TREND WORK-OUT: THE LEVELS OF YOUR TREND SPOT

The Trend Work-out: flex your muscles to train your inner trend researcher. In the following months I, trend intern Sanne, will be your trend fitness instructor and give you tips and tricks on practicing trend research. Read more and get started right away!

Welcome to week four! I hope last week's training, creating your own trend definition, has helped you get a clear view on what a trend is. This can be helpful in this week's exercise, where we are going to define the levels of your trend spot!

Signal ready?
Did you spot something new this week? In the newspaper, tv, on the street, of which you thought: wow interesting new thing, what is it? Good! Look it up again, because we are going to describe this trend spot on the three levels in the Trend Levels Canvas:

• Driving forces, the global driving forces behind your spot
• Values and needs, consumer values, needs, wants and expectations related to your spot
• Manifestations, a signal, have you spot similar manifestations in other domains or regions that share the same values and needs to the signal you have found?

But why do we do this?
Filling in the Trend Levels Canvas helps you understand your trend spot much better. It will help you to understand it from different perspectives. This way you can interpret why a certain change is happening right now.

Fill in the Trend Levels Canvas
​Before you read any further I would like you to think about your signal first and what you would write down in the three levels. The reason I would like you to think for yourself first is because I don't want to influence you too much with my Trend Level Canvas. :) You can find the Trend Levels Canvas below and fill in in digitally or in your notebook.

MOGU
​For my trend spot I chose MOGU, an innovative brand that uses 'waste' as input for innovative processes and valuable ecologically responsible sources. MOGU technology uses fungal mycelium and binds this to make natural materials. They are testing the possibilities of the material, and if you check their website you will find more information about what they do, what they make and how they do it.

Forces
There are, in my opinion, two global driving forces behind this trend spot:

• Climate change: finding new resolutions for materials that have bad influence on the environment. Also use every source we have and don't let waste become waste.
  
• Circular economy: making biodegradable products, so that they could go back to the raw materials instead of having to be burned or destroyed in ways that are bad for the environment (climate change).

Values and needs
​Underlying values, needs, wants and expectations that are related to MOGU are a few. So I believe people who would use this material or are interested in seeing this more in the future, care for the world and would like to help make it better. Show you care, and also finding it important that products are made in a fair way, are bio/ecological and can replace 'bad material' products we use daily such as plastic.

Since it is a dead material I think people are more open minded. I do wonder how it would be if the product would still be alive, would it be weird or eventually accepted as well? What do you think?

​Manifestations
So, are there other trend spots that share the same values and needs and are in some way linked to the global driving forces....? Yes!

• 'De Fruithaven', a dance club that transform rest material of fruits and vegetables into a source of electricity (unfortunately it’s closed).
• 'Blood related', a series of products made from wasted animal blood out of the slaughter industry.
• 'Ventri', bags made of the bladder and stomach of animals. Also from animals that are already been slaughtered and otherwise would have been thrown away.
• And the last one, material made from the filaments of coconuts. Rest material that used to be set on fire and destroyed, is now being tested as a new material by 'Goodhout'.

I hope this training helped you analyze a trend spot. If you have any questions don't hesitate, just send me a message and I'll be glad to help you out. Next week we have a little vacation, but don't stop working out and after our holiday we will go further with chapter three: creating a scan plan!