Putting consumer mindsets before technology will send Future Home markets through the roof

This article is part of a series highlighting chapters in our newly published book The Future Home in the 5G Era. Follow us on LinkedIn to be notified of each article’s release: Jefferson Wang and Boris Maurer

Technology will fix everything! That was the mantra of first-wave product and service developers for today’s connected home market. It led to highly fragmented home tech landscapes built by device, service and network providers competing for a place in our homes – and it forgot the consumer who now has to do-it-yourself and be the solution architect putting together a fragmented connected home experience. In our new book The Future Home in the 5G Era – Next generation strategies for hyper-connected living, we started with a focus on the end-to-end consumer experience.

To build the Future Home, we must understand consumers on many levels beyond a traditionally broad market segmentation or static personas. While writing the Future Home in the 5G Era book, we considered ‘who consumers think they are now and who they want to become tomorrow’. In our research coordinated by The Dock, Accenture's flagship R&D and Global Innovation Center, we decided to use a mindset methodology to better understand the foundational motivations behind consumer decisions. By putting foundational motivations on different axes, we could identify four mindsets based on contrasting consumer needs and offer different solutions as they transition to other mindsets. We had to first research, analyze and understand these consumers’ truths before we could determine how to best use a combination of new technologies such as 5G, cloud, security, AI, edge computing, eSIM and more, to build the right products and solutions for the Future Home.

When we put consumers before technology, we need to understand how to quantify the expectations of different types of Future Home users. Our research produced groups of mindsets with distinct perspectives on the role technology should play in their homes, as seen in the graphic below.  

We compared consumer views on their home with their relationship to technology. On the left side stand the ‘Showstoppers’ who see their home as a passionate reflection of their personal brand, who design spaces that excite them and impress guests. On the right side are the level-headed ‘Nestlers’ whose priority is to create a sense of comfort, functional coziness and safety for their family. These types are offset by a vertical spectrum spanning between ‘Explorers’, the early adopters of technology, products and services, proud to always use the latest tech, and ‘Navigators’ who will only pick up new technology and find value in it once they have seen it succeed with others, particularly others they know. In our book, we outline: (i) foundational consumer needs & wants, (ii) how consumers may shift between mindsets and (iii) the architectural blueprint to build the Future Home in the 5G Era.

We think our research into consumers and summarized in these mindsets is paramount to understand before a new Future Home product is built. For the Future Home to become mainstream, the mechanics of utility at first sight for a digital home service (health care, entertainment, education, remote work, energy management or food delivery) is critical. The Future Home is built by us—the users—and advanced technologies working together such as 5G, cloud, security, AI, edge computing, and eSIM, will be its crucial enablers.

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Check out our previously published articles in The Future Home in the 5G Era blog Series:

#1 – Accelerating the Importance of The Future Home in 5G

#2 – Getting a foot in the door of the Future Home

#3 – Flat and engaging: CSP platforms spell the future in home technology