We know that the COVID-19 pandemic is triggering a sea change in our collective mindsets, priorities, and behaviors. Most of us have only begun to grasp that things will not snap back to normal in a matter of weeks or months — or maybe ever.

How will we care for our bodies and for each other? How will we trust each other, “authority figures,” corporations, and public institutions in the near future? Will the ways we value our possessions and our time be altered permanently? From extreme hygiene habits to socializing through video games, many behaviors that were once marginal may become the norm. And at the same time, might previously mainstream behaviors fade away, such as ride-sharing with strangers or shopping in brick-and-mortar boutiques?

We don’t know yet. It is tempting to conjecture about the profound social shifts tied to these questions, and to proclaim the fate of consumerism or the era where anything that can be done virtually will be. But as the crisis unfolds, we believe that close observation of the behavioral changes of people navigating this crisis will help detect signals to cut through the noise in our news feeds and the static in the thought-leadership industrial complex.

Times of crisis, terrible though they are, are deeply revealing of human behavior. As social scientists, we spend a lot of time investigating how and why people do what they do. Here are four key questions that we think are ripe for exploration in this unprecedented moment of collective behavior change. 

1. Which previously “fringe” customer behaviors will become mainstream?  

Times of crisis accelerate what we call “weak signals”––unusual or emerging behaviors from the fringes that are indicative of future mainstream behavior. To take a historical example, the Second World War not only drove the commercialization of technologies such as penicillin and television, but also catalyzed nascent forces of social and political change that were slowly germinating in the prior decades, notably in the area of civil rights. Studying weak signals rigorously is difficult, but betting on the right signals could very well determine which companies will thrive in the long run. As the sci-fi novelist William Gibson famously said: “The future is already here––it’s just not evenly distributed.”

Example of a weak signal we’re paying attention to: Until recently most of us didn’t think much about the provenance, hygiene, and logistics behind the products we brought into our homes. But, nearly overnight, that changed. As the crisis unfolds and over the coming years, how will we scrutinize sustainability and safety of the supply chain for the goods we consume?

2. How will the virus lift barriers to adoption?

Mass societal crises tend to push large volumes of people into new routines and behaviors that we once resisted. For example, many of us relied on call centers to resolve customer experience problems, but are now forced to resolve them through digital channels. Most of us relied on in-person medical visits, but are now forced to interact with our doctors remotely. The virus has instantly manufactured growth areas for existing (often digital) offerings. This represents an unprecedented opportunity to learn about what cuts through barriers to adoption, especially the psychology and behavior of late adopters.

Example of how we are paying attention to the pandemic’s lift on barriers to adoption: How can we onboard millions of effectively “new” online customers with meaningful experiences? How do we change the way we prioritize the feature set or product roadmap as their behavior shifts?  

3. What net-new behaviors are emerging that represent new opportunities and threats?

Some crises upend many different aspects of daily routines simultaneously. Quarantines, for example, force us to modify nearly every aspect of how we interact with others. It is precisely this type of crisis that can create totally new behaviors. This typically happens because the new behavior solves multiple needs created by the crisis. For example, some of the hardest hit hospitals in the US are not replacing in-person care with remote care. Instead they are adding “virtual” physicians to in-person care sessions (on a tablet or phone), to offload some of the burden of writing medical notes, calling family members, and supporting quite difficult patient conversations. And these new behaviors can have knock-on effects that matter for both users and the broader system. In the healthcare example, physicians who attend via tablets and phones can smile and connect and come off as much more “human” than their in-person counterparts who are hidden behind masks and protective gear.

Example of net-new behaviors that we’re paying attention to: The crisis is forcing new ways of communicating. Take, for example, victims of domestic abuse using code words in pharmacies, people color-coding Instagram posts to signal existential status, and digitally celebrating sacred rituals like weddings remotely. How will the pandemic create new ways of interacting – and which will stick?

4. What can the absence of things reveal about what is most important to us?

Much of our work at ReD is spent trying to go beyond what customers say they care about, and observe what truly drives their preferences and behaviors. We often deploy what sociologists call “breaching exercises,” where we ask a study participant to remove a product or service from their life for a time, to better understand if they miss it, why, and what kinds of workarounds they have to fill its absence. Crises like the current pandemic are removing countless aspects of our everyday lives: physical presence, hired childcare, shopping in physical stores, and so on.  These are all, in a way, naturally occurring breaching exercises that force people to reflect on what they miss about “the old way of doing things.”

The absence of things opens up opportunities to better understand what has always mattered to people but may have been overlooked. It also allows us to identify what people valued about established behaviors that can point to new opportunities.

Example of absences that we’re paying attention to: What can the current surge in digital communication tools reveal about the benefits and wonders of in-person interaction? What can that tell us about the future of social connection?

Studying the Next Normal as it Unfolds

Clients have come to us asking for clues to the ‘next normal,’ and for ReD’s take on the social shifts that are most relevant to business. Like all our projects, we are taking a beginner’s mind in our response. As we embark on an exploratory study of social change, the questions raised in this letter are a sample of our working field guide. We are already looking at patterns in our own collected data and insights as well as breaking research coming from universities and institutions. Our goal is to build a rich base of insights for our clients, synthesizing the most advanced publicly-available data with our own research.

Many experts are talking about how the crisis will “change everything”…but do we know that is true? And what things will change and what things will stay the same? This is a clarion call to social scientists—a hopefully once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to observe human behavior in flux.