take Virtual Reality serious.

There has been massive growth in the amount of

content being created, while the introduction of

Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR to the

space means that almost anyone with a

smartphone can now experience VR.

This year saw innovators raise the VR game by

making it literally tangible, with devices such as

Gloveone – an internet-connected glove that

allows the wearer to 'feel' any object they can

see on a screen or Virtual Reality headset.

Impacto is an armband that combines basic

'haptic' feedback (a tap or vibration on the skin)

with electrical muscle stimulation to push or pull

the user's limb in a way that convincingly

simulates a physical impact.

A VR ecosystem called Jump was announced at

Google's IO conference – it includes a 360-

degree camera rig, software to assemble the

footage and a player. These developments may

be the key to making VR more accessible to the

masses. Also announced this year was VRAN,

the world's first virtual reality advertising network

(thus the acronym), allowing advertisers to buy

media space within VR content.

NEXT-LEVEL VR

BIOMETRIC

INTERFACE

With the rise of Neuromarketing and the spread

of accessible biometric technologies, brands are

innovating to allow people to interact through

their biometric data alone.

UMood is a new experience launched by Uniqlo,

in one of its stores in Sydney, that uses

neuroscience to match customers' moods with

the perfect T-shirt. Participants don an EEG

headset that then measures their reactions to a

series of videos.

Don't Look Away is the title of Usher's interactive

music video for his new track, Chains, on

entertainment platform TIDAL. The video only

plays when the viewer is looking directly into the

eyes of the people on the screen (as monitored

via their webcam) – who have all been victims of

social injustice.

A new web app called Smile Suggest detects

which websites make you smile and then saves

them for you in a folder. The app runs silently in

your browser and uses facial expression

analysis technology, via your webcam, to take a

note of whatever pages make you laugh or

smile.

PIXEL

PROCESSING

Computers have only started to be able to

understand images based on visual

characteristics rather than metadata in the last

few years. Companies such as Cortexica have

been leading the way, with its algorithm that

mimics the visual cortex in the human brain –

starting with Tesco's WineFinder app back in

2009 and then moving into the fashion world.

Amazon's A9 subsidiary has also developed its

visual search capability – and this is what

Pinterest has used for its newly launched visual

search function. Now, if you see an element of a

pin that you like, e.g. a lamp within a photo of a

room, you can quickly crop the lamp and search

for only that.

Google also has its own visual search ability

and, at the RE.WORK artificial intelligence

summit, announced Im2Calories – its

prospective tool that will allow users to calculate

the number of calories in food by taking a photo

of it. The AI uses 'the depth of each pixel in an

image' and 'sophisticated deep-learning

algorithms' to identify a foodstuff, judge its size

and come up with a calorie count.

PLACE MATTERS

76% of adults now own smartphones in the UK

and, given that 63% of us admit to taking our

phones with us to the toilet, our location is being

tracked nearly everywhere we go. From a data

point of view, we now have rich insights from

people's location history and can build up geo-

behavioural profiles based on where they go in the

real-world, not just what they do online.

From a content point of view, we can now trigger

data based on people's location – which allows for

interesting creative opportunities, as Snapchat's

geo-located filters have showed. Meanwhile, KFC

created a UK first with sponsored geo-filters in 900

of its restaurants.

Traces is a messaging app that allows you to

record messages that can only be accessed

digitally at specific locations. This year, Oxfam

used the platform to spread awareness of its work

by leaving tailored messages outside each of its

650 UK shops.

Canadian band Keys N Krates partnered with

VICE and Fido on the world's first location-based

mobile music video. Once viewers allow the

video's website to access their location, they are

served up relevant geo-tagged images .

THANK YOU

HeyHuman.com

@HeyHumanAgency