🧠 Google Hardware – Cultural Foresight for the Future of Productivity

Client: Google (via Canvas8), 2023
Role: Cultural Insight Lead – France Market
Services: Cultural Insight, Desk Research, Behavioural Foresight, Strategic Analysis

The Challenge

As part of its long-range innovation roadmap, Google Hardware set out to explore how attitudes toward productivity are evolving globally. The brief: develop rich, market-specific foresight to inform the future direction of screen-based products and consumer technology. This phase of research focused on France, with the goal of uncovering how cultural, economic, social, and technological shifts are reshaping what it means to be "productive" in work, home, and leisure contexts.

Strategic Focus

I was brought on to lead cultural desk research and synthesis for the French market. My work included:

• Uncovering cultural nuances of productivity through a gendered, generational, and class-based lens

• Mapping behavioural shifts across work, domestic labour, and leisure—from remote work and burnout to indoor gardening and slow travel

• Identifying barriers and enablers of productivity shaped by cultural norms, tech adoption, and shifting values

• Contributing new themes such as Loaded Productivity (gendered mental load) and Collective Productivity (climate-driven decision-making)

• Highlighting implications for tech design, UX, and product development within Google’s ecosystem

I helped build a clear, evidence-based narrative around how French users will want to engage with technology to manage their time, wellbeing, and productivity over the next 3–8 years.

Impact

The insights I delivered directly informed Google Hardware’s global foresight work shaping UX thinking, innovation scenarios, and product feature considerations across teams. My local lens revealed where global narratives fall short and where tech products must be adapted to meet culturally-specific needs and mindsets. My contributions also helped steer strategic discussions around how to design for empathy, simplicity, and value-aligned productivity in the French market.

Want Culturally-Driven Insight to Power Your Innovation?

I work with tech companies, agencies, and research consultancies to develop localised foresight and cultural research that informs product design, marketing, and innovation strategy. If you're looking to future-proof your product roadmap or understand how global ideas play out locally, get in touch!