User 2020: A WWRF Vision

The User 2020 vision is of the changing needs and habits of a user in the future digital world. In order to understand the needs of the future users, we need to look at how users and technology have changed during recent years. The different generations of users are products of their own time and environment, and each has had its effect on the development of technology. The closer we come to the current generation, the bigger is the effect of technology on the characteristics of that generation. User needs guide the technology and the technology shapes the users. This WWRF Outlook analyses this evolutionary process.
The basis of this Outlook lies in studies of user generations. Although it’s controversial to do so, users have been divided into generations based on their ability and willingness to use ICT solutions. Whether the users are digital ‘tourists’, ‘immigrants’ or ‘natives’ is mainly determined by the era in which they were born. This is due to the fact that digital natives, born in an already “fully” digitalized world with a plethora of ICT services, have a much closer relationship to these solutions than generations before them. This has also shaped the users perspectives and had an effect on their future needs.
Human needs have been studied much longer than user generations per se. Psychologist Maslow presented a characterization of human needs as early as 1943. This basic characterization was later studied with an evolving environment in mind. Although the basic needs have remained the same, the tools to achieve these goals have changed. This has shaped the users and their future needs and well as created situations in which some higher-level needs may override lower-level needs. Regardless of the time, we will always have a number of generations with differing needs for the solutions. For this purpose we have created various personas for User 2020.
The last part of this Outlook focuses on future challenges and how these challenges can be met. The user experience has played an important role in ICT services for some time and will do so in future. The evolved user and their dynamic needs require services to be dynamic and evolve with the changing needs of the user.