Trend Forecasting and Why it Matters to Designers.

by Christian Delise

November 2022

Automotive companies spend immeasurable money and resources trying to stay ahead of the curve of what consumers want. These efforts range from conducting customer focus groups, hiring researchers to tap into market trends, and analyzing business roadmaps of competitors. I should know, as I've held variations of these job titles in Design studios for two of the world's largest OEMs. Despite the admirable work that goes into compiling long winded trend reports, nothing competes with pure instincts and intuition. As a Designer when your forecasts are proven accurate it is a reassuring relief that you're in the right field and your methodologies are true.

As a kid of the 90's, I remember flipping through the magazine pages of Road & Track, Car & Driver, Auto & Design, or some other publication that probably doesn't have an ampersand. Some of the most memorable issues revealed a Concept Car from a major automaker. Dream Cars, as they were enchantingly described, were always a vision of what might be. Often times they never made it to the road, and automotive enthusiasts learned to take these theatrical art pieces of marketing with a grain of salt.

In many ways these future previews were a major driver in my pursuit of a career in Car Design. However, as my personal and professional tastes evolved I became increasingly critical of any design which delved too far into 'fantasy.' Save those for the movies. There's nothing wrong with Blue Sky thinking, and much of those Avant Garde studies do produce meaningful form language which can work it's way into production models. However, the main problem which most Car Designers are tasked with solving is: what machine can be feasibly produced to serve the wants and needs of the drivers 5-10 years out?

In 2007 I was studying Automotive Industrial Design curriculum at the Academy of Art University. Formerly a student of Business Marketing, I couldn't help but inject a healthy dose of Consumer Psychology logic into a field otherwise focused on Art and Engineering.

One of my first fully fledged design studies was a passion project for a Porsche branded all terrain cross coupe. I say passion because aside from being an enthusiast of everything Porsche, I truly believed in the commercial success and viability of the concept based on all the signals I was noticing. From my limited experience at the time, the two best lines of success for an aspiring Designer was either to impress with your art, or to convince with your logic. Design, I was learning, was a creative combination of both those elements: producing things that inspire both emotional desire and portray critical thinking.

The early ideation phase is one of the most critical parts of the Design Process, and is a challenge for one to fully immerse themselves in the practice of imagining what is possible. This phase is most fascinating to me because all creativity is based on a balance of combining what already exists and merging these elements into an original version of what could possibly exist. The most beautiful design sketch is only an image without the right context of feasibility and timing.

So how do we properly analyze and forecast these trends? Firstly, stay clear of trying to "predict" the future. It's clearly impossible to do so, despite many repeated attempts. Forecasting is about tapping into the vibes of the culture and anticipating what people might be feeling as a result of potential external factors. Now there are clearly multitudes of variables which go into the possibilities for the future- and it is imperative to find the ones which are most likely- but generally speaking, we are trying to forecast the environment in which we might find ourselves down the road, and aim to create a novel product to introduce into that context which can address the target users needs and desires.

For the Porsche Convey concept, the vision is one of past meeting the present. Trend forecasting often involves reflecting on the lessons of history. Incidentally, this is a common theme for the brand in question as it is a company which leans heavily on it's heritage. When looking to the past, rally car models played a huge role in the motorsport traditions. To me, these were the ultimate marketing ethos for any car- style meets durability. Personally, I couldn't imagine anything cooler than ripping through the desert in a battle ready Porsche and this had not been done yet with a modern model. That's the egotistical angle of Car Design... capturing the cool. The question is: how would this retro nostalgia and all- terrain capability feed into the desires of the modern Porsche buyer?

Future climate: When looking forward, it's become increasingly apparent that our roads and overall climate are in an increasingly poor form. Volatility in both our society and our infrastructure has bred a protectionist outlaw mentality in consumers. It is only natural that drivers are shying away from the low riding, curb scraping, wealth exuding image of sports cars and leaning towards something which projects a more robust and durable image. In order to survive in today's world, one needs thicker skin. Around the time of finishing the Convey concept model, the 2008 market crash occurred, mega cities were beginning their growth spurts, and the foundations for overlanding counter culture escapism into nature had been laid. As far as I could tell, the Mad-Maxing of anything with wheels was on the horizon, and packaging that mentality into sophisticated performance cars was all but inevitable.

This might be a common sentiment in today's post pandemic, recession-teetering world, but back in 2007 it was merely an educated projection made from some early signals. The Porsche Convey rally car concept I penned in school was driven by the ambition to create something which would stand out from the crowd while serving an alternative lifestyle need for the evolved Porsche drivers of the future.

It is both rewarding and inspiring to see the brand finally make the decision to produce a rally version of the fabled 911. For Porsche their work is cut out for them as basically any 911 variant inevitably has a line of customers already putting in orders, regardless of actual need. For a Designer such as myself, who realized his lifelong dream to work with the brand in 2018, it's a humbling realization that trend forecasting works and to always trust your instincts.