Development of web-based participatory trend forecasting system: urtrend.net

The goal of this research is to develop a participatory system that can capture live trend issues and people's latent needs in the issues. Web 2.0 technology is adopted because open and sharable information platform is important for this development. The urtrend.net is developed with three sub systems: issue monitoring & generation system, imagination & creation system, and value finding system. This paper focuses on the development of the first and second sub systems. Using the System 1, trend related data are gathered and analyzed to extract emerging trend issues in our lives. Using the System 2, people can join freely the public discussion on the issues from the System 1. System 3 will be developed to analyze people's discussion to provide deep insights for designers. The urtrend.net enables designers and planners to be more creative and innovative because the system will produce more sophisticated trend information with rich and informative resources.