When envisioning the futurestate of a company or a service, we’re usually faced with the challenge of designing for a customer that doesn’t exist yet. What do we mean by this? Well, they exist in the obvious sense, they’re just not ‘there’ yet.

在设想公司或服务的未来状态时，我们通常面临为尚不存在的客户进行设计的挑战。 这是什么意思？ 好吧，它们以明显的意义存在，它们还不是“那里”。

If, in the 90s we’d surveyed people to see if they’d rent out their houses to strangers, they would have largely answered no. Their future selves, with the launch of AirBnB, seem to have turned on a dime. Likewise, if we’d asked them if they’d routinely jump in a stranger’s car after a night out, the answer would also have been no.

如果在90年代我们对人们进行了调查，看看他们是否会将房子出租给陌生人，那么他们在很大程度上会回答“不”。 随着AirBnB的推出，他们的未来自我似乎已经一毛钱了。 同样，如果我们问他们晚上出门后是否会经常跳上陌生人的车，答案也不会。

Because, of course, none of us know what choices we’ll make, or behaviours we’ll display, in the future.

因为，当然，我们谁都不知道将来会做出什么样的选择或表现出来的行为。

So how can we design for people that we can’t talk to yet?

那么，我们如何为尚无法交谈的人设计？

It’s an interesting problem; how to anticipate how a future customer might behave. It turns out that, for all meaningful purposes, we can get pretty close. Remember, futurestate design is near-future-ambitious, not far-future-whimsical. Remember, too, that the biggest breakthroughs come when we enable a new behaviour in people, rather than when we simply meet a current need or fix a current pain-point.

这是一个有趣的问题。 如何预测未来客户的行为方式。 事实证明，出于所有有意义的目的，我们可以非常接近。 请记住，futurestate设计是近乎雄心勃勃的， 而不是远古时代的异想天开的。 还要记住，最大的突破来自于我们在人们中实现一种新的行为，而不是仅仅满足当前的需求或解决当前的痛点。

旧的方法是修复我们可以看到的内容。 (The old way is to fix what we can see.)

Traditionally, a company would conduct research with today’s customers to determine their current and anticipated needs. While customer-centricity is still far from ubiquitous business behaviour, most companies conduct customer research in some form or other, and for many operational purposes it’s invaluable information. Any product team worth a damn should be speaking to customers every day.

传统上，公司会与今天的客户进行研究以确定他们当前和预期的需求。 尽管以客户为中心还远远不是普遍存在的业务行为，但是大多数公司都以某种形式进行客户研究，并且对于许多运营目的而言，它是宝贵的信息。 任何值得该死的产品团队都应该每天与客户交流。

However, use this type of research as a basis for futurestate thinking and it will lead to an extremely constrained view of how a future customer will likely behave. In fact, it’s so convincing to hear something in a customer’s voice, that it can lead to full-on blindness to disruptive threats and, equally, to where opportunities for something genuinely new might exist.

但是，将这种类型的研究用作未来状态思考的基础，这将导致对未来客户的可能行为的看法极为局限。 实际上，令人信服的是听到客户的声音，以至于导致完全看不到破坏性威胁的可能性，同样也可能导致出现真正新事物的机会。

It’s worth remembering that most of the legendary disruption stories involve companies who were at the forefront of customer research, yet were still surprised when those customers flocked to something else.

值得记住的是，大多数具有传奇色彩的颠覆故事都涉及那些站在客户研究前沿的公司，但是当这些客户涌向其他客户时，他们仍然感到惊讶。

Why is it so limiting? Because in the same way as organisations carry their legacy behaviours with them, so do customers — that oft-quoted ‘faster horse’ scenario is very much alive and well. People, for the most part, naturally think of what would be better than they have today. Their expectations are defined by what they have.

为什么这么限制？ 因为与组织随身携带其遗留行为的方式相同，客户也是如此，所以经常被引用的“更快的情况”是非常好的。 人们通常会自然地想到比今天更好的东西。 他们的期望取决于他们所拥有的。

So we have to find ways to look beyond the better/faster/smarter/cheaper evolutionary mindset and envision the potential future mindset of a target customer. We can achieve this by exploiting a fascinating change in the way that people’s expectations and attitudes are defined.

因此，我们必须找到超越更好/更快/更智能/更便宜的进化思维方式的方法，并设想目标客户的潜在未来思维方式。 我们可以通过定义人们的期望和态度的方式发生重大变化来实现这一目标。

我们对一个人的期望是由我们许多人的经验定义的。 (Our expectations of one are defined by our experiences of many.)

It used to be that your expectations as a customer were defined by the standards of the sector or subject of the service you were using. It made perfect sense to evaluate the standard of one service against others like it because we all accessed them in such discrete ways. We didn’t compare a dry cleaners with a bookstore, or an accountants with a physiotherapist, or travel insurance with a newspaper. Mentally they were compartmentalised into distinct buckets defined by their function.

过去，您作为客户的期望是由所使用行业或服务主题确定的。 相对于其他服务来评估一种服务的标准是非常有意义的，因为我们所有人都以这种离散的方式访问它们。 我们没有将干洗店与书店进行比较，也没有将会计师与物理治疗师进行比较，也没有将旅行保险与报纸进行比较。 精神上，它们被划分为由其功能定义的不同的存储桶。

Well, those divisions don’t exist any more. In the digital age, this compartmentalised behaviour has changed, dramatically.

好吧，这些分裂已经不存在了。 在数字时代，这种分隔行为已发生了巨大变化。

Each new innovation or improvement that we experience as a customer sets a new bar for all of the services we use, not just those that are peers or competitors — because we access those services in progressively more consistent ways; via multiple apps on our phone, for example. Our earlier mental models of subject or purpose-based subdivisions are evaporating as our access to services converge on digital devices.

我们作为客户经历的每一项新创新或改进都为我们使用的所有服务设置了新的标准，而不仅仅是同行或竞争对手的服务-因为我们以越来越一致的方式访问这些服务； 例如通过手机上的多个应用。 随着我们对服务的访问逐渐集中在数字设备上，我们较早的基于主题或基于目的的细分的思维模型正在消失。

The digital devices that we rely on for an enormous amount of everyday life now have led us to form one ever-evolving meta-expectation from all of our service experiences.

现在，我们赖以生存的大量数字设备使我们从我们所有的服务体验中形成了一种不断发展的元期望。

Your expectations of a bank are now directly influenced by your experience of a ride hailing company. We don’t make a distinction between services in the way we used to: we judge everything by everything else, and our behaviours change constantly to reflect an overall standard of what is acceptable to us (like sharing personal data) or expected by us (like frictionless payments).

你的银行的预期现在直接由你一程海陵公司的经验的影响。 我们不会像以前那样在服务之间进行区分：我们通过其他一切方式来判断一切，并且我们的行为会不断变化，以反映我们可以接受(例如共享个人数据)或我们期望的总体标准(例如无摩擦付款)。

Today’s great experience is tomorrow’s baseline expectation, and we can use that to help define what our future customer design target should be like by casting our research net wider to consider influences on behaviour more comprehensively — and imaginatively.

今天的经验是明天的基线期望，我们可以通过扩大研究网络以更全面和富有想象力地考虑对行为的影响，来帮助定义未来客户设计目标的目标。

您必须休息一下，“他们永远不会那样做”的心态。 (You have to take a break from the ‘they’ll never do that’ mindset.)

Exploring and articulating holistic experience influences — with the individual in the centre of that holistic view — is a powerful tool in futurestate design exercises. By demonstrating that what seems like a radical shift in behaviour in our future customer really is not — because that very behaviour is already very much adopted by them elsewhere — we can get much closer to their futurestate customers’ mindset.

探索和阐明整体体验的影响力(以个人为整体视角的中心)是Futurestate设计实践中的有力工具。 通过证明我们的未来客户的行为似乎发生了根本性转变-因为这种行为已经被其他地方的人们所接受-我们可以更接近他们的未来状态客户的思维方式。

Think of it this way: over the next few years, what behaviours might become acceptable, or commonplace, that would open up entirely new ways for your company to service customers? The best way to figure that out is to cast your research net widely, from understanding what behaviours are driving the success of fast-growing startups to speaking to people who are far outside of your usual domain. Look for the outliers.

这样想：在接下来的几年中，什么样的行为可能会变得可以接受或司空见惯，从而为您的公司服务于客户开辟全新的方式？ 弄清楚这一点的最佳方法是广泛地研究网络，从了解什么行为正在推动快速成长的初创公司取得成功，到与不在您通常领域内的人们交谈。 寻找离群值。

Take as your working assumption that if people are, say, already allowing a relatively unknown startup’s algorithm to take money automatically from their bank account by learning and tracking their spending habits, then you might be able to leverage that behaviour too. It’s basically collecting emerging patterns today to use as fuel for thinking about your own future.

假设您的工作假设是，如果人们已经允许相对未知的初创公司的算法通过学习和跟踪他们的消费习惯来自动从他们的银行帐户中提取资金，那么您也可以利用这种行为。 它基本上是在收集当今的新兴模式，以用作思考自己的未来的动力。

This approach establishes an entirely different frame of reference for how you might service customers and can unlock an enormous amount of inventive, progressive thinking — even in people whose incoming attitude is ‘they’ll never do that’, or ‘that’ll never happen’. Entrenched beliefs, and rigid mindsets about what customers will accept, quickly fall away when you construct that holistic ‘meta-expectation’ picture of the futurestate customer’s mindset.

这种方法为您如何服务客户建立了完全不同的参考框架，并且可以释放出大量的创新性，进取性思维，即使对于来访态度是“他们永远不会那样做”或“永远不会发生”的人们'。 当您构建关于futurestate客户心态的整体“元期望”图片时，根深蒂固的信念和对客户会接受的态度的僵化态度很快就会消失。

Sector or product-based expectations are only relevant to short-term thinking. If you only look at today’s competitors, or speak to today’s customers, you’ll never achieve a real breakthrough. By conducting research into services that would be considered irrelevant commercially but are highly relevant behaviourally, you can articulate a futurestate behavioural benchmark that helps everyone involved step out of current state ‘they’ll never do that’ constraints, and into the ‘what if?’ mindset that is so critical to any form of innovation.

基于行业或产品的期望仅与短期思维有关。 如果您仅关注当今的竞争对手或与当今的客户交流，您将永远无法实现真正​​的突破。 通过对那些在商业上不相关但在行为上高度相关的服务进行研究，您可以阐明一个Futurestate行为基准，该基准可以帮助每个参与人员摆脱当前状态，“他们将永远不会那样做”，进入“假设情况”？ ' 对任何形式的创新都至关重要的心态。

在研究而非希望上建立对明天客户的看法。 (Build your view of tomorrow’s customer on research, not hope.)

Futurestate design should never rely on science fiction or fantasy. Its value lies in envisioning an achievable target vision of the future, not in pretending that anything can be done. Sometimes we need to push the envelope a little further (for example, anticipating the use of a new technology that doesn’t have a large scale application yet) but that’s rare. Usually, we stand back from the futurestate experiences we capture in our work with clients and we are all confident of achieving them without first inventing unobtanium.

Futurestate的设计绝不应依赖科幻或幻想。 它的价值在于构想未来可能实现的目标愿景，而不是假装任何事情都可以做。 有时我们需要进一步努力(例如，预期使用尚未大规模应用的新技术)，但这很少见。 通常，我们会从与客户合作中获得的futurestate经验中退缩，我们都有信心在没有首先发明unobtanium的情况下实现这些目标。

That applies to customers equally: don’t construct a fictional persona as a design target based on your hopes and dreams for what they might be. Do the research and build a view of the customer that your futurestate company will serve, based on rationale and sensible inferences. Infer, but don’t imagine their behaviour.

这同样适用于客户：不要基于您对他们可能的希望和梦想而构建虚构的角色作为设计目标。 根据基本原理和合理的推论，进行研究并为您的futurestate公司服务的客户建立一个视图。 推断，但不要想象他们的行为。

The time to apply imagination and lateral thinking is in how you might exploit those characteristics: the aim is to liberate creative thinking by releasing some of the constraints of today.

发挥想象力和横向思维的时间在于您如何利用这些特征：目的是通过释放当今的一些限制来解放创造性思维。

广度和多样性总能获得最佳结果。 (Breadth and diversity always get the best results.)

When we work with teams to envision the futurestate of their company, we always fuel the thinking process with insights from services and experiences beyond their own sectors. We watch long-held views on what’s impossible, or will never be adopted by customers, fall away and we see their creative brains switch on as they get excited about the opportunities presented by tomorrow’s customer.

当我们与团队合作以预见其公司的未来状态时，我们始终会通过自身部门以外的服务和经验中的见解来推动思考过程。 我们看到了长期存在的观点，认为不可能发生的事情或永远不会被客户接受的想法消失了，当他们为明天的客户提供的机会感到兴奋时，我们看到了他们的创造力。

So, don’t limit how you think about your future customer by what they can tell you today — whether in-person or via data. They might be the same basic human as they are today, but they’ll behave very differently in a few years’ time and you need to get your brain closer to that person than today’s.

因此，不要以他们今天可以告诉您的方式(无论是面对面还是通过数据)来限制您对未来客户的看法。 他们可能是和今天一样的基本人，但是几年后他们的行为将大不相同，因此您需要使自己的大脑比今天更接近这个人。

Between now and then their expectations of, and attitudes towards, your futurestate services will be the product of a diverse range of influences. Most of those will come from experiences far outside of your domain, so don’t be afraid to look far and wide to build a picture of where they might end up.

从现在开始，他们对未来状态服务的期望和态度将是各种影响的产物。 其中大多数将来自您的领域以外的经验，因此不要害怕走远，以建立最终结果的图片。

That thing you think that they’ll never do? We bet they’re doing it right now.

你以为他们永远不会做的那件事？ 我们打赌他们现在正在这样做。

To explore the Futurestate Design series to-date, visit The Human Layer, where you’ll learn what it is and why it’s important, how to approach it, and we share the rules and tools to help your futurestate design programme succeed. Make sure you subscribe to receive next week’s post, where we’ll be challenging current-state analysis and showing you how to make it work for the future of your business.

要探索迄今为止的Futurestate设计系列，请访问 The Human Layer ，在这里您将了解 它的意义以及为什么重要 ， 如何实现它 ，并且我们共享 规则 和 工具 来帮助您的futurestate设计计划取得成功。 确保您订阅接收下周的帖子，我们将在该帖子中挑战当前状态分析，并向您展示如何使其适用于您的业务未来。