Society 5.0 herald the coming of the ubiquity of technological systems in our environment. Those systems won’t be an option, as they will become one of the primary ways we will interact with our environment.

Designers, especially UX Designers, have made great strides in the past decade to create products that are increasingly more intuitive. Fierce competition made sure that products with clunky controls would be cast aside by paying customers. As this reality inches closer, we need to start addressing it.

The road ahead, however, will take far more from designers than better interfaces targeted toward a techno-savvy public. All types of designers will need to make their work far more accessible than ever before. UX Design (that’s user experience design to the uninitiated) will continue to grow as a field, even faster than before. Other areas of design, from system design to architectural design will need to pay attention to these new publics are design accordingly.

Society 5.0 is bringing advanced technological tools to the masses, trying to ease and better their lives. We are talking about self-driving vehicles, IoT-backed remote medical consultations at home, AI-assisted data analytics to feed you better tailored information and much more. Society 5.0 aims to address the plight of many oft-neglected segments of our population (such as the elderly or the handicapped) by giving new technology-driven opportunities to receive care and participate in all aspects of society.

What does accessibility mean?

Intuitive

Decades later we still make jokes about how complicated it was to set the time on a VCR. Designers of all stripes have learned since that nice, thick user manuals are thrown in remote drawers without being read and then instantly forgotten, or find a new life as door stoppers.

Today’s designs must be intuitive. Either people should understand instantly how to use the item, or the object itself should show the user how to operate it. This intuitive design becomes even more crucial than it is today as technology will permeate everyone’s life more than ever before.

Just think about self-driving cars. Yes, there will be training to use them and reading the manual will be important. But not everyone will take the time or have the leisure to do so. If there’s an emergency and you have to use a self-driving vehicle without proper training, hope that it can guide you through its safe operation.

Convivial

Intuitive design is one thing, but we still need people to want to use the tools made available to them.

Simplicity, speed, and rewarding experience is the only way to make sure whatever tool or service we create will actually be used. Creating a remote system to allow low-mobility elderly people to get medical checkups from home isn’t helping if they refuse to use it.

This also applies to people. Managers making themselves more accessible and open to frank discussions offer convivial access. Welcoming discussion groups who keep a positive attitude and avoid falling into toxicity are another example.

Physical access

When we talk about physical accessibility, we usually conjure up images of wheelchair ramps and text magnification. In Society 5.0, which aims to include as many people as possible, it will need to be much more than that.

Whether it is to allow disabled people to participate in the workforce easily or to offer proper health monitoring at home to the elderly, we will need IoT-connected cyber-physical systems. Those systems need to be designed and made available.

Think about chairs that read your bio-signs and systems that translate brain impulses into digital commands to controls computers, self-driving vehicles, phones, and automated kitchens. All of these systems are currently in existences as prototypes or proofs-of-concept, but the lack designs created for general consumption leave them as mere dreams for the future for many people who would live much better lives with them. For all his prestige, even Steven Hawkins did not have access to those.

Just think of all the difference advanced 3D-printed prosthesis made. While some models include highly sophisticated electronic packages and cost a small fortune, it is possible to download some simpler models from the Internet to create new arms for kids for a few hundred dollars.

We are also now talking about exoskeletons allowing people to carry heavy charges for extended periods of time. When will similar constructs enable paraplegic people to walk again? We are not far.

The rise of DIY bio-hacking, especially for cybernetic implants, show a new realm of possibilities. People are replacing glass eyes with cameras and sensors. Now how can we combine that AR to close the remaining gap between reality and cyberpunk novels? People implant magnets to gain a new sense to feel magnetic and electrical currents. How can this be improved to gain direct, touch-less control of tools and systems around us?

When you take those new innovations into consideration, physical accessibility takes a whole new sense.

Digital access

It’s not just people interacting with systems anymore. The Internet-of-Things (IoT) is on the rise: we are now living in a world where billions of devices are connected and talking to each other. That growth is not remotely done!

We are all aware of the rise of smart home gadgets, ranging from the useful to the pointless, and giving rise to creepy stories. In the medical field, 87% of organizations have adopted IoT systems for anything from remote monitoring to mechanized pills designed to deliver medication in specific parts of the body. There are examples like that in virtually every field.

Designing for both human and IoT connectivity is going to be a must. At the same time, simple connexions are not enough, and security must play a critical role (see Security, below).

Transparency

At its core, Transparency can mean availability of information.

I’m not advocating for total transparency of all information at all times (see Security below), but a lot of information is often restricted or inaccessible for no good reason.

I see four main barriers to transparency:

Power: There is power in controlling information. In many jobs, people use that control to justify their continued employment by turning themselves into gatekeepers. In some instances, people will restrict access to information strictly to create unnecessary power dynamics. We can find these information tyrants pretty much everywhere.

Bureaucratic process: From pretend security processes who make legitimate access to information difficult but do nothing to slow down criminal access, institutionalized lack of trust and ridiculously long chains-of-command, all the way to substantial bureaucratic processes that keep growing without ever being questioned, so much information would be freely available to you if you could just provide that damned permit A-38…

Lack of communication skills: Clear communication is a skill. As such, it isn’t innate but must be learned and can be improved throughout our entire lives. And yet it is something we neglect regularly.

The key to communication is to stop assuming the other person will understand what we are trying to communicate and try a bit of empathy. How can we make whatever information we communicate easier to access, simple to understand, clear in content and actually useful to the other party?

Fear: Humans are a fearful species. We tend to be paranoid for no reason, or the wrong reasons. Companies hide financial problems from employees for fear they will stop working. Bosses hide mistakes for fear that their subalterns will lose trust in them. Parents tell tall tales about the upstate farm where the dog has gone to avoid talking about death with their kids. When did this acts born of fear actually made any situation better? We don’t only delaying the inevitable, we actually make it worse.

We are also pretty good at inducing fear into other to shift their attention from what they really should be fearing. Want an example? Equifax, the large company that holds pretty much all your credit information, will frighten you with how you can reveal your information to bad people and try to sell you products to make that information more secure… all the while being themselves hacked through a mixture of negligence and stupidity, giving away all our information.

By creating transparency around information, we speed up processes, ease work, and avoid much guesswork that can lead to mistakes. Transparency reduces the senseless fears, and paranoid fantasy people have when they know you are hiding things from them.

Security

A critical part of the discussion on accessibility is the security around the information that you don’t want to share. Little things like personal information, passwords, confidential records, restricted access, you know, all those things that get hacked and stolen several times a week these days.

There are several challenges in front of the security experts:

• how to make systems generally more secure while staying easy to use?
• how to make sure sensitive information remain accessible when without being at risk of being stolen?
• how can smaller organizations protect themselves from well-funded, government-backed hackers?
• how to remove people as the weakest link in any security system?,
• how can private citizens protect themselves if big corporations that require their private information can’t keep it secure? (again, think of the Equifax leak as an example).

The security issue has large communities of experts already debating and exploring new avenues to improve security. As citizens, will the custodians of our private information get on board and listen to them, or just ignore the issue as it would imply additional expenses? We need to make to send a message with our wallets and aim to work only with those organizations who take all the necessary steps to protect us.

Designing for new publics

When high technology permeates everyone’s environment, whole swaths of the population who were often ignored or addressed in “future updates… probably” are now part of the core public.

Not only these people won’t be able to avoid those technological systems anymore, but many of them will have to be explicitly designed for them.

The physically impaired

Physical impairment encompasses a wide range of conditions.

We got motor issues, from a broken limb to quadriplegia, to neurodegenerative afflictions attacking coordination or causing tremors. We got sensory input issues, from color-blindness, partial or complete blindness, muteness, deafness, loss of sense of touch. There’s a lot more, but those can already get us thinking.

While we certainly can’t account for all impairment for all systems at all times, we still have the option of addressing the impairment itself and give the afflicted person better access to a much wider range of systems.

The mentally impaired

When I was younger, my grandmother took care of a group of people with intellectual disabilities. She had them start their own small business, creating crafted items to be sold in local stores to finance fun activities of their choice. The activities were nice, sure, but it was nothing compared to the pride they had every time they saw their items for sale in a real store. Like everyone else, it was vital for them to contribute to the world, to matter. Society 5.0 believes they just need the right tools to do so.

People with intellectual disability aren’t the only ones who could be considered “mentally impaired.” Several afflictions, many brain injuries or neurodegenerative conditions fall into this categories. Hell! Being drunk isn’t called being impaired for nothing! Still, all of them will need to move around, as well as to operate systems in their house and out in the world.

How do you design for people who have trouble with complex operations? Or people who can’t remember instructions after a minute or two? Or people who are unable to read?

The elderly

The elderly tend to be a bit of the two previous categories but in a different package.

More and more of our senior citizens are well enough used to technology by now. However, as age progress, even the tech-savvy ones can become confused or merely insecure about using unfamiliar systems.

Our society is aging and fast. Not only we had fewer children in the past five decades, but more people are living longer. A rapidly aging population was one of the main drivers behind Japan’s Society 5.0 reflexion, and the rest of the world isn’t that far behind. Elder care is going to be one of the most critical aspects of our society from now on.

Children

Our lovable little monsters are all too often treated like second-class citizens. We either design specifically for them, or we assume their parents will take care of things for them.

However, as technology will spread to all aspects of our living environment, kids are going to interact with those new systems continually. Kids can be rough with electronics, inquisitive with new systems and love to learn to do things by themselves (well, when they want to). My own daughter can’t read yet, and when she uses a child-restricted tablet designed for especially for young kids, she will still find her way to eBay or fiddle with the tablet’s settings. Every. Single. Time.

Kids play outside, visit shopping malls, use washrooms. They do a lot of the same things adult do and should be able to use many of the same systems too. They can’t only have their own versions, as duplicating systems everywhere would soon be cost-prohibitive.

Animals

We have a lot of pets and, in an automated world, some systems will have to be designed for their needs too. Even wild animals, such as raccoons and coyotes, are now getting used to life in urbanized areas. Better tracking and control of their movements will allow us to design our cities better to accommodate these new “citizens” that, whether we like it or not, are here to stay.

As research demonstrates that animals are more complex and intelligent than we first thought, as a society, we will need to recognize their needs better and cater for their recreational needs.

Robots and other cyber-physical systems

Finally, all of our new robots, toys, and tools have some needs that must be fulfilled if we want them to serve us properly.

Machines have a variety of need as significant as ours, larger even if we consider that they require more maintenance and an increasingly large number of them will require to be connected to other systems.

We tend to design those machines themselves, but not their environments. Autonomous mobile robots are still a curiosity, apart from the odd exception (like those robotic vacuum cleaners), but this will change faster than we think. Fully human-like androids are still far in the future, meaning that between now and then we need to design for somewhat mobile, somewhat autonomous, somewhat intelligent machines.

Get involved in the discussion

Society 5.0, while making a lot of exciting promises, involves quite a lot of challenges that are all too often glossed over. Accessibility and all of what that means for the design industry is but one of those challenges.

The best designers of tomorrow are those who will start exploring these new challenges today. We are at the dawn of an era of new possibilities.

At Hivernité, a Montreal’s think tank with a focus on reinventing our world for the era of Society 5.0, these discussions involving the experts of the field, both veteran and new, are quite important. If you are interested in participating, I invite you to keep an eye on our website to see when and how you can contribute.

Maurice Lefebvre

I am a futurist, system thinker and organizational transformation expert, dedicated to easing our transition into Society 5.0. I am available as a speaker through the think tank Hivernité (www.hivernite.ca) as well as a trainer and organizational coach through Moabi Formations (www.moabiformation.com).

www.hivernite.ca

As Society 5.0 is on the horizon, a fresh batch of upheavals will strike most organizations as emerging technologies, market dynamics and people’s relationship with work will change. 

This means that, yet again, organizations will have to face Change. It means a lot of power plays will happen, a lot of money will be spent (and often wasted), a lot of people will be stressed and a lot of company will fail their changes in a way that will cost them far more than just money. 

Just talk about Change in your organization and you’ll see the fear in the look of the people around you. “Not AGAIN.” 

We see Change as something big, put in motion as events. Each requires solid change management skills to build a strong strategy, communicate it appropriately, deliver the plan, manage expectations and manage for resistance to change. All of these things are difficult and the bigger the changes, the more difficult they are. 

Big changes will always be stressful. It will be difficult for humans who have evolved stress to improve their survivability during unexpected and uncertain events. It will be difficult for organizations built like machines: precise, ordered and predictable. The more you add stress, the more the resistance and the higher the chances something breaks. 

So how to approach those big Change events to execute them successfully? 

Don’t. 

Lean experts have been advocating for creating a culture of continuous improvement, of constant small changes. This is great, as it creates a culture of constant dynamism. For people, those changes are not violent, events or big enough to put them in danger. For organizations, it requires a reorganization into a living, dynamic structure, much closer to a natural ecosystem. 

But that the theory. “In the real world, it doesn’t work like that Maurice.” Big changes often end up not working or paying off as intended. Companies either aren’t Lean or have adopted parts of a Lean model. Old habits die hard, and they still manage their changes from a central authority. I have met my fair share of Lean change experts who will spend months analyzing change impacts, devising change management plans and creating communication plans for the rollout of those changes. Or of companies that ask for continuous improvements and innovation, and yet stifle any attempts of locally modifying behaviors and dynamics that haven’t been decided/designed/approved by a central authority. Where’s the Lean in that? 

Just asking for companies to allow their divisions, like teams, to innovate without interference, or even better with their full support, is wishful thinking. Why? Because until those companies changes, anyone initiating those changes will be at risk and will face resistance. In Jack: Straight from the Gut, Jack Welch describes his attempts at bringing change to General Electric, as a CEO, akin to starting a war and throwing grenades. If it’s that difficult when you are in charge, imagine when you are just a cog in the machine. 

Sure, teams can achieve a limited form of continuous improvement. As long as it doesn’t rattle the rest of the organization, it can work well. But it is limited. It can be so much more than that. And if we want to evolve a company to adapt to the emerging world of Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0, it’s a situation we need to address. 

To understand the underlying problem bringing changes in companies, one that becomes clear when we use a bit of system theory and learn how complex systems work. 

Explaining the problem

We’re going to do a bit of theory now, so please bear with me. 

One standard model of complex systems is the hierarchical model, where specialized systems of varying complexities nested within one another. Like companies. 

One of the most frequent problems with hierarchical systems is that the healthy dynamics between the hierarchical levels becomes skewed. 

Hierarchies evolve from bottom to top, from the lowest level to the highest, from the cell to the whole organism. The lower you go in a hierarchy, the faster the evolution rate. Those lower levels are the front line of the complex hierarchical system and as such have to respond a lot more precise and specialized stimuli.

The highest-level system, like the brain or the board of directors, still has a critical role to play: it must give a general direction, a purpose, to this evolution. Without it, lower systems will evolve fast in often unpredictable, and undesirable, directions. Like cancer. The higher-level system parses vast quantities of information coming from all the sub-systems, but that information is more straightforward, higher-level, already digested into something less complicated. 

Both high-level and low-level systems have their precise roles. The common mistake is to give too much power to one or the other. 

In a company, the most common issue is too much power taken by upper management. They know where they want to company to go and request departments and teams to execute their plans to get there. But that kind of centralized power comes at the loss of most of the information that should be gathered and processed by the teams. The team’s focus becomes execution rather than intelligence and adaptation. Information only trickles up within the system rather than flow and is usually ignored until it can’t be anymore. Innovation is stifled, hurting the capacity of the entire organization to adapt to change. 

On the other hand, not enough guidance form the upper management and the various teams will only react to their own, immediate situation. This will cause a significant loss of cohesion and productivity across the entire company. We don’t see this situation as often as too much control from management, as it requires a decentralized, self-organizing model, like Holacracy, which is still rare. 

The principle remains similar for governments. Too much control at the top and you create a totalitarian regime, replacing natural adaptability, innovation, and evolution by whatever is deemed the priority of the moment by the government. Too little regulations and you get tax avoidance (which prevent the delivery of shared services), monopolies concentrating common resources (such as money) in few hands, crime and other similar system-related problems. More often than not, governments strive for a balance but end up with too much and too little at once: constraints who end up benefitting large conglomerate while killing small businesses, help for specific slices of the population that ends up trapping them in a situation where they need that help, over or under-reacting to a challenge because they focus on the wrong reasons (such as an upcoming election), etc. This situation is a result of addressing symptoms without understanding the underlying system. 

Fixing the imbalance

If we fix that power imbalance, not with a single patchwork but with a change of internal dynamics to align how the company works with how a complex hierarchical system works, then we can hope of creating an organization that is a dynamic system under constant evolution and improvement. 

My favorite model to remedy to this power balance is based on an approach described by Dave Gray in his book The Connected Company. He calls it podularity. It is a model, not a framework or a complete, complex solution. To make it work for you, you need to fiddle with it a bit, you need to keep communications going, and you need to keep it alive and evolving. For organizations that adopt a Lean mindset, this is right up their alley. 

In this model, management establishes goals, constraints, and resources into sandboxes. Teams are wholly self-organizing but attached to a sandbox. Teams get their resources from the sandbox but must contribute information and effort toward the goal as well as respecting the constraints. The system is very alive as the sandboxes will evolve, with their resources and constraints adjusted based on the information contributed by all the teams attached, while still aiming for the goal determined by management. Teams who don’t follow the rules of their sandbox can’t draw resources from it and will need to attach to a more appropriate sandbox or starve and be eliminated by the system. The beauty of this model is that it is self-correcting and the power distribution between higher and lower systems stays in balance through the sandbox. It makes for a very organic model and can be scaled to apply to a government level.

One of the strengths of the model is that it is possible the to progressively introduce it within an organization. Start with the groups that are ready and willing. Make sure their sandbox includes everything both they and you need to give them their independence. Then let them deliver results and improve the system. Make sure their successes and challenges are well communicated across the organization, so other groups can open their minds to it and start thinking how it can work for them. 

I often talk about decentralized organizations. Well, this is it. 

Just like adequately working complex hierarchical systems, the higher systems set high-level goals and constraints. Lower-level systems must work within these guidelines but can evolve fast to adapt to their changing environment. They can also influence the guidelines to make sure they are kept relevant. The entire complex system will slowly adjust and evolve as a result of all the small local changes, slowly modifying the dynamic of the whole organization. The entire dynamic feel more natural, reducing stress across the whole system as the scale of actions, decisions, and consequences is vastly reduced. Autonomy and reduced scale allow for experimentations, leading to innovation and adaptability. 

It does require a will for the central authority to let go of its power and redefine its role. This kind of transformation starts with the top, not as a big change management plan, but rather as a will to let go. The hardest changes in the culture of an organization rarely come from the team, but instead, it comes from the organization’s leaders. A desire for change and a willingness to do what it takes are two very different things. 

If you want to know more

While using this model isn’t overly complicated or difficult, it helps to know what you are doing. 

I recommend reading Dave Gray’s The connected Company. Not only is the decentralized model outline there, but the whole book is a fascinating read, showing us clearly why companies need to evolve their habits, as the old ways won’t work anymore. 

I’m involved with two companies that can advise and support you if you are interested in evolving your organization toward such a model. 

Octant organizes seminars and retreats, both privates and open to the public. Decentralized model is a subject we often cover. 

If you want to adopt this model and require training or coaching for your organization, get in touch and I’ll hook you up.

Maurice Lefebvre

I am a futurist, system thinker and organizational transformation expert, dedicated to easing our transition into Society 5.0. I am available as a speaker through the think tank Hivernité (www.hivernite.ca) as well as a trainer and organizational coach through Moabi Formations (www.moabiformation.com).

www.hivernite.ca