What Kind of Homes Will Gen Alpha Want?

0:00Allison Robl Stransky:At ThinkLab, we believe that research should do more than just spark ideas. It should create meaningful change. So for every survey completed, we plant a tree. That means that your insights don't just shape the future of the built environment, they help reforest it. It's quick, it's meaningful, and it starts with your voice. Simply click the link in the show notes to get involved in our latest research and grow something bigger than data. Let's design a better future together.

0:37Allison Robl Stransky:Are you curious about the future of business, brand, and the built environment? Today, we dive into what Gen Alpha is already teaching us, and why the most future-ready leaders are listening now. Welcome to Design Nerds Anonymous, the podcast that sparks curiosity at the intersection of business and design. I'm your host, Amanda Schneider, founder and president at ThinkLab, and speaker, now featured on TED.com. In this episode, we're talking about the future of life, from the spaces we design to the technologies we trust, with two powerhouses shaping what's next. Danny Mariano is the CEO of Razorfish, a marketing transformation agency at the forefront of data, digital experience, and the evolving consumer journey.

1:29Allison Robl Stransky:She's also the author of the upcoming book, The Alpha Revolution, diving deep into how Gen Alpha is already rewiring the way we think about brand, influence, and expectations. Joining her is Alison Stransky, Chief Marketing Officer at Samsung Electronics America, where she leads not just the brand, but also the innovation that connects our devices, our homes, and our lives. With a background at Google, L 'Oreal, and Unilever, Allison brings a unique lens on how AI, wellness, and work are colliding, and what that means for the spaces we live in. She also brings sharp insight into what future consumers will expect from brands, and how those expectations might transform the homes, workplaces, and communities we design.

2:21Allison Robl Stransky:Together, they help us see around the corner of what's to come. From anticipatory smart homes and wearable health tech, to why Gen Alpha might just be the most hopeful generation yet. So to set the tone, we asked each guest to introduce themselves and capture the future in one word. You're going to love the words they picked. Here's Dani.

2:46Dani Mariano:The one word I would say that describes the future for me is hopeful. I think this generation is going to be tremendous. I think they are growing up at a time that is really difficult for any other generation to understand because they're born with technology in their hands, but they also have a voice. I'm Annie Mariano. I'm the CEO of Razorfish. We are a marketing transformation agency, and we really focus on understanding people and how to bring technology and marketing together to meet the needs of consumers. The one group we are really fascinated about right now is Gen Alpha. So they are turning 13 this year.

3:27Dani Mariano:They are a generation we've never seen before. And we work with our clients like Allison to really help them see around the corner of what's coming next, especially right now in this fast paced technology innovation cycle that we're in.

3:40Allison Robl Stransky:I love to hear a positive word. We've done a lot of research on Gen Z, of course, who is now in the workforce, now officially 18%, but projected to be as much as 27 % by the end of next year. It's driving a lot of negative conversations on the workplace side. So I love that you started us off with a positive word about this next generation to follow. But Allison, introduce yourself. And if you had to pick one word to describe the future, what would that be? Hi, Amanda. Thank you so much for having me. I am Allison Stransky. I'm the CMO of Samsung Electronics America. And I am so excited to join you and Danny today to talk about Gen Alpha, because we're thrilled to see what this next generation is going to do for all of us.

4:21Allison Robl Stransky:For a little bit more on my role, my team, a really special seat within Samsung. We are the corporate marketing team. So we're responsible for the Samsung brand, but we also have the big data team, the citizenship team, the corporate communications team, and the Connected Experience center within my org. And that is a team who is responsible for the future of how all of our devices are going to work together and how our vision of one Samsung better together and enhanced by AI is going to come to life. When I think about GenAlpha, the word that comes to mind is harmonized. I'm also really optimistic and excited because we really believe that technology, people, the planet, we're going to move into this place where we all work together so much more seamlessly that we believe in tech for good and tech that is going to make not just our consumers' lives better, but the whole world a better place.

5:19Allison Robl Stransky:Another positive word that makes my heart so happy. Hopeful and harmonized, which I think, especially in this divisive era that we're in, maybe it means Gen Alpha is going to bring some great hope. So hopefully that's inspiring for our listeners as well.

5:37Allison Robl Stransky:We're just getting started. A quick pause for this short break, and we'll be right back.

5:45Allison Robl Stransky:We are at our best when we have an authentic, deep relationship with all of the people that we work with. When we are brought in early, when we are seen as a partner, that's when we can deliver

5:56Dani Mariano:our best and provide the best outcomes for everyone involved. Mannington Commercial is relationship focused. We want to connect. And it's not just about flooring solutions. It's about how we all work together synergistically on all of the projects that we work on. It's not transactional. It's how can we really support the needs and the requirements with our full attention and our full suite of solutions. but really with the intent of making everything the best that it can possibly be. Hi, I'm Cindy Kaufman. I'm Vice President of Marketing with Mannington Commercial, and we are a very proud sponsor of the DNA Podcast.

6:40Dani Mariano:We would love to invite everyone to come and connect with us, whether that means visiting our website at one of our showrooms, connecting with one of our local reps in whatever market they're in. We will be more than happy to meet you where you are and support you through whatever your project needs are and longer term than that.

7:04Allison Robl Stransky:All right, let's get back into it.

7:10Allison Robl Stransky:I want to move quickly into stats. I'm a data nerd, a design nerd, and you both were invited here because we came across some research from Razorfish that really interested us. And Danny included Allison, which we're thrilled to have both of you. But I'd love to start with Razorfish's data. So Danny, maybe you want to pick one or two of those that were really inspiring to you as we look towards this hopeful, harmonized future. Tell us about those stats and why you think they are surprising or revealing that relates to how we're going to look at the future of homes.

7:44Dani Mariano:Yeah, so we at Razorfish have commissioned three waves of proprietary research. We are surveying from a 60 ,000 person panel globally, and we're looking at not just Gen Alpha, but also speaking with their parents. So we're doing this in the spirit of understanding this generation. Just to be clear, we're not trying to market to kids, but we are trying to understand them because I do think they are going to fundamentally change a lot of things that marketers have to be ready for, especially companies like Samsung. They're working on huge roadmaps and they're way ahead of the curve. So I love working with them as a partner.

8:17Dani Mariano:But if you're somebody who's doing product development, it's really important, especially like in the build space, you're thinking about what are these kids going to want when they turn 18, 25, 30. And so one of the things that has struck me in the research is what the table stakes are for them in terms of brands and their experiences. When we asked Gen Alpha who their preferred brands are today. We get results like Nike, like Samsung, like Amazon, Netflix. When we look at Gen Z 10 years ago, when they were about the same age, they were talking about cookie brands and cereal brands. And so the maturity of the brands that these kids are interacting with are so sophisticated.

9:00Dani Mariano:And the experiences that these brands create online and offline are very sophisticated. And so as Gen Alphas are forming their opinions at a very young age about what is normal, two hour delivery from Amazon, that's normal. For Gen Z and up, that's still pretty novel, right? That's still pretty exciting that could happen. For these kids, it's duh, of course I can get something in two hours. And so I think when they are learning about the household, when they are going to home improvement stores, when they're thinking about appliance brands, furniture, etc., we also see in the data that 71 % of parents of Alphas are saying that their children have a more mature understanding and knowledge of those brands than they did at their same age.

9:46Dani Mariano:So we have a lot of data points pointing to how mature these kids are in terms of their brand experiences and their life experiences. If I'm not going on too long, I'm also a data nerd. Their access to technology is unmatched. So by age 13, Gen Alpha has as many devices as adults do. With 90 % owning smartphones. I don't think that's a surprise if you're around kids. 73 % have laptops. 69 % have gaming consoles, 64 % have tablets, and 33 % have smartwatches. So that's a full range of technology. And I'm sure Alison will talk about this because she and I geek out about this all the time, about how seamlessly they move between all of those.

10:31Dani Mariano:But what we're also seeing in the research is that in real life is really important to these kids. And I don't know if that's because of the pandemic effect or that they're just craving in-person experiences. So when I think about the community that we're talking to today about what are we going to be doing about building homes and buildings and schools and different environments? How do we balance technology and the fact that they're using all this technology and have expectations, but also create spaces for them to gather where they're enabled by the technology? And they're super influential in the buying series.

11:08Dani Mariano:So they want to be part of designing the house of the future today.

11:12Allison Robl Stransky:I think that's so interesting. And this idea of in real life and digital and integration of those two has come up very heavily in our research. We've done a ton of research on Gen Z. And I would say that's one of the most shocking things is how blind they are to those two separate components. To most of us that grew up in the physical world first, where the digital came second, those are two separate things. But when we talk to these younger generations, it's really blurred. And Allison, I'm sure you're going to bring us some stats that really dive even deeper into this as we look at how many devices and just how that's happening in homes?

11:46Allison Robl Stransky:So we're really interested in understanding the relationship, not just with technology, but then AI in particular. So that's where we're leaning in to see where the future is going to take us because we're also looking at who's going to ultimately become an AI native generation, not just digital, not just tech, et cetera. So a couple of things that we find really interesting, Some of our research is, to be frank, a little bit more Gen Z leaning because we're Samsung. We're marketing to some of these consumers today while we are curious about learning about alpha for the future because they are where we will be going next.

12:23Allison Robl Stransky:But one thing that I found fascinating is that 86 % of Gen Z say that technology is essential to their lives, which as you were explaining how fluid everyone is, I think that last 14 % doesn't even think about it because it's so fluid or alpha is going to be the first hundred percent. It could go in either direction because it is just completely ubiquitous. It is so integrated. And now here comes the AI conversation. So more than 60 % believe that AI is going to help with daily tasks and making everything better, but they're also questioning it right now. They don't see the current tools as either being ready or enough because they are so future looking and mature in a lot of these areas.

13:15Allison Robl Stransky:So they're saying AI is coming. I really believe in AI, but it's going to get better than this. And I think their version of going to get better is also a little bit optimistic and accepting and welcoming as well. I'm very curious about the AI conversation, especially as it relates to the built environment. I think this is a real challenge that we're having in translating that. How is that going to shift what we know and what we build? We know that the world is shifting fast from AI, from all of these generations that we're talking about, climate change, expectations for work, integrations with healthcare.

13:51Allison Robl Stransky:We could talk about all the different vertical markets are all really evolving in real time, but our built environment, the things that we physically live in in the real world can't pivot overnight. It's long-term, often expensive to make changes, but it has to keep pace with these changing demands. So, Allison, I want to start with you, giving everything you're seeing in your work, especially this AI conversation. How do you think some of these shifts might show up in the built environment, specifically around homes? We're thinking about two things in particular. One, you need to design for adaptability because things are moving so much faster now and will probably continue to accelerate.

14:30Allison Robl Stransky:So there are the things that you cannot change. The walls are harder to move, not impossible either, but the things within those spaces, that's where we would need to see much more fluidity between your home. Let's also go back to COVID, how much that changed everybody's environment. Your home is not just where you sleep and entertain and eat to do everything in your home. But I think this is going to be a very native concept to Alpha, so that needs to continue. So that's the adaptability that we see. And then we also primarily think about it through the tech lens. Tech needs to completely disappear into this environment and the experience needs to trump the tech itself.

15:16Allison Robl Stransky:So as AI is becoming more prevalent, we know it's going to become even more personal, even more predictive, and it's going to move beyond automation to become much more anticipatory and multimodal. And so what all of that means is you're not going to have to think about or ask your tech to do these things for you. It's going to adapt your environment around you. It's going to make meal planning suggestions before you even ask the question by reading what's in your refrigerator and knowing your family's diet and your habits, and then presenting you with ideas. And that's just going to become so completely natural that you're not even going to think about the days of when you had to hand right out a shopping list.

16:01Allison Robl Stransky:It's just all going to be around you. So we are getting really excited about that. We're seeing little bits of it today, but this is another area that I think is going to be accelerating pretty quickly as well. And in the innovation that we have coming, a lot of these very futuristic experiences are there now, but this is almost the 1.0 generation of what AI on your devices is going to be doing because here it comes to accelerate and improve life. As we think about sharing your information, we had Phil Kirshner and a gentleman from Microsoft, Matthew Marzinski, talking about the workplace and AI and sharing a lot of your information to better connect and better align your workday with your home life.

16:46Allison Robl Stransky:But there's still a lot of hesitation about giving up your information. Allison, I'd love to ask, do you have any insight on that fear in the home? I feel like with Alexa, somebody's always listening. Maybe we already aren't afraid of that. Are you seeing the same hesitation? Everyone has a different and personal take on what they are comfortable with. So to us, privacy is also paramount. Within all of our devices, it's completely customizable. So you want to save it only on the device so that it's not uploaded into the cloud. You have that choice. You want it used just for you and not in the greater marketing space.

17:23Allison Robl Stransky:You have that choice. So I would say more than anything else, we are aware of the way people feel and we give you the option to make sure that you are comfortable with how your data is being used. But data is also this great currency because even when it does exist on your device rather in the greater sphere, your device is going to become much more helpful to you. And we really believe in getting to that end benefit of adding value, adding helpfulness to your life. Like we really do, back to all the positivity, we're doing this to help every consumer achieve that personalized, customized, better home life experience.

18:07Dani Mariano:Allison, can you talk at all about some of the things you guys launched at CES around Knox and creating blockchains at the home level? Because I think as that becomes more and more ubiquitous, that starts to work against this privacy question of how you protect the data within your home versus data in the world.

18:27Allison Robl Stransky:Yes, exactly. So what Danny was alluding to is the Knox matrix. So with all of your Samsung products, when they work together, they actually create this matrix of protecting your data even more. So it is blocking out bad actors, but also to that point, fully customizable. You build your own matrix. And the idea here is everything is connected. You're logged in in your refrigerator and your TV. So protection is becoming even more important because when your fridge just plugged into the wall and that was the end of it, what was going to happen other than an electricity fail. Now, to get to all of this helpfulness and all of these higher order benefits, the devices have become more connected, their Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled and all of those things.

19:15Allison Robl Stransky:But that is where the Knox matrix comes in to keep you even more protected, the more devices that are working together. It's got such a great name too. It does. Yeah. That sounds like Fort Knox, right? Like it sounds very secure,

19:30Dani Mariano:Very secure. Yeah. But what I love about it is as we think about designing for the future, what I like a lot about what Allison's talking about, it's all about the use cases and understanding what people are going to want in their home. And what we see in the Gen Alpha research is they don't distinguish between in real life and being online, as you both were describing. They're just being. They don't change their persona in the online world. Gen Z feels more like themselves in the online world because they express themselves in a way that they don't feel comfortable doing in real life. But Gen Alpha is not reporting that same dynamic.

20:08Dani Mariano:They're themselves wherever they are. And in some of our early focus groups, it was fascinating to see how they talked about the different devices, which is a use case. Like you could move easily from the car to the house, from their phone to the tablet, to the TV. And And for them, it just makes sense. It's hard for them even to express, but they can tell you when they use each device and why. And the use cases are different depending on if they're alone or with groups. And so for me, when I think about this conversation, it's really about what are those use cases going to be? I love the idea of technology just disappearing because it just is.

20:45Dani Mariano:It's just like electricity. Of course, it's there, but it's not front and center. And I think that's a big difference for Gen Alpha versus Gen Z. and that Gen Z understands screens. My kids are Gen Z. So they remember cable TV, not when there was all this streaming going on. They remember a remote control instead of today you can basically talk to your remote. You don't have to bust through the channels and go through a guide and all of that kind of stuff. Just the experiences are so different. And I think if we focus on how do people and how do kids want to experience the world, they're so empowered.

21:18Dani Mariano:They want to see something online and then immediately do it in the kitchen or do the experiment or go down to Sephora and experience the beauty products. And I think when we talk about the home, we want to facilitate those kinds of interactions. And the security, of course, is important. We know privacy from some of our other research is top of mind for American consumers. The ways that we can start to think about protecting the home. And I think the Knox Matrix is one of those where it starts to make sense.

21:49Allison Robl Stransky:We'll be right back after this short break.

21:55Dani Mariano:I'm probably not alone or isolated in feeling that right now there's so much that we could choose to worry about and things feel really uncertain. What I find is that when we think about and spend time imagining the future, it can actually calm some of those fears. It can actually do something. What we're trying to do is catalyze action so when you see and feel and can touch the future in your mind, it inspires you to want to do something today to shape it. That's the entire point. Spending time thinking and discussing gives us the opportunity to shape that better future that we're all hoping for.