by How might the universals needs we’ve identified earlier fit in with daily life? We need a generic framework of situations to bring specificity to the universal needs in order to craft the emerging need states. For ConsumerShift, I used the framework from John Robinson’s Time Diary studies, as reported in his excellent book, Time for Life, in which he tracked Americans’ time use via diaries and broke down daily activities into several categories (work, household/family care, shopping, personal/biological necessities), learning, leisure (entertainment/recreation), affiliation, and communications). I think this framework applies reasonably well across affluent nations even though it is a US source. [Remember, a key point is that we are looking for new-to-the-world need states and thus we’ll emphasize affluent nations where these are more likely to emerge.]
Table. Situational needs
Committed time Free time
Work Learning
Shopping Leisure (entertainment/recreation)
Household/family care Affiliation
Personal/biological necessities Communications
This simple framework was useful to get started. The first step in creasing the needs states was to craft a simple matrix comparing theuniversal needs with Robinson’s categories above, with more specific need states being identified at the intersections where appropriate. This led a list of literally hundreds of potential specific need states. In the next post, we’ll finish the process of how I arrived at the need states ConsumerShift. Andy Hines
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