Navigate a trend board

This article describes the structure and content of a trend board.

Trend board header and navigation

The trend board header (Figure 1) is present at the top of the main trend board pages and lets you:

• Access high-level information about the trend board: title, description, number of clusters and trends.
• Suggest trends that you think our AI model should analyse.
• Adjust the settings of the board, for instance to edit or delete it.
• Take the trend board guided tour. If it is the first time you ever open a trend board, hovering over the pink orb next to the title starts the tour. After completing the tour, you can always take it again by clicking ‘Settings > Take the tour’.
• Follow the trend board.
• Configure monthly or weekly newsletters to stay up-to-date with the latest articles related to the trends.
• Share the board with colleagues.
• Copy the trend board to create your personal copy of it.

Click the navigation pills (Figure 1) to access the main pages of the trend board: the summary page, the trends page, and the newsfeed page. Alternatively, you can search for individual trends.

Figure 1: trend board header, navigation, and search bar.

Summary page

The summary page shows a consolidated view of all the trends included in the board and serves as the homepage of the trend board.

Trend radar

The first element of the summary page is the trend radar (Figure 2), an interactive visualisation that summarises all the trends of the board in a single view. The radar represents a powerful tool to quickly examine relevant trends as it features numerous options (dropdown menus, see Figure 2) to create different subviews:

• Filter displayed trends by cluster.
• Select the context in which to examine the trends: a specific industry selected among the industries of the trend board, or a general context encompassing all industries monitored by Trentracker (‘All industries’).
• Select the radar preset:
  1. Trend Strength Index (TSI, default): shows the current TSI of trends, represented by the size and colour of the bars in the chart.
  2. Trend Strength Index Estimate (TSIE): shows a similar view as the TSI preset, but using TSIE, a measure of the forecasted impact of trends.
  3. Horizon: shows trends grouped by horizon, the timeframe in which trends are expected to reach their peak impact. This view provides a structure to assess potential opportunities for trends within specific time horizons. The trends are grouped by horizon (represented by the colour of the bars). Trends are sorted clockwise from highest to lowest TSIE (represented by the size of the bars).
  4. Action Overview (shown in Figure 2): shows Trensition’s ROESI strategic actions and TSI. ROESI actions can be used to augment or objectify internal thinking or support decision-making. The trends are grouped by action (represented by the colour of the bars) and sorted clockwise from highest to lowest TSI value (represented by the size of the bars).
  5. Trend Change p2y/p7y: shows the past trend change (velocity) over a period of 2 or 7 years. This view helps you understand which trends are accelerating or decelerating within the respective time interval. The trends are sorted clockwise from highest to lowest trend change value.

All the metrics mentioned above are explained in a dedicated knowledge base article. Hovering over a trend shows a tooltip with the trend’s image, title, description, and key metrics. Note that throughout the trend board, trend metrics are depicted by easy-to-read icons.

Figure 2: trend radar.

Summary trend lists

The rest of the summary page consists of three lists of trends that will help kick-start your exploration:

1. Top 20 trends: top 20 trends overall, sorted by decreasing Trend Strength Index Estimate (TSIE). Read more about TSIE in the dedicated article.
2. Actions: trends grouped by ROESI strategic action, optionally filtered by cluster or favourite.
3. Speeding up, Slowing down: trends that are accelerating or decelerating during the past seven years (highest or lowest velocity, respectively).

Trends page

The trends page (Figure 3) lists all the trends present in a board. It is possible to filter displayed trends by cluster, favourite, or search query. To mark a trend as favourite, click on the star icon in the top right corner of a trend card. To open a trend’s detail page, click on the card’s title or image.

Figure 3: example trends page screenshot. Here, trends are filtered to show the ‘Business Model’ cluster only.

Newsfeed page

Browse the stories behind the metrics using the newsfeed page (Figure 4). Trendracker continuously monitors the web to find new articles and scores them to help you rapidly identify the most relevant information. To assist you, the newsfeed features multiple filtering and sorting options:

• Find articles by search query.
• Filter by trend, newsfeed type, or source.
• Browse favourite or pinned articles. Favourite articles are visible to you only, while pinned articles are pinned for all the users of a trend board.
• Sort articles by relevance (most relevant first) or date (most recent first).

Figure 4: example newsfeed page screenshot.

Detail page

A detail page is available for each trend included in the board (Figure 5). In addition to the trend’s metrics, shown in the header, the detail page offers insights related to multiple specific facets of its evolution.

Use the left tabs to access:

• Industry insights (active tab in Figure 5), showing how this trend changes over time in multiple contexts of interest vs. overall.
• Geographical insights that help you understand this trend’s impact in different regions and urban areas all over the world.
• Development insights: breakdown of investments and startup inspiration.
• Corporate innovation insights: evolution of business innovation, converging trends and related global forces.
• Newsfeed of articles linked to this trend.

Figure 5: ‘metaverse’ example detail page screenshot.