What might continue to be true in 2025?
#208 - Feb.2025
Last year I shared predictions about important trends to track during 2024. It's time to check if they were accurate! So, were they? Well, yes...and no.
Any prediction is a bet into the future. It's a way of making sense of multiple signals converging into a common place.
The more you are aware of these signals, the better you become at anticipating changes. It's not about getting it right, but fostering a discussion about what's coming.
Let's revisit each of them and see where are we standing today.
Last year's predictions
Ethics by design. ethics opens a wide and complex space balancing concepts such as justice, bias, and system responsibilities. Designing new experiences should consider principles such as transparency and continuous auditing of biases that could lead to excluding, offending, or impacting people's lives.
There is no doubt that ethics played an important role in 2024, especially due to the rise of solutions powered by AI. We saw an increase in awareness of the harm biased systems can create. Yes, it is a very polarized space and it will continue to be. Yet, we saw new frameworks gaining traction such as Inspect or agreements on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights in the EU. How fast these frameworks will become hard commitments enforced by law is still unknown.
Cybersecurity. Customers are now more aware of the ownership of their data. Data is now part of our assets. Trust is built at every interaction with your product and how you manage customer's data is part of this.
I would have loved to see data ownership and security as a strong theme in 2024. I feel there is so much to do in this space. But we are seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Last year we saw many social media platforms becoming blocked in certain countries (like Twitter in Brazil) creating awareness on users about how fragile is the dependency on such products. These episodes will start teaching people that, often, the products is not the software but rather each of us. We become the products with our data and privacy. Let's wake-up!
Immersive experiences. This is a space that I expect to grow in 2024. Not only through the rise of new gadgets but also as a new design practice where product leaders can offer new experiences. We can expect new interactions, affordances, and design principles for this new medium.
In 2024, there was a significant rise in spatial computing and AI-driven personalization. VR rides in theme-parks or art exhibitions combining the physical and digital world is just the tip of the iceberg. We also saw new business models, such as The Gang, where brands and games meet in the digital world to increase engagement. New gadgets appeared on the radar (Apple's Vision Pro), yet we are still to see the go-big plans for these devices.
Sustainability. Our world needs leaders who are conscious of the impact of their actions on our planet. The new generation of digital products should not only be desirable, feasible, and viable but also take into account the needs of our planet without compromising on the quality of experience they offer.
2024 was the warmest year on record. This should be a concern for all of us. Reducing the footprint of technology and ensuring we adopt energy-efficient coding techniques is still a challenge. There is still a lot to do. 2024 brought new challenges with the mass adoption of AI-models which are very energy-dependent. We are starting to see more progress of more efficient models. The world count on us to do more.
Experimental design. In a constantly uncertain economy, experimentation must be at the core of innovation. Even more important in new tech such as AI, where uncertainty is embedded within foundational models.
I was pretty close on this one! Gen-AI opened a lot of opportunities for experimenting new solutions. Rapid-prototyping and quick AI-coded applications gained traction in 2024. We saw business across the world exploring the best way to leverage AI, putting Gen-AI tools in the hands of employees to discover new ways to doing things. We also started over-relying on AI for making our job. Is time to start looking for the right balance.
AI-driven design. AI tools are now part of the toolkit of any designer. AI has the potential to augment the way how we understand customers, identify patterns, ideate solutions, and prototyping.
In design, we saw many examples of Gen-AI being used for discovery work. People in the product community often shared their experiences leveraging AI for common design tasks. Last year, AI entered the toolbox of designers and product managers.
Now, let's see what is coming this year!
What is coming in 2025
Short answer: I don't know.
Instead of predicting what will happen, I think a better approach is to focus on what might continue to be true in 2025.
So here are a couple of things I'm looking forward:
AI-agents becoming mainstream. Many people are already relying on AI tools to automate daily tasks. But I think that the real change in AI-Agents adoption is the mental model of having a virtual team of specialists available whenever needed. I believe this year we will see many people and companies scaling agents and starting to adopt hybrid teams (people + machines).
Micro-companies and one-person-businesses. The leverage you can get with today's technology is unimaginable 5 years ago. The creative output that a person with an internet connection and a couple of (free) tools can achieve is impressive. The entry bar of becoming a business at a global scale continues to lower. This is an opportunity for everyone!
Service-as-a-Service. Yes, it's not a typo. This is not a new concept but something that I expect to rise in 2025 driven by the AI revolution. The delegation of entire end-to-end and customer-facing services to businesses powered by AI will become more common, as people start to trust and we begin to see real outcomes from these partnerships.
Evidence of new Moore's law. There's arguably a new concept that might drive the tech evolution for the coming years: the cost to use a given level of AI falls about 10X every 12 months. This means lower costs to train and scale new models, prices dropping (or staying the same but with more value), and more competition over optimizing AI models. This also means that we can expect faster evolution and adoption cycles of disruptive technology.
As we navigate through 2025, the connections between AI, human creativity, and technological evolution will continue to reshape how we work, create, and innovate.
Exciting times ahead of us!
¡Saludos!
