THE FUTURE OF DIGITAL EXPERIENCES - VISION: THE MOBILE EBUSINESS PLAYBOOK - HUBSPOT
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The Future Of Digital Experiences
Vision: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook
by Julie A. Ask and Michael Facemire
April 17, 2018 | Updated: April 24, 2018
Why Read This Report Key Takeaways
Digital channels are more amorphous and No Individual Thing Replaces Mobile
fragmented than ever. However, they share a In the next 10 years, no new device will
common core: mobile. Mobile will emerge as the overtake the massive scale and popularity of
central choreographer in this broader, connected mobile phones. Mobile itself will become the
ecosystem. Digital business professionals will choreographer of the next revolution in digital
address their customers’ micro moments by experience as it powers and orchestrates a
deconstructing today’s digital experiences into multitouchpoint, blended user ecosystem.
granular parts, enabling them to construct highly
Digital Experiences Evolve From Channel Silos
personalized digital experiences that solve
To Open Ecosystems
users’ immediate problems. This report lays out
Digital business leaders must evolve from serving
the future of digital experiences and tells digital
customers in their own apps, websites, or stores
business professionals how to get started.
with their own intelligence to an open ecosystem
This is an update of the report published on of shared customers, context, and experiences.
May 9, 2017; Forrester reviews and updates it
Digital Experiences Will Evolve Along Three
periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
Dimensions
The mobile core of these digital experiences
will evolve along three dimensions — channel,
context, and construction — and in four stages —
from owned moments in siloed apps or
websites to borrowed moments in blended
experience ecosystems.
forrester.comFor eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals
The Future Of Digital Experiences
Vision: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook
by Julie A. Ask and Michael Facemire
with Sharyn Leaver, Martin Gill, Fatemeh Khatibloo, Jeffrey S. Hammond, John R. Rymer,
James L. McQuivey, J. P. Gownder, Michele Pelino, Laura Naparstek, and Erin Sellers
April 17, 2018 | Updated: April 24, 2018
Table Of Contents Related Research Documents
2 Digital Technologies Fuel Business Vitality CMO: The Future Of Mobile Is Context
But Lack Potency As Silos
The Future Of Mobile Experience Development
4 Mobile Is The Catalyst For Future Digital
Your Customers Will Not Download Your App
Experience Ecosystems
10 The Path Forward: Four Stages Of Digital
Experience Evolution
19 Future Digital Experiences Require Share reports with colleagues.
Substantial Innovations Enhance your membership with
Research Share.
Recommendations
22 Build A Digital Experience Ecosystem
Strategy
24 Supplemental Material
Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge, MA 02140 USA
+1 617-613-6000 | Fax: +1 617-613-5000 | forrester.com
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Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. Unauthorized copying or distributing
is a violation of copyright law. Citations@forrester.com or +1 866-367-7378For EBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals April 17, 2018 | Updated: April 24, 2018
The Future Of Digital Experiences
Vision: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook
Digital Technologies Fuel Business Vitality But Lack Potency As Silos
“Apps and chatbots and web! Oh, my!” One can imagine Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz making this
exact statement if she were faced with the current litany of digital experiences that we choose from to
meet our customers’ needs. Once upon a time, at least a year ago, the choice was much simpler: Do
we build a website, a mobile app, a mobile-enabled website, or a combination of each? But simpler
did not equate to better because many companies treated each of these as a standalone channel to
meet a discrete set of needs — yet, some of those needs overlapped across channels, adding more
confusion. Fast-forward to today, and digital business professionals have over three times the digital
channels to deliver.
Consumers Are Ready For Better Digital Experiences
Digital experiences today offer up a buffet of millions, if not billions, of different services to consumers to
serve them in their moments of need. Sure, Google indexes these services, but consumers still need to
know what they want, where to look, and how to navigate the internet. In other words, consumers still do
the heavy lifting. Firms use technology to infer consumer preferences and needs, but they primarily target
consumers with ads rather than assist them. Today’s digital experiences fall short because:
›› Desktop websites have evolved into self-service “kitchen sink” experiences. Firms have
built browser-based experiences to do all things for all people. Successful mobile experiences
serve customers in specific moments of need. The simplicity of mobile has fueled the mobile mind
shift and altered consumer expectations of how convenient digital experiences can be. Shifted
consumers are discarding desktop browsers for mobile apps, messaging, and chatbots to bank,
shop, read newspapers, order food, and book travel.1
›› The smartphone isn’t smart. Eleven years of mobile experiences have stifled the expectations
of mobile users. In reality, smartphones are little more than communication, social media, and
gaming platforms, chock-full of hardware, that deliver alluring experiences. Sure, consumers can
do everything on their phones from watching streaming sports to buying groceries at Whole Foods
Market without their wallet — as long as they only ask the device to do one task at a time, and the
device can provide a predetermined, discrete, programmable answer to that request.
›› Connected devices connect to the internet — not people or each other. Everything from
our cars to our thermostats, pedometers, sous vide machines, and lights are full of sensors and
connected to the internet so they can send data to manufacturers and be controlled remotely by
consumers. However, they are expensive and operate primarily as standalone objects. Not even
the ingenious IFTTT service creates the experiences consumers want, such as using their Echo to
control home appliances.
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The Future Of Digital Experiences
Vision: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook
Firms Approach Digital With Siloed Functions And Strategies
Firms approach consumers in technology silos. They have a strategy for search, email, mobile apps,
messaging, kiosks, phone, and more. But consumers don’t think in terms of channels — they just
want to complete tasks in a way that is convenient. They expect experiences to be consistent, but not
identical, across touchpoints. Mobile has raised the bar: Consumer expectations founded in mobile
transfer to other channels. Firms that focus on discrete channels rather than consumer journeys miss
the mark because:
›› New channels are proliferating faster than firms can keep up. Mobile is beginning to eclipse
desktop web, with 4.9 billion unique mobile subscribers owning more than 3.7 billion smartphones
in 2017, but what mobile means is in flux.2 In 2016 alone, more than five new channels were
introduced in mobile. Google gave us Instant Apps and Accelerated Mobile Pages. Facebook and
Kik gave us chatbots. In the meantime, web technologies advanced into the formerly app-only
realms of native push notifications and progressive web apps. Organizing or operating by channels
means a new team, strategy, and development platform for each new technology.
›› Consumers depend on mobile, but firms underspend. More than half of consumers in the
US are, or soon will be, “shifted,” meaning they expect to get everything they want or need
immediately, using all available context, each time they pick up a mobile device.3 Firms can
only meet these expectations if they view mobile as an enabler of experience transformation —
something that only 43% of digital business executives confirm their firms have done.4 And the
costs are high. Forrester estimates that firms must spend $5 million to $20 million, but only 43%
spend at these levels. Go figure.
›› Firms struggle to deliver relevant services based on context. In 2011, we predicted that the
future of mobile would be context.5 But seven years later, most companies barely scratch the
surface. Only 14% of digital business executives we surveyed in 2017 use location technology to
track consumers across channels.6 Target, Walgreens, and Walmart offer an in-store mode if they
detect that a consumer is inside one of their retail locations; Delta Air Lines and United Airlines offer
customer check-in 24 hours before a flight. Anything more advanced is limited to pilots.
›› Firms’ mobile strategies are myopic and channel centric. Most firms’ mobile strategies focus
on a customer downloading and using their brand’s app; the brand owns the mobile moment.7
However, consumers have enough apps — on average, they use only seven apps in a given
day and 25 in a given month — despite the availability of more than 2 million apps.8 Customers
gravitate to major platforms like social media, which is powering discovery as well — a section of
the journey formerly monopolized by the desktop web. A few early pioneers like KLM and Uber
tap into Facebook Messenger and WeChat to deliver services to customers. Forrester calls this
borrowing mobile moments.
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The Future Of Digital Experiences
Vision: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook
Mobile Is The Catalyst For Future Digital Experience Ecosystems
Today, many firms struggle to master mobile basics, and for most firms, experiments into connected
devices or broader digital ecosystems are just that — experiments. Consumer demand is driving rapid
digital evolution, and your customers aren’t waiting for you to learn best practices. Today, consumers
orchestrate their own digital experiences by choosing apps, finding websites, or opting in for
messaging. Tomorrow, mobile will be a digital experience choreographer, creating blended experiences
from an ecosystem of developers and vendors building on shared data to address mobile moments.
The primary interaction may be on a mobile device, but it won’t be constrained to it (see Figure 1).
Rather, these blended experiences will include anything that an individual can connect to — wearables,
things, cars, homes, and gaming platforms. These experiences will require a shift along three key
dimensions (see Figure 2).
›› Channel: From discrete apps to orchestrated ecosystems. Today, enterprises serve customers
within their own apps or websites, which requires customers to download individual apps, install
individual connected devices, and configure individual services. In the future, these invisible walls
will collapse, and blended ecosystem experiences will automatically appear when and where the
customer needs them, across a connected set of partners, devices, interfaces, and data.
›› Context: From consumer-provided to ecosystem-assembled. Today, companies rely on context or
information that their customers have shared with them, such as location or preferences. Tomorrow,
consumers will give trusted brands permission to harvest context (or data) from their ecosystem of
connected devices, services, and sensors.9 Moreover, consumers will manage which ecosystems have
access to their data for explicit benefits, not just passively provide individual app permissions.
›› Construction: From hard-coded apps to dynamically assembled experiences. Today, developers
build standalone websites and apps with hardwired logic. While they can update content, today’s
task flows are hard-coded. Only a select few apps today, such as Uber, change the task flow
based on context — but Uber still serves customers within its own app. In the future, developers
will build content and metadata-tagged components and hand over access to third parties that will
dynamically assemble the components into streamlined task flows based on user context.
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The Future Of Digital Experiences
Vision: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook
FIGURE 1 Mobile Will Power Blended Ecosystem Experiences
The home: Mobile powers the way you interact with a personalized ecosystem of
connected devices.
As you use ingredients in the kitchen,
Amazon Echo adds them to a shopping
Mobile curates a recipe based on the
list. Convenience stores will offer
ingredients you have and shows a
incentives to buy these products when
video of the recipe as you cook.
you are nearby.
After exercising at the gym, the
thermostat detects the textile
sensors in your shirt and your heart Connected home audio systems
rate through your fitness band, detect the media that was
senses you are too hot, and lowers playing in the car. The music or
the temperature of the room. podcast continues to play based
on your proximity to various
speakers inside the house.
73 Mobile is the “brain” that ensures
the continuity of the music.
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The Future Of Digital Experiences
Vision: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook
FIGURE 1 Mobile Will Power Blended Ecosystem Experiences (Cont.)
The airport: Mobile optimizes travel with real-time updates and assistance.
Days before a flight, your mobile
device downloads the latest
unwatched episodes of a TV show.
From your past viewing behavior, the Push notifications are sent to
device determines your tastes, your preferred device if your
chosen subscription TV networks, gate or flight time changes.
and preferred media stores.
Your device recommends
Your mobile device syncs your airline’s restaurants and shopping in the
flight data with the airport’s internal terminal. Mobile powers the
mapping systems to direct you airport environment with smaller
through security to the right gate. devices that inform and serve you.
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The Future Of Digital Experiences
Vision: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook
FIGURE 1 Mobile Will Power Blended Ecosystem Experiences (Cont.)
The park: Mobile transforms public places into human health ecosystems.
While your grandmother is
walking in the park, her
wristband monitors her
blood-oxygen levels in real
time, reporting them to her
doctor and to you. You receive
a notification on your watch
when her vital signs change.
After a few minutes, you
receive a second alert that
she has been inactive for 10
minutes with a rapid heart
rate. Her wristband called for
an ambulance before
notifying you that there is an
emergency.
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The Future Of Digital Experiences
Vision: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook
FIGURE 1 Mobile Will Power Blended Ecosystem Experiences (Cont.)
The store: Mobile personalizes the shopping experience to help you find the items you
want at the most convenient locations and the best prices.
At home, you add products to
your shopping list by speaking
to a virtual assistant device, Checkout
viewing a product with an AR
headset, or scanning an item
with a camera.
In the store, your wristband guides you to
items on your list and pushes promotions for
those items. Your shopping list is color-coded
based on impact on the family budget,
accessed through a connected banking
service. The device shows nearby stores with
similar items and incentives to shop there.
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The Future Of Digital Experiences
Vision: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook
FIGURE 1 Mobile Will Power Blended Ecosystem Experiences (Cont.)
The car: Mobile maximizes comfort, safety, and navigation with highly personalized
driving experiences.
When you enter your rental car, all of
your personal settings update for
you and your passengers. Your
mobile phone serves as an identity
proxy that prompts the car to adjust The route to your destination
the seat, mirrors, steering wheel, appears in the heads-up
climate, and entertainment based on display. Routing information
your unique preferences. is sourced from an app store,
and waypoints are sourced
from a mobile location
provider. Your car
27 MI recommends local
64
restaurants or directs you to
MPH
55 ºF 120
80
gas stations along the route.
x10/hour 40
Exit 124,
turn right
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The Future Of Digital Experiences
Vision: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook
FIGURE 2 Experiences Will Evolve In Granularity Around Three Core Dimensions
Experience stage
Device
(today)
Provided Hard-coded Apps
Platform
(today) Shared App extensions Platforms
Virtual assistant
Managed Static assembly Device
(2018+)
Dynamic
Assembled assembly Ecosystem
Blended (experience)
ecosystem
(2021+)
Context Construction Channel
The triangles indicate the dimension’s granularity.
The Path Forward: Four Stages Of Digital Experience Evolution
Just as the path to context proved to be challenging, so too is the path to blended ecosystem
experiences. They won’t appear overnight. Digital business professionals will evolve their use of digital
to win, serve, and retain customers over four stages of evolution. Mobile will become less of a channel
and more of an enabler of all digital experiences.
Stage 1: Single-Device App And Web Experiences
Customers choreograph their own experiences with standalone apps, websites, or messaging that
depend on information that the enterprise owns and uses with explicit customer permission. While
consumers rely on apps to engage with the brands they favor, they look to the browser for one-off
experiences. Web experiences begin to rival app experiences, leading consumers to rely on fewer
apps. Their mobile moments are mostly pull-based — they unlock their smartphones when they need
something, choose an app or website, and address their need (see Figure 3). In this stage:
›› Channels are standalone apps or websites. Enterprises continue to serve customers via their
own apps, websites, and messaging. The primary extension is the home screen or notification area
of the phone, where interactive notifications arrive. Search remains critical, as consumers use it to
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The Future Of Digital Experiences
Vision: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook
find content and services within a blended web and app ecosystem via the use of deep linking to
indexed content within apps. For example, a Google search returns phone numbers, maps, and
ratings, including results from apps like HotelTonight, Uber, and Urbanspoon.10
›› Context is provided by consumers. Consumers provide or share their location, sensor data, and
other personal information with the brands they trust.11 Enterprises also tap their own consumer
data, and leaders layer intelligence onto that data and create rules for building insights, such as,
“Is a customer in my store or a competitor’s store?”12 Apps choose the right content (e.g., text
or images), time, and channel (e.g., push notifications, in-app messaging, or SMS) to engage
consumers effectively. Life360 builds intelligent location by observing commute patterns to locate a
user’s home and workplace.
›› Construction relies on hard-coded logic. Developers build mobile apps and mobile websites that
begin to work well together. Web content is sharable in both formats but only under a preordained
set of conditions. A limited use of context — location, time of day, and potential activity based on
current calendar data — creates some personalization; reacting to the user’s environment is still
a few years away. Companies begin to index their apps to allow deep linking from any non-app
source, making content discoverable from all channels.
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The Future Of Digital Experiences
Vision: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook
FIGURE 3 Customers Create Their Own Single-Device App And Web Experiences
Single-device app and web experiences
The future of digital experiences: stage 1
Consumers create personalized experiences using a set of standalone apps, websites, and messaging.
The enterprise owns the data powering these experiences and uses this data with explicit customer
permission. Consumers rely on apps to engage with brands they favor and use browsers for one-off
experiences. They turn to their smartphones when they need something, engage with an app or website,
and address their need.
Channel Context Construction
A set of apps and Permission Hard-coded elements
websites on a device provided by the user within single apps or sites
on a device
Food log entries
for the week
Walking distance
1.1 .7 3.6 (miles)
Other data (height,
weight, age)
Context legend:
Any consumer information held by a company on its servers or on the device
(e.g., food I ate today, heart rate, or the distance I walked)
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The Future Of Digital Experiences
Vision: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook
Stage 2: Digital Platform Experiences
Consumers find it cumbersome to hop in and out of individual apps or switch from a smartphone to
a laptop to accomplish a simple task. They look for quick access to services, such as a bank balance
or fast food, from mobile platform solutions like Cortana, Google Now, and Siri as well as third-party
platforms like Amazon Echo, Facebook Messenger, and Waze. As a result, digital business leaders in
this stage extend their digital strategies to borrow moments from partners, broadening services beyond
their own channel or app.13 Today, consumers in the US can place an order with Domino’s on Facebook
Messenger. Enterprises can even chat with customers on these messaging platforms to offer real-time
customer service (see Figure 4). In this stage:
›› Channels evolve from apps to platforms. Enterprises extend their services outside their own
partitioned websites and mobile apps to emerging third-party experience platforms like Facebook
Messenger, Google Now, and WeChat. These platforms allow digital business leaders to serve a
preexisting set of users; this differs from the recent past of building apps and hoping users find
them in app stores. Vendors like [24]7.ai and Nexmo are already extending their core offerings to
platforms such as Facebook Messenger and WeChat. And photo apps like Flickr and Instagram
allow consumers to print their photos at CVS and Walgreens.
›› Context is shared by consumers with trusted brands. Enterprises share data and identity to
allow third parties to serve their customers when they are in a better position to do so.14 The data-
sharing model is hub and spoke, with few trusted partners, like Apple, facilitating data sharing
within their ecosystem based on consumer permission. Context brokers emerge as companies
can’t create insights well enough or fast enough on their own.15 For example, Uber partners with
airlines to allow passengers to book an Uber within an airline app when they land. If their flight is
delayed, a context broker signals all subscribed services — such as taxis, restaurants, and hotels.
›› Construction demands app extensions. Enterprises build services that are consumable
throughout multiple channels and ecosystems. Android Intents and iOS App Extensions are the
basis for this new granularity in the early stages of a composable mobile experience model. On
the back end, inbound requests come from foreign places in foreign formats — messaging clients
in natural language format, notification lists without app context, and third-party apps and sites
with unknown context. Services like Button and CI&T Smart Canvas illustrate how a layered API
architecture is critical to transform and normalize these requests into known models.
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The Future Of Digital Experiences
Vision: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook
FIGURE 4 Mobile Platform Experiences Utilize Borrowed Moments From Partners
Mobile platform experiences
The future of digital experiences: stage 2
Mobile operating systems and third-party platforms define the bulk of consumer-brand activity. There’s no
more hopping between apps and web pages; platforms like Cortana, Google Now, and WeChat now
provide the information necessary to address mobile moments. Companies in this stage extend their
mobile strategies to borrow mobile moments from partners, expanding their services beyond their own
channels or app.
Channel Context Construction
Operating systems and Shared App extensions through
third-party platforms platforms on a single device
1:15
Your blood-oxygen
level is low. Ext. Ext.
1 2
Your activity level
is low today.
Context legend:
Any consumer information held by a company on its servers or on the device
(e.g., food I ate today, heart rate, or the distance I walked)
Data from a third-party platform (like Apple HealthKit) storing personal information
(e.g., hours of sleep and heart rate)
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The Future Of Digital Experiences
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Stage 3: Virtual Assistant Experiences
It’s the rise of the virtual assistant! Virtual assistants begin to offer real utility in response to open-
ended requests such as “I need to get home.” As virtual assistants improve, usefulness replaces their
inherent creepiness. Consumers are more willing to manage access to their data in exchange for
agents anticipating their needs and knowing their preferences. Consumers rely less on apps and more
on digitally composed experiences. In the early stages, services depend on content, other services,
and information within their own ecosystem and from a few selected partners. The Amazon Echo, for
example, is compatible with Prime Music but not iTunes; it also has deep integration with Sonos but
very basic usefulness with Bose (see Figure 5). In this stage:
›› Channels are amorphous but accessed via a consumer’s chosen device or service.
Consumers choose which brands to trust, but they hand over the choreography to the device or
service (e.g., Alexa, Google, or Siri). The device answers distinct user requests like “I need to meet
with Julie to discuss a potential business opportunity” by responding “Use these two apps and
this website, and stand in front of that sensor at 11 a.m.” It bases these static recommendations
on historically similar use cases. Some companies choose to allow third parties to serve their
customers, while others are disrupted. Currently, Walgreens is working directly with Google to offer
access to its Balance Rewards system to generate insightful and timely alerts.
›› Context is consumer-managed and sourced from an ecosystem of connected devices.
Consumers use services like Meeco to manage access to and monetize their personal data.
They knowingly allow third parties to collect multiple sources of data to offer them better
services.16 Lark, for example, ingests data from multiple data sources through Apple HealthKit
and APIs to create a holistic picture of a consumer’s health and then offer AI-based coaching.
Google and Microsoft — using Cortana, Google Now, and Now on Tap — rely on consumers’
use of their respective platforms to create personalized context and suggest ideal outcomes for
mobile moments.
›› Construction depends on the static assembly of composed experiences. Experience
components that react to environmental triggers replace standalone apps. Virtual assistants
assemble these fragments of content and services based on two driving criteria — user context
and historically similar use cases. Virtual assistants then offer up streamlined task flows and
curated content for consumers. Development models evolve from known-state diagrams to
functional, reactive programming models. API standards for both environmental triggers and
responses to those triggers emerge: not single standards, but sets of standards that gravitate
around key platform ecosystems. Using AI to create human-like interactions or content to engage
consumers becomes commonplace.
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The Future Of Digital Experiences
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FIGURE 5 Virtual Assistants Offer Digitally Composed Experiences
Virtual agent experiences
The future of digital experiences: stage 3
Consumers ask mobile and physical standalone devices open-ended questions and are presented with a
set of “solutions” that comprise a curated set of apps, sites, and platform experiences. They expect third
parties to anticipate their needs and know their preferences, and they expect to manage that access simply
and naturally — not app by app or function by function.
Channel Context Construction
App-/device- Managed Static assembly of
as-a-service apps, sites, and
platform experiences
2 2 3
1 3 3
1 2 1
alexa
Context legend:
Any consumer information held by a company on its servers or on the device
(e.g., food I ate today, heart rate, or the distance I walked)
Data from a third-party platform (like Apple HealthKit) storing personal information
(e.g., hours of sleep and heart rate)
Data from connected devices (e.g., fitness bands, thermostats, scales, healthcare
devices, and the cloud)
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Stage 4: Blended Ecosystem Experiences
The smartphone becomes smart and turns into the connective tissue of the local user ecosystem.
For the first time, digital services proactively suggest and inspire users to do things that they didn’t
ask about. The smartphone becomes less of a user interface device and more of a user control and
identity device. Digital services dynamically assemble content, information, and other services based
on immediate context to streamline task flow. Very little of this is done at the urging of the user; she
instead empowers digital ecosystems to either make decisions for her or offer her solution choices.
Devices within local user ecosystems react differently based on who and what is nearby. Tesla is a
great example of a local ecosystem — the comfort settings, driving styles, and even audio setup within
its cars all change based on which driver unlocks the door (see Figure 6). In this stage:
›› Channels dissolve into ecosystems. Consumers no longer download apps or opt in for
messaging; they simply give brands permission to serve them. Where the service appears and in
what format depend on context. Engagement automation solutions move beyond simply choosing
between a push notification and an in-app notification and evolve toward taking action. That
applies to a multitude of scenarios: an alert to the fire department if a smoke detector goes off,
unlocking the front door when a child arrives home from school, or a notification to a consumer’s
mobile phone about a flash sale while he commutes to work on the bus.
›› Context is assembled from everything. Digital business teams build insights by harvesting
and assembling data from sources within a customer’s ecosystem — sensors on the phone, the
“things” in the internet of things (IoT), wearables, human-embedded technology, and activities
from social channels.17 Individual user context dynamically meshes with the known historical
needs of users in that context to provide dynamic, real-time solutions to a user’s need. Context
brokers, which entered in stage 2, advance substantially to support these services. For example,
the combination of heart rate data from a wearable, perspiration data from a shirt with embedded
sensors, and the outside temperature allows a device to anticipate that a consumer will soon be
thirsty and provide directions to cafés or stores to buy a drink.
›› Construction assumes connected device ecosystems and dynamic assembly. Connected
device ecosystems give developers information about the nearby environment. These ecosystems
comprise a set of device types, communication protocols, and user interfaces. Devices proactively
download (or stream) experience components from the web and/or experience stores along
with control of connected things; this is the evolution of today’s IoT. Machine learning is key to
orchestrating experiences. The home has one dominant set of ecosystems; the car has a separate
set. Components may overlap between the two sets, but there isn’t a single set to rule them all.
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FIGURE 6 Blended Ecosystem Experiences Proactively Inspire Users To Do Things Beyond Their Requests
Blended ecosystem experiences
The future of digital experiences: stage 4
Consumers use a smartphone as the choreographer of their local ecosystem. Instead of making an
open-ended request to a single device, people expect all local devices to anticipate their needs and
provide appropriate responses within the ecosystem. The “virtual agent” of stage 3 now anticipates user
demands and responds with a complete solution, not simply a set of experiences that the user will execute.
Channel Context Construction
Anywhere on Shared Dynamically assembled
any device experience parts
5:34
NOW
You are allergic
to your
medication.
Context legend:
Any consumer information held by a company on its servers or on the device
(e.g., food I ate today, heart rate, or the distance I walked)
Data from a third-party platform (like Apple HealthKit) storing personal information
(e.g., hours of sleep and heart rate)
Data from connected devices (e.g., fitness bands, thermostats, scales, healthcare
devices, and the cloud)
Insights generated by analyzing existing and new data inputs; examples of insights might
include “no environmental effects” (e.g., pollution, Zika virus) or “possible medication allergy.”
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Future Digital Experiences Require Substantial Innovations
Software and hardware innovations will fuel the next round of digital experiences, but those in
software will be much more critical (see Figure 7). Entrepreneurs and heavyweights alike are pursuing
technology developments to bridge the gap between the static digital experiences we have today and
mobile’s future promise to be the ultimate utility operating within an ecosystem. The list of technology
innovations that will affect next-generation experiences is long, but a few of them are essential to serve
customers within an ecosystem. They include:
›› Engagement automation to scale proactive engagement. With more than 30 billion mobile
moments in the US alone each day, it is impossible to collect data and context, analyze them,
and generate insights in real time — let alone act on them. Personalized needs are too diverse to
predefine into the logic of an app or service. Engagement automation is a system or collection of
solutions that, given a set of rules, determines who to engage with, which content to use, at what
time, and with what channel. Today, mobile platforms create these rules manually; going forward,
services will demand automated rules or logic creation.
›› Intelligent context platforms to scale common insights. While knowing location in a vacuum
is interesting, knowing what the location means is valuable.18 A user’s latitude and longitude
may indicate that he is in Walgreens, but did he just come from a competitor’s store? If so,
the experience should react accordingly. The same is true of users’ emotions, situation, or
behavior, such as spending money or commuting. Digital business pros will unlock some of this
understanding using internally developed systems of insight.19 But most won’t be able to afford to
develop these independently, prompting the rise of a new category — context brokers.
›› Consumer-managed data to enable multiagent service delivery. If digital business leaders
are to enable blended ecosystem experiences, consumers must trust brands to share their data
appropriately with them to choreograph experiences. Personal identity and data management
vendors that let consumers decide what data to share, with whom, and for how long largely focus
on consumer privacy — not personal information management.20 Adoption of these solutions has
been low. Forrester believes consumers will begin to demand control over their data.21 Enterprises’
ability to share context will be a byproduct of technology adoption.22
›› Artificial intelligence to scale coaching. Giving us the confidence to make decisions and act in
our moments of need is at the top of the mobile needs hierarchy. This confidence may come from
trusted information, such as Waze letting the user know that she needs to leave 10 minutes earlier
than she planned for a dentist appointment or a coach guiding her to choose the best snack option
given a glucose reading. The amount of time available to us doesn’t scale, so AI is essential to
serve us in our moments of need based on real-time context.23
›› Composable parts to scale dynamic assembly. Instead of building large apps and websites,
developers will build fine-grained experience components, tagged with metadata, to enable
dynamic assembly. They will use a functional programming model to create reactive interaction
© 2018 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. 19
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models — a change from today’s object-oriented state-machine paradigm. Search engine
optimization re-emerges for developers as metadata descriptions become as important as the
component construction itself — and as search engines use this metadata in the composition of
blended ecosystem experiences.
© 2018 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. 20
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FIGURE 7 Software Innovations Critically Affect And Drive The Future Of Digital Experiences
Pay attention Determine applicability, or start using
Technology Today 1 year 2 years 3 years 4 years 5 years
App deep linking
Functional programming tools
Multitouch/3D touchscreens
Intelligent context platforms
Consumer privacy management
Machine learning
Voice control
Ultrawideband RFID
Augmented reality
Internet-of-things (IoT) data extraction
Mobile engagement automation
Artificial intelligence
Microsoft HoloLens
Identity federation and resolution
Streaming analytics/insights-as-a-service
IoT data sharing
Low-code/no-code tooling
Sensors in textiles
Depth sensors
Engagement federation technology
Emotion analysis
Dynamic assembly based on context
Flexible displays
Virtual reality
Context brokers
Image recognition
Eye tracking
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Recommendations
Build A Digital Experience Ecosystem Strategy
Mobile disrupted laptop computing, and it is soon to disrupt itself. Progressing through the four stages
we’ve outlined here gives rise to challenges in creating both front-end, blended experiences and
back-end services to support those experiences. Gone are the days of focusing on a single channel
(browser or mobile device) and creating a siloed, short-term strategy for it; consumers ultimately want
their mobile moments addressed by a robust experience that transcends individual devices to make
use of both local context and all local connected devices. Digital business professionals may find this
challenge daunting, but these five steps make it manageable:
›› Understand your customers’ ecosystems. Identify the ecosystems of devices, apps, and services
that your customers already use, and then find ways to serve your customers in those ecosystems.
Consumers may use a Google Nest for climate control but a Jarden smoke detector. Understanding
your customers’ ecosystems will help you prioritize investments and timing.24 Also, do not blink
when looking for the future ecosystem players: Apple and Google control today’s mobile ecosystem,
but the amount of low-cost hardware available has created a perfect storm that will allow unknown
vendors to create wholly new centers of gravity in tomorrow’s blended ecosystems.
›› Refine your strategy to harvest, share, and monetize data. Data and context will be a basis
for insights and competitive differentiation. Figure out what insights will help you anticipate your
customers’ needs, and proactively serve them. You’ll need technical access through APIs as well
as customer permission. You may own or generate data that’s valuable to other parties, so create
a strategy to share and/or monetize it with consumer permission. Platforms, enterprises, and
consumers will be much savvier about the value of their data and what they expect in return for it.
For example, consumers who share activity data with auto or health insurers will expect discounts
on premiums.
›› Build experience components. Every experience your organization creates should be
decomposable into what are ultimately experience components. Assume no hard connections in
either the back-end infrastructure or the front-end interface. All component interactions should take
place via well-defined APIs. What users consume purely on a mobile device today may soon be
consumed across that device and a car, TV, and screen-free device like an Amazon Echo.
›› Prepare for dynamic, ad hoc partnerships. Building adaptive intelligence demands real-time,
multidirectional data sharing.25 These data partnerships will require data interoperability. Determine
the technical and business details of working with the giants and a handful of partners with
which you share customers. As virtual assistants dynamically compose answers in stage 3, and
blended ecosystems emerge in stage 4, your experience will appear alongside parts of other
brand experiences. These scenarios create ad hoc partnerships that, if realized quickly, can be an
opportunity for additional partner activity.
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›› Normalize incoming environmental signals and outgoing experience triggers. A blended
ecosystem experience drives exponential growth in the number of front-end device types that you
will need to support. At the same time, the number of incoming signals, such as user data, context,
or environmental changes, will grow exponentially as well. Standardize everywhere possible to
contain this exploding matrix of technology. Start building a well-defined, governed API ecosystem
that enables third parties to access your data. Work with future context brokers to sift valuable
context from environmental noise.
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The Future Of Digital Experiences
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Supplemental Material
Companies Interviewed For This Report
[24]7.ai Fuzz Productions
4Info Google
Adobe Grability
Alibaba GrubHub
AliveCor Here
Amazon Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Augment Hilton
Avoka Technologies IHG
Axiom Jarden
Ayla Networks Dr. Jeff Xiong
Basis John Deere
Blippar KLM
Bosch Tools Kraft Foods
Braze (formerly Appboy) Kwilt
BumeBox Lark
Button LifeTrak
CI&T Lycos
Clorox MapQuest
CrowdOptic Marriott International
CVS Meeco
eBay Metromile
Facebook Microsoft
FedEx moBack
Fitbit Mobiquity
Fitmo Neustar
© 2018 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. 24
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The Future Of Digital Experiences
Vision: The Mobile eBusiness Playbook
NewAer Swrve
NewStore Target
Nexit Ventures ThoughtWorks
Nexmo T. Rowe Price
Nuance Communications Trunk Club
Photon Twitter
PlaceIQ Ubimo
Plastic Mobile Under Armour
PlayKids Unified Computer Intelligence Corporation
Pure Oxygen Labs United Airlines
Qualcomm Valencell
Quixey Volvo
Rakuten Vurb
ReDo (Do) Walgreens
Salesforce Yahoo
Sentiance YouWeb Incubator
Solstice Zebra Technologies
SpotHero
Endnotes
1
The Mobile Mind Shift Index measures how far consumers have shifted in their approach to mobile. Shifted individuals
have embraced mobile devices and expect companies to offer mobile interactions and features in context and in their
moment of need. See the Forrester report “The New Mobile Mind Shift Index: Global.”
Shifted consumers are much more likely to use smartphones and tablets than desktops to purchase goods, check
finances, and book travel; they are also more likely to use apps for news and food/cooking. Source: Forrester Data
Consumer Technographics® North American Online Benchmark Survey (Part 1), 2017.
2
In 2017, there were more than 7.5 billion people on the planet and almost as many mobile subscriptions. The 4.9
billion unique mobile subscribers owned over 3.7 billion smartphones. By 2022, 5.3 billion smartphones will be in the
hands of 5.5 billion unique subscribers. See the Forrester report “Forrester Data: Mobile, Smartphone, And Tablet
Forecast, 2017 To 2022 (Global).”
Source: “Current World Population,” Worldometers (http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/) and GSMA
Intelligence (https://www.gsmaintelligence.com/).
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3
Today, 25% of online adults have shifted in the US, and 32% are in transition. As many as 37% in Hong Kong, 21%
in metropolitan China, and 36% in South Korea have shifted. Source: Forrester Data Consumer Technographics North
American Online Benchmark Survey (Part 1), 2017.
For more information on Forrester’s Mobile Mind Shift Index (MMSI), see the Forrester report “The New Mobile Mind
Shift Index: Global.”
4
Source: Forrester’s H2 2017 Global Mobile Executive Online Survey.
5
For more information about the rise of context in mobile five years ago, see the Forrester report “The Future Of Mobile
eBusiness Is Context.”
6
Source: Forrester’s H2 2017 Global Mobile Executive Online Survey.
7
For more information on owned, manufactured, and borrowed mobile moments, see the Forrester report “Mobile
Moments Transform Commerce And Service Experiences.”
To read about how those types of moments affect marketers, see the Forrester report “Brief: Create Mobile Moments
That Boost The Brand Experience.”
8
More than 2 million apps are available to consumers today — up from around 1.5 million just one year ago. According
to Statista, the Google Play store has 2.8 million apps, and the Apple App Store has 2.2 million. Source: “Number of
apps available in leading app stores as of March 2017,” Statista (http://www.statista.com/statistics/276623/number-
of-apps-available-in-leading-app-stores).
The number of apps consumers use in a given day comes from Forrester Data. Source: Forrester Data Mobile
Audience Data, January to June 2015 (Global).
9
For more information on contextual privacy, see the Forrester report “The New Privacy: It’s All About Context.”
10
This is also a stock experience on Android today via Google Now.
11
Forrester defines enterprise preference management as the business practice of systematically collecting, managing,
and utilizing explicit customer preferences — about frequency, channel, content, interests, and intent — in outbound
communications. These preferences are managed in a centralized repository and collected in a user-facing portal
known as a preference center. For more information on consumer trust and the handling of preferences, see the
Forrester report “Implement Preference Management To Build Customer Trust.”
12
Enterprises rely extensively on nonmobile data and third-party data as well. They depend on observed data, such as
digital behavior or purchases; shared data, such as preferences; or purchased data from third parties like 4Info and
Axiom. For more information on the sources of context that enterprises bring to the table, see the Forrester report
“Vendor Landscape: Mobile Engagement Automation Solutions.”
13
It’s important to note that this does not apply to content aggregation or syndication.
14
Shared identity from companies such as Facebook and Google allows third parties to connect the dots and better
serve customers.
15
Beginning in stage 2, the amount of data sources that can be culled for context in an ecosystem becomes too large
for a single company to manage. Context brokers take all the sources of context in an ecosystem (location, time, other
humans, devices, etc.) and pull the valuable aspects out for a given experience. For example, in a shopping mall,
there may be thousands of beacons that are detailing movements of thousands of people, but a given brand will only
want the information of those who have shopped at competitive locations. Context brokers will be able to provide this
information in real time without sending the full set of data points on every person in every location.
16
Forrester calls these types of tools “personal data lockers.” For more information about the kinds of tools and
vendors that enable consumers to control their own data, see the Forrester report “Make Sense Of A Fractured
Consumer Data Ecosystem.”
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17
IoT data will no longer be proprietary and buried within a closed ecosystem; it will be shared on an open,
standardized platform.
18
For more information about the rise of context in mobile five years ago, see the Forrester report “The Future Of Mobile
eBusiness Is Context.”
19
Big data doesn’t create actions that shape your customer’s experience. Firms that master turning insights into action
form systems of insight to harness data, find valuable insights, and implement them to drive action that not only
improves the customer experience but also transforms it. To learn how to do this, see the Forrester report “Transform
Customer Experiences With Systems Of Insight.”
20
For more information about personal identity and data management, see the Forrester report “Personal Identity And
Data Management.”
21
For more information, see the Forrester report “Empowered Customers Demand Contextual Privacy.”
22
The catalyst for enterprises offering this control to consumers will be the following: 1) The entry of the internet
giants — Apple, Facebook, and Google among them — into this space will drive adoption; 2) global regulations will
require more explicit opt-ins and will make storing user data a liability; and 3) marketers will finally understand that
the data that consumers share is more valuable and more accurate than “big data” and analytics based on third-
party and inferred data.
23
Machine learning is a part of AI. What sets AI apart is the algorithm and the ability to learn without supervision. Some
machine learning is deterministic; the navigation app Waze is an example. AI is more about pattern recognition
and adaptation, which is why it is a great technology for fueling coaching experiences. AI is more contextual and
personalized. For more information about artificial intelligence, see the Forrester report “Cognitive Engagement: A New
Force Of Creative Destruction.”
24
Companies in China, for example, must serve customers on WeChat because Chinese consumers download few apps
and don’t use email. However, companies in the US are just starting to pilot initiatives with Facebook Messenger, which
boasts 1 billion active users. Source: Micah Singleton, “Facebook Messenger hits 1 billion users,” The Verge, July 20,
2016 (http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/20/12235476/facebook-messenger-1-billion-users-milestone-ios-app).
25
Forrester defines adaptive intelligence as the real-time, multidirectional sharing of data in order to derive contextually
appropriate, authoritative knowledge that helps maximize business value. For more information about adaptive
intelligence, see the Forrester report “Introducing Adaptive Intelligence.”
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