Olof Schybergson, Chief Design and Product Officer, Accenture Song ; Founder, Fjord In conversation with Wang Fang, Fortune China
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00:00So, Olaf, at Accenture Song, you publish this annual life trends report for 17 years.
00:07That's right, 17 years, yeah.
00:09So, when I read your 2025 report, my feeling is this report eloquently articulates a lot of
00:17various concerns that we had sensed for a long time, but had struggled to express.
00:25So, it's nicely put, so just tell us a bit more about the report.
00:30Why do you do this?
00:30How do you do this?
00:32And your feedback you get?
00:35So, the background to it is essentially a design trends report.
00:40So, that's how it started 17 years ago.
00:43And, you know, I work now, pretty much every client project is sort of a fusion of business
00:51needs, technology, and then humans.
00:55So, really, the trend report sits in the intersection of those.
00:57And what the song team sort of uniquely brings that other parts of Accenture doesn't necessarily
01:02bring is that focus on the human.
01:04Right.
01:04So, that's kind of where it comes from, what it focuses on.
01:09And it's meant to sort of inspire and inform our clients, but also challenge our teams
01:17in their projects and so on to take it into account.
01:20Right.
01:20So, it's very interesting.
01:22Yesterday, you gave a speech.
01:23That speech was more about how enabling technology can become.
01:28For example, it makes space more sensible, more responsible.
01:32But today, we're going to delve into the report, which sort of you spotted five trends
01:39for the next year.
01:40And collectively, they sort of paint darker side of technology.
01:46They look at the sort of often very stressful relationship.
01:51It has become between human beings and technology.
01:54So, let's have a look into the report and perhaps talk about the themes one by one.
02:01So, I'm really struck by this.
02:04This is the first trend you spotted, which is called the cost of hesitations.
02:11It's about the loss of trust that we have.
02:16I mean, in any digital interactions and brands have lost authenticity with all the message
02:24they send out and sometimes become confusing.
02:27So, how do business regain that authenticity and regain people's trust?
02:35Yeah.
02:35So, I mean, it's interesting that you interpret the trends as kind of dark because for me,
02:41they sort of expose some of the tensions.
02:43The tensions between an increasingly digitally mediated life of people and some of the opportunities
02:51but also challenges within it.
02:53So, this one in particular, cost of hesitations, that's very much about sort of the evolution
02:59of digital media and the reaction that people are having when they don't necessarily know
03:06whether they can trust the content, the brand, the communication, the promotion, and so on.
03:13So, it sort of gives rise to this sort of question mark, which leads to hesitation.
03:19And there's a real sort of underlying pattern that's been going for a while of what some
03:27people might call the shitification of the internet.
03:32And slop is another kind of term that started to be used for essentially either untrustworthy
03:41or poor content.
03:43And people feel like there's a lot of stuff coming at them in digital because people want
03:47to monetize digital.
03:48So, there's just a lot of information, a lot of promotion, a lot of marketing coming at
03:52them.
03:52So, that's already demanding.
03:56And then over 50% of people, the majority of people in the last year, according to the
04:01research that we've done, have experienced both content that's kind of false or fake
04:08and been subject to some sort of fraud.
04:12So, people are personally starting to question, you know, is this real and is it not?
04:17So, then there's a cost for them, but a sort of cognitive load of trying to figure out,
04:21is it real?
04:21Is it trustworthy?
04:22Can I go for this?
04:24Am I going to fall victim to something?
04:28But also, they might be missing out because they hesitate.
04:31And this has happened to me and my co-author of the report as well.
04:35His daughter sent him a link to this new Oasis concert, and he didn't trust the link,
04:40so he didn't click and they didn't get tickets.
04:43So, there might be a cost for the individual, but there's also a cost for businesses.
04:47So, if you don't trust whether this website is actually real, is this product description
04:53and this product review, are they real?
04:56And so on, you might not follow through with the purchase.
04:59So, that's becoming a real business problem.
05:02One big consumer electronics manufacturer that we're working with discovered just recently
05:08that the drop-off in purchases was very much to do with people asking,
05:14am I actually on the real dot-com site or am I somewhere else?
05:17Yeah.
05:18So, AI can enable business to know their customers better, that's for sure,
05:24but AI technology can also create a barrier between companies and their customers
05:29because it just makes it less necessary for companies to have human-to-human real interactions.
05:39One example is Starbucks in China.
05:42They're having problems.
05:43They got so caught up in trying to match their local competitors
05:49in enabling their customers to order digitally.
05:53So, they pissed off some of their loyal customers who are really interested
05:58and curious about their third space idea.
06:02So, another example I want to use is in China, this live stream e-commerce becomes really popular.
06:11So, you have people on screen, they can see hosts selling their stuff,
06:17but some companies are using AI-generated hosts these days.
06:22So, as a customer, you can just look at the screen thinking,
06:27okay, this person is talking to me, selling me stuff and even answering my questions,
06:31but once you find out they are actually fake ones, it can be really off-putting.
06:36So, technologies can create this barrier.
06:39So, how is Accenture Song helping business to sort of prevent this from happening?
06:46So, specific to sort of Gen AI, Gen AI is this incredible tool that allows us to do
06:52all sorts of things that we couldn't do a few years ago,
06:55but it can be used, of course, for good, but also for bad.
07:00So, those who want to spam people, those who want to defraud people,
07:04and so on, they readily can use Gen AI.
07:08And that is leading to this sort of pollution, in a way, of the content
07:12and therefore cost of hesitations, that sort of phenomenon.
07:17And from our perspective, we have a big focus and have had for years on responsible AI.
07:24And that's about ethics, it's about reliability, it's about building trust, etc.
07:31So, it's core to how we think about AI and Gen AI.
07:36But then there's also very much sort of the human and design consideration there.
07:40So, you can use Gen AI to simplify, make it more seamless, identify the human,
07:46so it feels natural to me, I can follow through, I trust it, and so on.
07:52But it can also get in the way.
07:53It can get in the way if it's implemented poorly, and then I'm like,
07:56am I actually speaking to a real person?
07:58Do I really trust the information that's provided here?
08:01And so on.
08:02So, it's a nuanced answer.
08:04It's not an easy yes or no, good or bad, easy or hard.
08:10You think as technology gets better, it will become even more difficult for us to discern.
08:15I mean, discern which real and what's, I mean, fake.
08:18That's probably, I mean, make things a little bit easier for companies to use tech, yeah.
08:24Yeah, yeah, for sure.
08:25And, you know, the sort of agent space is also evolving quite quickly,
08:30that we've seen sort of actually just recently a move away
08:34from the sort of humanized digital agents.
08:38Because there's been a little bit of a reaction against it that,
08:41you know, these sort of fake humans that aren't real humans.
08:44Right.
08:45So, I think that the space is evolving really, really fast as well.
08:48Let's have a look of the next trend, which is really thought-promoting.
08:53I mean, as a parent of a young boy, I'm in this trap at the moment.
08:58So, tell us a bit more about this.
09:00So, we're fearful about all the interactions our children have online.
09:04Yeah, so, it was talked about actually in some other,
09:09or mentioned at least by some of the previous speakers,
09:11the challenges around mental health, the challenges around a feeling of anxiety.
09:18There's an interesting book that came out this year called
09:21The Anxious Generation, talking about young people
09:24and the effect of, in particular, social media on them.
09:29And harmful content, but also overuse of digital, et cetera, is a real thing.
09:36And I don't, you know, I have two teenage kids,
09:39and I don't know any other parent of similar age kids
09:44who don't struggle with that sort of interplay.
09:46So, it's a tough trap for parents.
09:49How do you give safety?
09:50How do you get social connection?
09:52How do you give learning and education and so on to your kids
09:58without exposing them to the sort of harmful nature of social media and digital?
10:07So, it is a tough trap for parents, but it's also a trap because adults,
10:13their lives are also mediated through social media and digital and so on,
10:17and you want the role model for your kids.
10:19It's not easy to just say no, and then you kind of behave badly yourself.
10:23It's also a tricky balance.
10:24Yes, we have to behave ourselves as well, right?
10:27So, the third theme is impatience economy.
10:30This is interesting.
10:30Basically, customers are not waiting for companies to feed them information.
10:35They reach out, and they sometimes seek quicker solutions.
10:39So, this is about how businesses should supply their customers with quicker solutions,
10:46but without compromising on quality.
10:48Is that right?
10:49Yeah.
10:49Yeah, I think that's right, and it affects lots of different aspects of life.
10:54So, for example, in healthcare, self-diagnosis, you know,
10:57with the help of you might watch YouTube videos,
11:00or you might learn in other ways through digital,
11:02and you listen to influencers, et cetera.
11:06So, it might be diagnosis.
11:08It might be things like money matters, et cetera.
11:11So, people might not wait for their hospital appointment or doctor's appointment.
11:15They might not want to go and talk to the bank manager or speak to them or whatever,
11:20but they look for other shortcuts, essentially,
11:23to accomplish the things that they want to do in their lives.
11:26Well, I want to go through this quickly
11:30because I want to really focus on the fifth trend, which is social rewilding.
11:35This is a concept really interesting to me, appealing to me.
11:39So, could you just define this concept to us?
11:43What is social rewilding about?
11:45Yeah.
11:45And the trend, I mean, the forces behind this trend.
11:48Yeah, I'm glad you want to focus on it
11:51because it's actually my favorite of the five trends as well.
11:54So, I find it absolutely fascinating.
11:57And rewilding, as a word, has usually been used for rewilding, for example,
12:06manufacturer-like farms and so on back into the natural habitat and so on.
12:10So, this trend is all about humans kind of rewilding.
12:13So, reconnecting with the real world, looking for more textured social interactions,
12:21emotional experiences, and so on.
12:23And you could say it's a countertrend to what happened through COVID.
12:29It's also a countertrend to this sort of what felt, even recently,
12:34as a sort of unstoppable increase of digital in our lives.
12:40So, it's super interesting.
12:42You see things like people falling out of love with digital dating solutions
12:48and instead going back to old school forms of dating.
12:51You just want to unplug.
12:53That's right.
12:54Yeah, unplug.
12:55Yeah, and meet people in real life.
12:58So, things like in China, for example, city walking tours are a big thing.
13:04Running clubs are a big thing all over the world.
13:06So, people have these sort of in-person ways of socializing and so on.
13:13And the natural world plays a huge role.
13:16So, when you ask people what was the best experience in the last week or month,
13:21the majority talk about a real-world experience.
13:24And it's multiple times that of people mentioning digital experiences.
13:31Right.
13:31So, specifically, how would you help businesses to create such textured interaction,
13:39regain this human-to-human kind of feeling?
13:43Yeah, I think it's now about kind of we're at the stage where we're starting to sort of
13:48civilize some of these technologies where it's not an either-or
13:53and people don't get locked just into a virtual world.
13:56But you use the digital experience to augment and amplify
14:02real-world interactions and so on.
14:04But you also see people themselves kind of reorganizing around it.
14:09And kids are choosing to put their phones away.
14:14Kids are choosing to do other things.
14:16And you look at young kids and what are they into?
14:20There's actually a nostalgia for the pre-digital age in the digital generation.
14:25So, people kind of fall in love with these music videos from the 90s and the music of the 90s.
14:30And the games.
14:31And the games, yeah.
14:32And this sort of like the nostalgic for like, look, they look like they're really in the moment.
14:38And they look so unaffected and so on and so forth.
14:43You know, I discovered my kid has LPs, vinyls at home.
14:47It's like, what?
14:47What's going on?
14:49So, this is an amazing report.
14:50I really encourage everybody to have a look on Accenture Song's website.
14:55It's really thought-promoting.
14:57And thank you so much for sharing with us.
15:01Basically, it just tells us, I mean, how designers these days are challenged
15:06when everybody wants to unplug to how to design digital experiences that co-exist
15:13with our desire for real human-to-human interactions.
15:17Thank you very much, Olaf.
15:19Thank you so much.