2017 Technology & Design Behavior Trends

Every year the Non-Obvious trend report collects fifteen new predictions across five categories. These three are the technology and design behavior trends from the 2017 edition.

Invisible Technology - The more sophisticated technology gets, the more it is able to anticipate needs, protect us and provide utility while increasingly blending unnoticeably into our daily lives. (Example: self healing asphalt that fixes its own cracks using heat from the sun.)

Robot Renaissance - As the utility of robots moves beyond manufacturing and into the home and workplace, they adopt better human-like interfaces and may even have micro-personalities built in. (Example: the rise of caregiving bots from Japan that help care for the elderly.)

Self Aware Data - The combination of artificial intelligence and better sensors allows data to predictively organize, identify insights and often take action with little or no human intervention. (Example: drones that monitor farms and help automatically take action based on weather patterns.)

Each trend contains many more examples and stories in the full book. The examples above are used for illustration purposes only.