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3
 SHIFT 22 Editorial

4
‘DIGITAL IS 5

STILL IN ITS
INFANCY, Welcome to Shift, the annual

IT IS YOUNG report on the digital trends

that matter.

FRESH AND Shift is the brainchild of In The Pocket’s experts, who work in
the proverbial trenches of product and platform develop-

VIBRANT’
ment. This document is meant for you, the professional that
wants to stay ahead of the curve.
From inclusive design to low code, from crypto to the
metaverse: if it needs to be on your radar, you will read
about it here. More than ever, the digital landscape is in
flux. On your own, it is impossible to get a handle on every
important trend in the digital realm. You need guides to
navigate you through the trends that matter and that’s the
role we hope to play.
If I personally had to draw one conclusion from the
10 articles in this report, it would be that digital is still in its
infancy. It is young, fresh and vibrant. We have so much left
to learn. For companies that find the agility to adapt and
the courage to explore, the future is bright. This is only the
beginning.

Enjoy the read,

Jeroen Lemaire
Co-founder and CEO
 SHIFT 22 Contents

08 48
6 7
Europe’s product Hey ML, meet UX
challenge
56
18 Living on the edge
Data in healthcare:
time for action 66

How low-code can

26 you go?
Stop hiring for cultural fit
76
32 Through the web3
Inclusive design: looking glass
beyond regulations
90
40 Meditations on the
Shifting left on security Metaverse
 SHIFT 22 Europe’s product challenge

01 9

EUROPEʼS
Koen Boncquet
Tribe Lead

PRODUCT
CHALLENGE
 SHIFT 22 Europeʼs product challenge

Europe is an enormous, digitally

10 11
mature market. No doubt about it.
But how big and mature is it really?­
Why is it that the new Googles or
Amazons don’t originate in our
continent? How come we’re not Let’s take a look at some facts and figures. In total, about
450 million people wander the European continent,
­really competing in the digital whereas 330 million people stroll around the streets of the
­United States. Also, Europe has a higher portion of grad-
product race? It’s about time to uates in STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering

take a serious look at the United and Mathematics) and houses some excellent Computer
­Science departments in top universities such as ETH Zurich or
States, as the epicentre of digital ­Cambridge University. If that’s not enough, Europe tops the
charts when it comes to the number of smartphones in use.
entrepreneurship in our current Still, the important product companies that put their
stamp on our modern way of living originate almost solely
information age, and compare it in the US. Companies like Google, Facebook, Snapchat and

against Europe. Netflix have been immensely successful and even managed
to influence contemporary culture worldwide. If you look at
the 100 largest global companies, it’s striking that only three
European tech companies show up on the list.
It’s also remarkable that since 2010 the early-stage
startup investments in California alone double that of all of
Europe. One can only look at this and conclude something
doesn’t add up… How come the EU doesn’t make better
digital products?

TLDR Europe has a product problem. Although we have a
bigger market than the US, we’re trailing behind in
the worldwide digital product race. In this article, we zoom in on the
reasons for this product challenge and look for possible solutions
to put Europe on top of the charts.
A scattered landscape
One of the main reasons is Europe’s diversity. The EU
consists of many different markets that product companies
and entrepreneurs cannot treat as one. Scale-ups struggle
because the European landscape is too scattered. Europe
 SHIFT 22 Europeʼs product challenge

12
Tech startup 13
investors
may have more people than the US, but its economy is
­essentially a patchwork of different markets. Every ­other­­
in Europe
market comes with custom internationalisation or even
different regulations which mean your products have to
change. Consider the real estate and fintech domains: both
have a lot of country-specific regulations, creating a hard
border, not only physically, but also digitally.
Making matters worse, compared to the Anglo-Saxon
model, the economic model used in European societies is
much less flexible and less suited for rapid technological
change. The American economy and the Anglo-Saxon ap-
proach, in general, have been more successful in coping
with this technological change. Not surprisingly, the UK
consistently tops the European charts for investments and
startup successes.

Acknowledging the differences

There are big differences in the digital maturity of
­European countries. We have to recognise that many ­areas
in Europe are digitally underdeveloped, especially in the
more southern countries. In Romania, less than 1 out of 4
people bought something online last year, while in the UK
it’s more than 4 out of 5. Scandinavia has some of the most
mature digital economies in Europe, housing multi-­billion-
dollar companies like Spotify and Klarna.
Let’s zoom in on European cities. Across the continent, Source: Tech.eu

there are some city-based hubs for knowledge sharing such

as Stockholm, London, Barcelona and Amsterdam. These
are great accelerators but are typically much smaller than
their counterparts in America or Asia. Moreover, the future
will have more and more megacities, but none will be in
A broad overview for anyone who’s keeping track of the European technology invest-
ment scene. The team at TechStars created this map of 300+ investors who routinely
invest in Seed, Series A or Series B rounds raised by European startups. All in all, it totals
about €15 billion worth of funds. The bigger the dot, the bigger the investments.
 SHIFT 22
14
Europe. The United Nations forecasts the emergence of
10 additional megacities by 2030, of which more than half
will be in Asia.
So, looking at the numbers, you can see how Europe is
actually a scattered digital landscape, with a lot of variation
in maturity. The northern markets are leading the way, but
aside from some urban talent concentration in the main
­cities, a lot of continental Europe is three to five years be-
hind. The fact that too few product companies arise is first
and foremost a geographical ecosystem problem.
Product Development in Europe
A market that is not unified enough, with too few big
tech hubs for knowledge sharing, ultimately keeps us down
in terms of building state-of-the-art software ­products.
Product innovating is an underdeveloped and underap-
preciated discipline on our continent. In
particular, product-­specific roles such as The ratio of engi-
product managers and product design-
neers to full-time
ers come in way too late in the lifecycle
product managers
of new companies.
One study showed that the median was 24:1 in the EU,
headcount at which European startups compared to 8:1
installed a full-time product manager is in the US.
34. In contrast, Valley-based companies
typically hire a full-time product manager within the first
10 employees. The ratio of engineers to full-time product
managers was 24:1 in the EU, compared to 8:1 in the US.
The European system produces too many ‘product
people’ who are, in fact, glorified project managers with
MBAs and experience limited to corporate environments.
Europeʼs product challenge
15
We strongly believe that the best product people should
progress from engineering, design or other roles that
have actually been hands-on in building successful digital
products.
So it seems that we mostly have a ‘quality product
problem’, not a lack of great people or a willingness to go
there. It’s an underdeveloped and scattered ecosystem,
undervaluing core roles that excel in building great software
products. Mature markets simply value product manage-
ment and design a lot more, leading to better products.
How we can catch up
A combination of ideas and actions on different levels
will be the way to put us on track for success. Some of them
will be on a corporate level, others on a political one. We’re
convinced Europe should further federalise and unify. Some
necessary ingredients are targets for governmental R&D
expenditure, focus on a minimum quality of education (e.g.
mastering a second, shared language), allowing businesses
to set up equity incentives for employees more easily, and
so on.
In any case, it’s clear that there’s no silver-bullet solu-
tion, but we do want to highlight one main idea here.
Businesses should do their part in establishing true product
manager roles and providing the necessary training to
groom tomorrow’s product heroes. Companies can set up
Associate Product Manager (APM) programs to train new
high potentials in a product role. Unfortunately, these
practices are not yet common enough outside of the US.
And if companies even have them at all, they often lack
quality or depth.
 SHIFT 22

16

The Associate Product Manager Program should ide-

ally be a rotational program, consisting of opportunities
across different teams, designed for young potentials who

Better Products,
are interested in exploring product development opportuni-
ties. Understanding product strategy, analytics, tactics, and
complex technical challenges should be the goal.

Bigger Futures.
The business world is well-positioned to take the lead
since it’s not a discipline you can typically learn during your
university years. We need to develop more people with these
highly sought-after skills and make them the entrepreneurs
that help build the next European unicorns.
Once we acknowledge what is holding Europe back
and why it’s holding us back, we can move forward with a
We help you create top-tier digital products
new force and maximise the talent and professional energy to ensure a bright digital future.
that is abundant in our beloved continent. 

Discover more at www.inthepocket.com

 SHIFT 22 Data in healthcare: time for action

18

02 19

DATA IN
HEALTHCARE
Bo Smet
Product Strategist

TIME FOR
ACTION
 SHIFT 22 Data in healthcare: time for action

We live in an age where data is

20 21
abundantly available and accessi-
ble as never before. We have more
services and devices that generate
data around us in the blink of
an eye, yet there remains a big
elephant in the room: all too often,
Graphs, charts and numbers. Everyone who hasn’t been
we don’t know how to look at data living in a cave has grown so much more accustomed to

correctly and fail to process what it a truckload of data since the Covid pandemic began. But
that doesn’t mean this has influenced our behaviour sig-
means for users. nificantly. We have seen first hand — and on an unprece-
dented scale — that too much data risks drowning out the
message. This is not a pandemic-specific issue, but rather
Covid has highlighted a bigger problem: it’s no longer the
question of how to collect the data, but more than ever
about what to do with data.

The quantified self 2.0

TLDR With a device in our pocket or strapped around our
wrist, the Quantifiable Human has become reality.
We’re sitting on a huge pile of valuable data, but all too often we
lose sight of the data’s real worth and what it can mean for users.
Time to make data actionable.
As well as public data about a new virus, we have
seen the advent of handheld devices capable of detailed
health analysis. The life science industry is working hard on
the miniaturisation of various electronic diagnostic tests for
viruses, cholesterol, glucose, and STDs etc. And health apps,
FitBits or smartwatches are here to stay. Numerous apps
and small hardware devices have been popping up, aiming
to make a user’s life easier or even save a trip to the doctor.
Whereas earlier, we needed to actively choose to
track our data, now the device in your pocket or on your
wrist is so advanced and packed with sensors that much
of the tracking is done automatically. Tracking your life is
 SHIFT 22
22
no longer a conscious choice. The massive data footprint
this leaves behind makes gaining any valuable insights a
challenge. The signal-to-noise ratio becomes substandard
and so we look at algorithms to tell us what is important
and noteworthy. And therein lies the biggest weakness: the
reliance on opaque mechanisms that interpret data and
make decisions for us.
Designing data-rich applications
How should we deal with the abundance of data?
From our own experience in building data-rich applica-
tions, we’ve put together a few pointers on how to design
an ­effective interface around numbers and insights that
offer clarity and real value for users.
1 Focus on the most important data first. People are
never 100% focused when they open your app. Try to pick
one meaningful statistic that’s immediately relevant to your
user and build your interface around that. Users who want
more can dig for detailed data on a deeper level.
2 Give context. Numbers by themselves hardly mean
anything if you can’t compare them. Always show a frame of
reference around your number. Using averages over time in-
tervals is a popular tactic to communicate how you’re doing.­
Think: ‘How far along am I on my daily goals?’, ‘Is today a
good day or an average one?’ or ‘Am I still improving?’
3 Translate data into actionable insights. Numbers
can give you the naked truth, but they fail to convey any­
thing meaningful without context. Use words to describe
Data in healthcare: time for action
23
the current states and suggest the next action to take. For
example: when showing a positive virus test result, suggest
going to the doctor to discuss treatment.
4 Communicate insights with visuals, numbers and
words. Make sure your message is accessible to all. Com-
bine numbers, text, colours and graphs. Colour coding can
make values instantly readable and graphs are ideal for
comparing with averages.
5 Protect the privacy of your user. When dealing with
sensitive medical data, don’t assume the user’s device is
always used in a private setting. Try to put as little private
information as possible on your app’s launch screen.
Make data great again
The real goal is, of course, changing human be-
haviour. We need to understand that the human brain is
­inherently lazy and runs on auto-pilot when confronted with
familiar situations. The behavioural scientist BJ Fogg has
created a model of three factors that influence behaviour
change: motivation (the willingness to
change), ability (time, money, energy) Tracking your life
and an external trigger. We should use is no longer a
this to understand how the right data
conscious choice.
insights can trigger behavioural change.
The massive data
To transform data into triggers, we
need to process it into personal, contex-
footprint this leaves
tual and actionable chunks. Taking into behind makes
account the person the data is presented gaining any valuable
to and tuning it to their preferences can insights a challenge.
 SHIFT 22

24

be the difference between ignoring an insight and being

motivated by it to change your patterns.
Long-lasting behaviour change doesn’t happen over-

Better Products,
night of course. The Fogg model teaches us that there are
different ways of changing behaviour. From starting a new
behaviour, all the way to stopping unwanted behaviour.

Bigger Futures.
Whatever the pattern, change starts with taking small steps;
reminding someone to take a run at a time when you typi-
cally see very low movement is a good example.
Once you succeed in triggering users to implement
these one-time changes, you can focus on creating patterns
of behaviour, such as going running every day for a month.
And​​​​that’s the main goal: to implement lasting change in
All companies are transforming into digital
a person’s behaviour and to offer a truly meaningful expe- versions of themselves. Some fast, some slow,
rience. To make data actionable. 
but all have entered the arena of digitisation,
automation and UX. And so have you.

In The Pocket offers better products for bigger futures.

Not only do we design, build and ship digital products that
your customers love, we also define the strategies and
architectures that propel your business forward.

Looking at your future aspirations, we will work with you

to create digital products that make your customers hap-
py and your business grow.

Discover our work at www.inthepocket.com

 SHIFT 22

26 27

STOP
HIRING
FOR
03 Emma Braeye
VP People CULTURAL FIT
 SHIFT 22
Try to picture your last job interview. Chances
28 are high that you remember someone drop-
ping the term ‘company culture’ and that they
­wanted to make sure that ‘you’re the right
fit’. Nothing wrong with that. Culture lies at
the heart of any organisation and, naturally,
you want to attract people who fit the bigger
­picture and share the same norms and values,­­
don’t you? Then it’s only logical to hunt for
­cultural fits, right? Well, we hate to break it to
you, but you’re mistaken.
TLDR When companies hire, they tend to look for that per-
fect cultural fit. But is that all there is to it? The simple
answer is no. If you want to keep your company culture alive and
ready for the future, it’s time to turn that mindset around.
Stop hiring for cultural fit
29
Don’t get us wrong. Having a strong company culture is vital
for any organisation and the people you hire shouldn’t be
the complete opposite of that. But merely focusing on the
cultural fit can be a shaky ground on which to build your
company’s future. It’s a dangerous mistake to perceive your
company culture as something that’s set in stone, something
defined. Nothing is riskier than assuming that after a certain
number of years, you’re finally there: you have moulded the
company culture into its final shape and only want to hire
people that fit right into your company. That’s when things
start going downhill.
Stop looking for fits, start looking
for contributors
The people you hire today will shape the future of your
company. Focusing on hiring for cultural fit simply doesn’t
cover the load. Just ask yourself this: why would you want
to hire people who fit perfectly into your current culture?
Doesn’t that mean bringing in people with the same mind-
set, the same skills and the same qualities? What is the value
of hiring someone who already thinks the same way? It
isn’t challenging, and it won’t help your company prepare
for the future. Hiring purely for a cultural fit hollows out the
existing culture and stops the development of new ideas
and aspirations. How’s that for shaky ground?
The most important thing to do is to change your focus
from cultural fits to culture contributors. As we mentioned
earlier, workplace culture is something that’s alive and
 SHIFT 22
30
needs nourishment. The future talent of your organisation
should bring that nourishment to the work floor. Instead of
looking for the perfect cultural fit, it pays off to find some-
one who doesn’t fit in seamlessly. Someone who brings new
ideas, or someone who dares to challenge current mindsets
to break the status quo. Those people will benefit your com-
pany as they bring diversity and innovation to your offices.
They break the cycle. Don’t go looking for the egg that fits
the dozen, but look a bit further for the odd one out.
Keeping culture alive
So how should you break the cycle? Although we say
that you need to stop hiring for cultural fit, you don’t want to
stop assessing, defining and articulating your culture along
with its values, goals and practices. Recognising your current
culture is the first and most important
step towards starting to challenge it.
Recognising your
Don’t be afraid to welcome new influ-
ences, and accept that your culture will
current culture is the
change over time. It’s normal, it’s healthy first and most impor-
and it allows for your company to dis- tant step towards
cover new pathways and set up a path starting to challenge
for growth. it. Don’t be afraid to
Next, promote diversity and en-
welcome new influ-
courage people to disagree. Avoid be-
ences, and accept
coming a monolithic block by creating
that your culture will
a safe space for new ideas and don’t be
afraid to mix things up a little. If a new change over time.
joiner or colleague feels free to speak
their mind and introduce new ideas, it opens the way for
workplace culture to evolve and encourages teams to
Stop hiring for cultural fit
31
look beyond the safe environment of what they already
know. Automatically, you’ll create a much more diverse and
open-minded workplace.
The fertile soil for an evolving company culture comes
from new hires. Your new rule of thumb when recruiting new
employees should be to assess their cultural contribution
capabilities. Try hiring people with diverse backgrounds,
skills and personalities and avoid the pitfall of picking the
usual suspects. Don’t start the hiring process with a set of
boxes to tick to see whether the person fits in your company,
but rather prepare questions that inquire about their indi-
vidual potential and personal views on certain processes or
strategies. You’ll reap the benefits later.
Talent nourishes culture
Company culture is a cornerstone of every modern
business. And it’s essential to keep the noses in the same
direction. Hiring for that cultural fit instinctively seems like
the right thing to do, but it carries a huge risk of smothering
the culture that keeps your company on edge. Today, it’s
about cultivating your culture and giving it room to grow.
Hiring new people with new insights is essential to keep
your culture alive and growing. The next time you’re hunting
for talent, instead of focusing mainly on a cultural fit, ask
yourself how that person will contribute to the success of
your organisation. What’s that saying again? Contribution
eats culture for breakfast? 
 SHIFT 22 Inclusive design: beyond regulations

32 33

INCLUSIVE
DESIGN
Stephanie Depuydt
Product Management Lead

Thijs Van de Broek

Strategist

BEYOND
REGULATIONS 04
 SHIFT 22
Inclusive design is inevitable. And rightly so.
34 Aiming for digital products that do not exclude
a single human being is a goal worth fighting
for, but it’s much more than that. New laws and
regulations are on their way within Europe, and,
although we applaud that, companies should
not consider them as a checklist of new com-
pliances for their products, but rather as an
­enormous pool of untapped potential. Incorpo-
rating inclusivity and accessibility into the way
you work today will make your products stand
out and give your company that extra competi-
tive advantage in the years to come.
TLDR With new laws and regulations on the horizon, in-
clusive design is popping up on every organisation’s
agenda. Instead of preparing yourself to tick the boxes in order
to comply with new legislation, you could dive into a whole blue
ocean of untapped potential if you’re willing to take inclusivity and
accessibility seriously.
Inclusive design: beyond regulations
35
Credit where credit’s due: the European Union is playing a
leading role in taking digital accessibility and inclusivity se-
riously. Since 2016, they have made it compulsory for every
EU member state to incorporate the Web Content Accessi-
bility Guidelines, or WCAG, into their legislation. And things
are about to change. A new European law has passed that
will not only update and expand these rules but will change
the way we need to think about accessibility and inclusivity.
Without diving into technicalities, the EU is ramping
up the rules and norms about accessibility and inclusivity,
going into effect in every member state from July 2025.
The big shocker? These new laws and regulations will now
also include private companies. In the upcoming European
Accessibility Act the rule of thumb is ‘design for all’. Roughly
translated, this comes down to making the design of prod-
ucts, environments, programmes and services accessible to
everyone, to the greatest extent possible, without the need
for adaptation or specialised design. Simply put, all digital
products should be inclusive by design.
Sounds great, right? It does. But we all know how peo-
ple cope with new regulations. All too often we see them
as a long checklist with a lot of boxes to tick. Let’s get this
clear once and for all: inclusive design is not a one-off or an
add-on. There is no all-encompassing checklist. It’s part of
your strategic choices, your way of working and your culture.
Once you realise this, a whole new market opens up to you
— if you’re willing to look at it the right way.
Our warped view on disabilities
Most of the time we view disabilities from a medical
point of view: the disability is considered as an individual,
 SHIFT 22
36
medical problem that needs to be prevented, cured or con-
tained. The problem is the disabled person. But is that really
the case? What if we looked at disability from a totally differ-
ent angle? Instead of focusing on the disabled person, try to
view them as people who are disabled by barriers in society
and not by their impairment or difference. Does the prob-
lem lie within the person in a wheelchair, or does it lie within
the buildings without ramps? In this societal model, exclu-
sion­is not an inevitable consequence
of having an impairment. Disability is
A solution that
not a personal medical condition, but a
mismatched human interaction. aims to overcome
It makes more sense to consider in- a certain barrier
clusiveness as taking away as many bar- often helps a much
riers as possible. Why? Because everyone larger group of
encounters barriers one way or another. people than you
So a solution that aims to overcome a
would expect.
certain barrier often helps a much larger
group of people than you would expect.
Let’s take visual impairments as an example. You’re
considering adding audio descriptions in your app for the
visually impaired, but you’re afraid it’s a big investment for
only a small number of people. That might be right if you
believe it would only benefit permanently blind people.
But that’s simply not the case. Broaden your view. Consider
the huge number of people who are starting to experi-
ence problems with their eyesight. Or think about situations
where we’re not able to look at our screens, such as when
we’re driving the car or riding a bike.
Everyone experiences disabilities or barriers, whether
permanently, temporarily or situationally, so we should
embrace inclusivity in the products we ship. Try this for a
Inclusive design: beyond regulations
37
mantra: inclusive design isn’t about creating a specific de-
sign for disabled people; it’s about creating a flexible design
that needs to work for everyone in any given situation.
It’s not a cost, it’s an opportunity
Let’s crunch some numbers. According to The Click-
Away Pound Report, 83% of users with accessibility needs
limit their shopping to sites they know are barrier-free. 85%
of the respondents say businesses lose out when they don’t
cater to digital access needs, according to a survey by
Inviqa. Research by Q42 shows that a staggering 43% of
Dutch interviewees admit using one or more accessibility
features on their phones.
We have a considerable group of people with a per-
manent disability, but the actual audience that appreci-
ates inclusivity efforts goes way beyond that. Embedding
inclusive design, and going beyond the obligatory checklist,
shows real and massive potential for growth. It’s one of
those rare win-win situations. It increases your audience
reach as your features include more and more people. It im-
proves your product’s usability, not only for the unfortunate
few but for everyone. It leads to an increase in customer
loyalty as users can use their favourite app, no matter the
specific barrier they experience at any given time or place.
Last but not least, it definitely improves your overall brand
perception. It’s cool to care.
Integrating inclusive design
We hope that by now you have realised that acces-
sibility and inclusive design isn’t merely about complying
 SHIFT 22
38
with some new set of rules and regulations, but that it is, in
fact, both an opportunity for you and for your users. User
outcome beats compliance. However, make no mistake:
integrating inclusive design is not a one-off, nor is it an add-
on. You won’t achieve it by checking off a list of things and
carrying on as usual. It needs to become fully embedded
in your company, your processes and your culture. No easy
task, but here’s something to get you started.
1 Determine the status quo and look for the way
forward. To get a first impression of where you’re at
as a company, try selecting some flagship sections of your
product and start user testing these for accessibility. Don’t
trust your own assumptions, but invite impaired users to put
your inclusiveness to the test. Exclusion is a proactive choice,
so ask yourself who you are currently excluding and who you
are willing to exclude. This question isn’t as loaded as you
might think. Banking apps don’t want children to use their
products, right? So they exclude them by choice.
Knowledge building
Knowledge building isn’t easy and it shouldn’t
be underestimated. Start ­small and try picking
a focus, like visually ­impaired users. It should
get you on the right track and you’ll see
concrete results quicker than you think.
Inclusive design: beyond regulations
39
2 Build and spread knowledge internally. Start an
‘Inclusive Design Domain’. Look for a group of
cross-functional employees who feel passionate about in-
clusive design and are willing to make a change in your com-
pany. They can be the starting point for sharing new insights
and the go-to team for any accessibility-related questions.
And get them to document their learnings. Let them partici-
pate in meet-ups or talks in your company to spread aware-
ness. And, perhaps most importantly, include relevant users
as quickly as possible. Interviewing users always leads to the
best, most honest and specific feedback on your products.
3 Process integration. Make sure your inclusivity efforts
are durable by integrating them into processes. There’s
no exact way to do it; the most important part is to just start.
It’s different for every organisation. Having self-empowered
or autonomous delivery teams, however, will make it eas-
ier­­to adapt processes within teams and let them spread
throughout your whole organisation. You’ll see how fast
it changes colleagues’ mindsets if you make them aware
of the topic. They’ll perceive it as a new challenge, which
will have a positive impact on the world around them.
Look, the main point is inclusive design is here to stay. It’s
not just hype; it will become the new standard, enforced by
European law. Instead of acting out of fear of becoming
non-compliant, you should look beyond the legislation and
tap into the wide-open space of opportunities this creates
for you and your company. Better today than tomorrow. 
 SHIFT 22 Shifting left on security

40

05 41

SHIFTING
LEFT ON
Louis De Jaeger
Security & Privacy Officer SECURITY
 SHIFT 22
In 2020, more than 22 billion records of
42 ­confidential information and business data
were exposed, according to Tenable’s 2020
Threat Landscape Retrospective Report. With
technology accelerating and evolving at
­tremendous speed, the quantity and sophisti-
cation of security threats has picked up as well.
Security can no longer be a final step before
delivery; we must integrate it throughout the
whole software development lifecycle. This shift-
left approach to security won’t just make your
software safer; it will save you time and money.
TLDR More widespread than ever and gaining in ingenuity,
security attacks are on the rise. For too long, we’ve
considered security as something to deal with at the end of the
development cycle. Not anymore. Shifting left on security doesn’t
only make your product safer; it saves you time and money while
you’re at it.
Shifting left on security
43
We’ve come a long way in terms of speed of delivery. The
DevOps movement, for one, brought along a fierce acceler-
ation to the development cycle. Adding to that momentum
is the rise of SRE practices and Infrastructure-as-Code. Over
the last few years, we’ve been able to continuously improve
that time-to-market, but we’ve never really stopped to con-
sider security for a moment. The harsh truth is that it has
become more and more critical to prevent security issues,
rather than waste time and money fixing them.
In the past, a dedicated security team would take
care of the necessary security and compliance checks of
your product, just before deploying it to production. Every-
one who ever shipped software now probably knows that
fixing security issues at the end of the development cycle
is a real pain. For those who don’t know, if you involve your
security team only at the end of the delivery lifecycle, it is
usually painfully expensive and time-wasting to make the
necessary changes to improve your product’s security. Yet
few have acted on this.
Prevent, don’t fix
The general concept of shifting left is all about
­introducing tasks to clear classic bottlenecks — like testing
or deployment — earlier in the development cycle. DevOps
 SHIFT 22 Shifting left on security

44 45
STATE
is a successful consequence of the shift-left approach, but
it doesn’t encapsulate security. So, from now on, let’s try to
OF
think in a DevSecOps mindset: we don’t only want to shift se-
curity to an earlier stage in the cycle; we want to integrate it DEVOPS, 2021:
in every step along the way in order to accelerate the cycle.
The main goal of shifting left on security is preventing
failure by performing security checks earlier on. In prac- Consistent with previous
tice, engineers will catch and solve potential security issues
reports, we found that elite
­before they can become a real problem. With DevSecOps,
teams can continuously take security into account when performers excel at imple-
working on their products. Inevitably, the shift-left approach menting security practices.
will result in cost-saving (the sooner you detect, the cheaper
the fix), a faster time to market (eliminating security bot-
tlenecks), the mitigation of risks and the creation of a solid This year, elite performers
security culture in your company. who met or exceeded their
reliability targets were twice
Automation and security: it’s a match as likely to have security
Apart from the obvious benefits a shift-left approach integrated in their software
brings about, there’s more to gain below the surface. When
development process. This
embedding security early on, and at each stage of devel-
opment and testing, your team will save tons of time. The
suggests that teams who
key to that time-saving lies in automation. It may sound have accelerated delivery­
counterintuitive, but automated security testing does a while maintaining their
splendid job on condition that it’s applied early enough in
the development lifecycle.
reliability standards have
The market offers lots of tools that can help you shift found a way to integrate
left and implement automation through your pipeline. security checks and prac-
­Static or Dynamic Application Security Testing (SAST/DAST)
tices without compromising
automatically checks for vulnerabilities in your application.
Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST) combines their ability to deliver soft-
these two and is typically employed as some kind of agent ware quickly or reliably.
 SHIFT 22
46
into the runtime environment that observes operations and
attacks. Dependency Scanning, on the other hand, scans
for flaws in dependencies — a must-have to check your
open-source libraries — and Secrets Detection guarantees
that you have no compromised secrets such as database
credentials or API keys.
In essence, automation means less room for human
errors, increased code coverage and no issues in your pro-
duction environment. If you want to shift left on security
without automation, you will not succeed.
Don’t move responsibilities, share them
Shifting left is not about moving responsibilities, it’s
about sharing responsibilities. By aligning development,
operations and security, we can start talking about a true
DevSecOps approach. The cross-pollination between these
branches inevitably leads to more awareness and educa-
tion among the technical teams in your organisation. If
certain security processes become embedded in your way
of working, developers, for instance, will automatically gain
a better understanding of how security protocols work and
how they positively impact the outcome.
Does that mean that security teams We don’t only want
become obsolete in the long term? Ab- to shift security to
solutely not. Empowering DevOps to
an earlier stage in
perform security testing doesn’t equal
the cycle; we want to
replacing the core security team. To make
sure your shift-left process is functioning
integrate it in every
properly, you still need to perform pen- step along the way
etration tests or audit access rights and in order to acceler-
logs. On top of that, your development ate the cycle.
Shifting left on security
47
team will still need guidelines, best practices and new pro-
cedures that are developed and maintained by the core
security team.
Downsizing your InfoSec team, failing to collaborate
with them or engaging them too late are the most common
pitfalls that prevent teams from shifting left on security. If
your information security team is understaffed, they are
not able to address all risks and oversee all the processes
and people that they need to. It leads to situations where
they are not able to collaborate with your software teams,
something that is vitally important in this era of continuous
cyber-attacks.
Assess, learn and implement
Starting with shifting left on security is not always easy
and we can’t give you a one-size-fits-all solution. What’s
most important is that you define a clear strategy. Decide
where you intend to go and try to do this in a one-page
strategy that you can share with the company. Your strate-
gy will help every colleague to understand what successful
implementation looks like for your organisation. Include
vision, ownership structure and metrics into the document
and follow a ‘plan-do-check-act methodology’ to mature
your strategy over time. It doesn’t have to be perfect from
the beginning as long as you’re willing to stick with it.
Over time, you’ll see that shifting left on security will
help your organisation reduce risk, improve security and gain
efficiency in resolving potential issues. What’s not to love? 
 SHIFT 22 Hey ML, meet UX

48 49

06

Rémi Delanghe
ML Engineer

Kenny Helsens
ML Lead

HEY ML, MEET UX

 SHIFT 22
As AI matures and becomes democratised, we
50 are seeing an exciting shift towards a more
­user-centric usage of data science and Machine
Learning. AI, as a design component, shows real
value in creating better products and empower-
ing users by influencing the user experience ­
in a meaningful way. Having users interact
more directly with AI systems does come with
challenges though. The newly emerging field
of ML/UX teaches us how we can make AI and
data science more inclusive and transparent ­­
for end-users, so they can trust and use it to its
full potential.
TLDR In the years to come, the fertile fields of Machine
Learning and UX will collide. As ML finds its way into
more and more of the products and services we use on a daily
basis, the focus now shifts to impacting the user experience in a
purposeful way. Welcome to the new world of MLxUX.
Hey ML, meet UX
51
At their core, data science, AI and ML transform raw data
into information, decisions and actions. They excel at au-
tomating data-driven processes and help us to make more
informed decisions. This chain from data to action and
their incredible flexibility makes them much-loved tools for
optimising business value in all types of industries.
Picture Facebook’s content feed, YouTube’s recom-
mender system, Instagram’s profanity detection or Uber’s
demand forecasting. What’s their common denominator?
They all use AI technologies to tackle business-critical chal-
lenges. Facebook and YouTube optimise for engagement,
Instagram wants to create an advertising-friendly space and
Uber wants to optimise resources and predict price elasti­
city. The fact that AI is at the core of such
widely-used products is a testament to
the maturity of AI and its business value.
We tend to ignore
Nevertheless, we tend to ignore the impact on the
the impact on the experience of the experience of the
end-user when choosing to optimise for end-user when
business reasons. Untransparent per- choosing to optimise
sonalised feeds and recommendations for business reasons.
create a false sense of reality and echo
chambers. Biased or poorly communi-
cated filters and content censorship lead to frustration and
distrust in end-users. Engagement is mistaken for an enjoy-
able or meaningful experience, often leading to an adverse
impact on mental health and the proliferation of fake news.
 SHIFT 22
52
All too often we blame products and companies for
using AI in order to make money, but we think too little about
the unintended consequences AI has on the user experience
side. So, instead of cursing the past, we should focus on what
we’ve already learned and improved in recent years and
start looking to the future.
ML For Users
When we think about how ML in products affects the
user, two considerations take centre stage: ‘Expectation
Management’ and ‘User Control.’
In traditional digital product design, we assume
­deterministic behaviour from the components we use. When
we press ‘send’, we expect our mail to travel the web. We
learned over the years that pressing ‘control+z’ will undo
our last action the same way that flicking a switch turns on
a light. And when it doesn’t, we freak out. The point is that
we have built up trust and expectations around particular
digital objects, and breaking these expectations causes a
lot of friction for the user.
Machine Learning is the opposite of deterministic.
The predictions are probabilistic, and their quality depends
both on the data the model learns from
and the context we use the model in. To empower the user
These properties lead to opinionated
we have to identify
results, and when designing interactions,
what the user is
we have to frame the results along with
willing to offload to
their uncertainty. The results should be
presented not as an objective fact or an ML system and
magical solution, but as a prediction that what the user wants
can be wrong and should be challenged. to control.
Hey ML, meet UX
53
To empower the user, instead of infuriating them with
a system that will never be perfect, we have to identify what
the user is willing to offload to an ML system and what the
user wants to control. Repetitive, boring, data-intensive or
time-intensive tasks, producing only intermediary results,
are often good candidates to offload to ML. Tasks or actions
with a high impact, a high cost of being wrong, or nuanced
results are better off staying in the user’s control.
An excellent example of this balance is Google Maps.
After entering the start and end-point, the user offloads the
task of finding the best route to the ML system. The system
responds by offering multiple possible paths, information
about the trajectories and the possibility of adding more
waypoints to keep the user in control of the final result.
ML For Product Teams
Creating ML-enabled digital products that integrate
ML in a meaningful way for the end-user is a team effort. It
involves both the engineers, the designers and the team’s
product manager.
The product manager needs to ensure that user needs
are captured correctly and know what parts of the process
are worth automating or augmenting using ML.
The engineering team needs to master a wide range
of technologies within and outside the realm of ML, under-
standing the powers and drawbacks of these technologies
in the context of the specific user problem. The resulting
design space enables designers to create a wide range of
interactions that solve real user needs and give them the
freedom to frame the AI predictions and capture feedback
correctly. Ultimately, this feedback updates the product
 SHIFT 22

54

manager’s view on user needs and influences the next tech-

nology update from the engineering team.

Purpose beats function

So, what is the takeaway from all this? The power of Are you our
next digital guru?
data science, Machine Learning and AI means something
totally different to a business than it does to the end-user,
and this should affect your development process. Including
user needs and feedback in the development cycle means
adding UX design and user research in the data science mix
to go from functional AI to purposeful AI.
It is important to note that this is not the first time we
We are a place for spirited and skilled people
have carried out this kind of exercise. Two decades ago, we who aim to create the best digital products.
started creating a common language to help businesses
And there’s space left in our pool of digital
and users use, understand and navigate the web. Later,
we did the same with mobile apps, shaping a digital space brilliance. Up for the challenge? Check out
aiming to be a meaningful part of people’s life. Data, AI and our open positions or reach out to us.
ML are now at that same stage: having a clear impact on
people’s lives but in dire need of a common language so
they can be actually meaningful to people. 

talent@inthepocket.com
www.inthepocket.com/careers
 SHIFT 22 Living on the edge

56

07 57

LIVING
ON

THE
EDGE
Ilja Strobbe
Software Engineering Lead

Jonas Goderis
Cloud & API Lead

Jonathan De Moor
Cloud Architect
 SHIFT 22
If you look at the history of computing from a
58 broad perspective, there seems to be a pen-
dulum movement switching back and forth
between centralised and decentralised con-
trol. In the early days of computing, centralised
mainframes controlled ‘dumb’ terminals. With
the advent of the personal computer and local
networks in the ‘80s, a new era of decentral-
ised computing unfolded. Much more recently,
client-server architecture made the pendulum
switch back to the centralised trend with cloud
computing pioneers like Amazon (AWS), Google
(GCP) and Microsoft (Azure).
TLDR Somewhere between cloud computing and local
networks, edge computing is stepping into the field
as a highly capable candidate for the title of next computing
standard. Will it become the new paradigm for the next decade?
Time to talk about why edge computing is something you’ll want
to keep a close eye on.
Living on the edge
59
Today, the pendulum is swinging back again as we con-
tinue to evolve towards an increasingly connected world.
The rapidly growing IoT industry, the deployment of fast
5G networks, ever more potent end-user devices and new
types of applications are pushing for new kinds of comput-
ing models. Will the pendulum come to a halt in the middle
with the rise of edge computing?
Opportunities beyond the edge
In case the term ‘edge computing’ sounds a bit blurry
to you, let’s try to define it. Edge computing is a distributed
computing paradigm that brings computation and data
storage closer to the location where it is needed, to improve
response times and save bandwidth.
New applications, limited by the restrictions of existing
centralised cloud solutions, are forcing us towards this new
approach of edge computing. According to Gartner, more
than 15 billion IoT devices will connect to the enterprise
infrastructure by 2029. Combining edge computing tech-
niques with new and existing technologies like IoT, cloud
computing, big data and AI/ML will enable a range of new
applications for smart homes, smart factories (Industry 4.0),
connected vehicles, energy supply and health monitoring,
to name just a few. But what exactly does edge computing
have to offer?
The advantages of edge computing
Under the bonnet of every shift in the digital land-
scape, there’s always a powerful engine. Apart from sound-
ing fancy, we need to look at what is pushing the pendulum
 SHIFT 22 Living on the edge

60 61
EDGE
COMPUTING back towards more decentralised structures. What does
edge computing have to offer that’s attractive for both
Edge computing brings data industries as users?

processing closer to the data source. Less latency. Edge computing finds its origin in the
early CDNs (Content Distribution Networks) where caching
servers would be placed in places geographically closer to
the end-user to reduce latency. The physical limitation of
signal latency is not acceptable in mission-critical applica-
tions expected to give near real-time performance.
More autonomy. Bringing computing closer to end-­
users reduces the chance of network problems in a distant
location affecting local customers. And it can bring connec-
tivity to places where there’s no connection at all. Even in the
event of a nearby outage, the edge devices will continue to
operate effectively on their own.
Savings-friendly. By filtering out irrelevant data on
the edge, one can reduce network bandwidth, data ­storage
and processing in the centralised cloud. Spreading this
‘pressure’ could significantly affect the running cost of a
cloud platform.

Around 10% of enterprise-generated data is

created and processed outside a traditional
centralised data centre or cloud. By 2025,
Bron: Tech Target Gartner predicts this figure will reach 75%.
 SHIFT 22 Living on the edge

62 63

A win for privacy. Applications that require private
data can benefit from edge computing as well. Instead
of analysing all private data in one centralised cloud,
­advanced machine learning models could be deployed on
the edge. The private data of end-users can be processed
much closer and quicker, limiting the risk of a breach in the
cloud exposing data.
The edge in practice
Leaving theory to one side, let’s look at some interest-
ing case uses for edge computing. Take autonomous vehi-
cles, for instance. When we’re thinking about autonomous
vehicles, Tesla and their self-driving cars will almost certainly
pop into our heads first. But most likely the first use cases of
real autonomous driving will be truck platooning.
Truck platooning is the linking of two or more trucks
in a convoy, using connectivity technology and automat-
ed­driving support systems. These vehicles automatically
synchronise their speeds and routes and maintain a close
distance between each other. The truck at the head of the
platoon acts as the leader while the trucks behind it will
react and adapt to changes in the leader’s movement.
This new way of transportation, working on the principles
of edge computing, offers quite a few benefits:
Ecological. Given that trucks can drive closer together,
the air resistance force is reduced significantly and will result
in lower fuel consumption and CO2 emissions.
Safety. IoT sensor data is analysed on the vehicle
edge to provide automated and immediate responses,
like breaking. Vehicles following the leading truck only need

ONE Driver in first Lead vehicle linked Incorporates Coupling and

DRIVER,
container truck to the platoon vehicle detection, de-coupling to
leading 3* driver- via wireless anti-collision and allow other road
less trucks communications lateral control users to cross
technologies for between platoon

Source: PSA and Ministry of Transport

safety vehicles

MULTIPLE
TRUCKS
*Number of trucks in each
platoon may vary according
to trial results.
 SHIFT 22 Living on the edge

64 65

a fifth of the time a human would need to react, thus im- to assist safely, quickly and accurately. If these devices rely
proving safety. on submitting data to the cloud and waiting for a response
Efficiency. Platooning optimises transport by using before making a decision, it could be fatal for the patient.
roads more effectively, delivering goods faster and reducing
traffic congestion.
On the brink of a breakthrough?
With healthcare and autonomous vehicles, we are
Changing entire industries only scratching the surface. Smart cities, for example, aim to
Edge computing isn’t limited to very specific use cases; improve the quality of life for residents with smart parking,
it’s likely to affect entire industries, such as the life sciences traffic management or improving security by proactively
sector. Before 2020, digital transformation in healthcare monitoring public spaces and law and order.
was pretty slow, but over the past year, Likewise for the oil and gas industry; if there are any
the industry has speeded up efforts to Rich Bird: ‘We’re not problems or unusual activity, this can be detected instantly.
embrace digital transformation. The replacing doctors or Edge computing allows us to analyse the data immediately,
sky’s the limit when it comes to the op- identify the cause of the issue and take the appropriate
care teams with this
portunities for using edge computing in actions to rectify the situation long before significant dam-
technology, we’re
healthcare, says Paul Savill, Senior Vice age occurs.
President of Product Services at tech helping them make Even in the financial sector detection of fraudulent be-
company Lumen. quicker and better-­ haviour often happens post-event. Banks detect suspicious
Many devices currently out there informed clinical transactions and take steps to prevent further losses by free­
(for example health monitors, sensors decisions by gener- zing cards or accounts. Running AI-enabled analytics at the
and wearables) are either not connec­ ating insights from edge could detect fraudulent patterns and proactively pre-
ted,­­or are collecting a large amount vent fraud — benefitting both the banks and their customers.
providing data that
of unprocessed data that needs to be Let’s be clear, countless applications will leverage the
helps improve the
stored in the cloud. As healthcare often possibilities offered by edge computing to create solutions
deals with very sensitive information, this
outcomes for their that were previously deemed infeasible or even science fic-
creates privacy and security concerns patients.’ tion. As always, adoption will not happen overnight, but one
that require a lot of attention. An edge step at a time, offering real-world improvements to already
on the hospital could process data locally, protecting data existing cloud solutions. The real question is: are you ready
privacy and instantly alerting caregivers when unusual to start living on the edge? 
trends occur with a patient and help is required. Also, robots
assisting in surgery must be able to analyse data instantly
 SHIFT 22

66

08
Bram Vandenholen
Solution Architect

HOW
LOW-CODE
CAN YOU GO?
 SHIFT 22 How low-code can you go?

Tools like Airtable and Zapier are

68 69
increasingly enabling tech-savvy
users without a computer science
degree to build interfaces and
automate workflows. Under the
heading low-code/no-code, they
promise the power of tailor-made
software and integration without
having to write code yourself. Too
good to be true or really the next Low-code (and no-code) encompasses quite a diverse
range of tools and platforms. There’s a high chance
big thing? Both, depending on how you’re familiar with one of their best-of-breed solutions
like Salesforce (CRM), Stripe (payment services) or Shopify
you look at it. (e-commerce). These new-generation software players are
built to play along with others, meaning they come with­
all sorts of integration possibilities and APIs, allowing orga­
nisations to glue them together without huge development
efforts.
Others, like Webflow or Appian, allow companies to
create user-facing websites and apps via intuitive, visual
editors. Tools like Notion or Airtable combine storing infor-
mation (as a database) with handy DIY workflows around
them, like managing tasks or keeping stock. Then, there are
automation platforms like Zapier or NodeRED. These low-
code alternatives allow a whole range of other tools and
hardware to be stitched together. And that is just scratching
TLDR Low-/No-code tools, like Notion, Webflow or Shopify,­­
the surface.
are big business. They are finding their way into com-
panies small and large and are projected for gigantic growth. Sure, What they all have in common is that they make tech-
they make technology easy for non-developers. But how far can nology easier for non-developers. They basically empower
we take low-code solutions? Do they have a limit? everyone in an organisation to create app-like experiences,
 SHIFT 22 How low-code can you go?

70 71
HOW BIG IS THE
OPPORTUNITY?  4,45
These figures back up why every
IT and digital professional should
BILLION
2020
have low-code on their radar.

65%
of app development will be
low-code by 2024
(Gartner)
PROJECTED
EXPANSION

75%
The enterprise low-code
application platform mar-

 14,38
ket is projected to expand
from $4.45 billion to $14.38
of development shops will use billion between 2020 and
some form of low-code by end
of 2021 BILLION 2025, with a compound
annual growth of 26.4%.

(Forrester) 2025 (Gartner)

 SHIFT 22
72
streamline workflows or even automate processes. In a way,
it’s a democratisation of IT, allowing every employee to
become a ‘citizen developer’.
The benefit is obvious: ‘business’ no longer needs to
lean fully on ‘IT’ to get digital solutions in the hands of cus-
tomers or staff, thus saving costs and speeding things up.
To give one obvious example, low-code solutions proved
tremendously useful at allowing organisations to quickly
­respond to the pandemic. Customer-facing experiences­
were set up in a matter of days, not months. Internal work-
flows were adapted without a complete rebuild of the
­enterprise resource planning.
With such promise, it’s no wonder the low-code
space is booming. But is this truly the future of software
development?
There are always limitations
As everyone in software development will tell you,
there are always trade-offs. Low-code has speed and
democratisation as two huge aces up its sleeve, but they
can create some cons as well. Whether the pros outweigh
the cons depends on each specific use case and context;
what’s crucial is that these quality attributes are discussed
upfront before you make your technology choice.
To get you started with your pro and con list, we’ve
jotted down some typical quality attributes and trade-offs
(all ending with ‘y’) that are inherent to low-code platforms.
Just to show that some nuance will always be justified:
Security. Does not have to be a problem in itself,
but with ‘everyone being a developer’, you need to avoid
a Wild West of applications and shadow IT, where one
How low-code can you go?
73
poorly-secured application in the stack can cause security
or privacy issues all over the place.
Stability/testability. Since ‘works for me’ is never
good enough for enterprise-grade software, always be
mindful that unit testing and end-to-end testing for low-
code isn’t as well established as in more traditional software
engineering.
Debuggability. No-code tools can sometimes be dif-
ficult to debug if something is amiss somewhere in the flow,
especially if code is distributed over snippets of scripts.
Maintainability. Software is a living, breathing thing,
meaning things will change. API’s will change, the data
model will change, and logic will change. You will have to
maintain a helicopter view and update the various compo-
nents without impacting users.
Scalability. If your digital solution proves to be a hit,
can you scale it up using the low-code stack or will you have
to start from scratch?
Supportability. When (not if) things break, who do
you call? How are the SLA’s of the low-code tools you use?
Extendibility. Given you’re depending on integrations
offered by low-code tools, do these have a future-proof
roadmap so they too will evolve over time?
Usability. The UX will probably be good enough, but
is that really good enough? What about accessibility re-
quirements, localisation? Sublime UX is what makes you
stand out after all.
To no-code or not to no-code?
Nuance is the only way to answer this question and
end this article. The low-code movement really does have
 SHIFT 22

74

a lot of potential, but as with so many things in software

development, there are no silver bullet solutions. This is be-
cause, like software development, there’s always a trade-off

User Research
to make.
Are you looking for speed in very straightforward
use cases, such as some business-line apps or very specific

at In The Pocket.
customer flows? Or do you want to kickstart a new busi-
ness without making huge customer software investments
­upfront? Then let low-code help you on your way.
For business-critical digital products where user expe-
rience is a differentiator and where factors such as security
and scalability are fundamental, the trade-offs inherent to
low-code suites will probably come at too high a cost. The
There’s no way around it. When designing
future has many paths, choose wisely.  and building digital products the user should
always be the focal point of attention. User
research is of paramount importance here at
In The Pocket, and we’re always eager to learn.

From an ‘outside-in-perspective’ we talk to users, figure

out their needs and then link it back to how it could work
for your business. With these fresh and unbiased ideas, we
make your digital product stand out from the competition.

Discover our work at www.inthepocket.com

 SHIFT 22 Through the web3 looking glass

THROUGH
76 77

THE WEB3
LOOKING GLASS

09 Christophe Rosseel
Chief Service Delivery Officer
 SHIFT 22
In the beginning, there was darkness. Then, one
78 day, man created the worldwide web, a seem-
ingly random collection of static, networked
web pages in an era of low bandwidth. Most
people had a hard time imagining where this
would lead. Early adopters mused about an
information superhighway, but the dream was
as vague as the metaphor. Enthusiasts were
outnumbered by the sceptics who thought of
web pages as brochures at best, or pornogra-
phy distribution at worst.
TLDR This article aims to open your mind to the possibility
that we are collectively underestimating the potential
of blockchain technology and the arrival of web3. What if ‘Crypto is
for money laundering’ is the new ‘the Internet is for porn’?
Through the web3 looking glass
79
Linear thinking often characterises early-stage innovation;
early cars were just horse carriages with some extra parts.
Similarly, organising web pages into directories extended
the logic of phone books into the Internet. Discoverability
through search was only evident in hindsight. It takes a
few years of imagination and experimentation for native
innovations to appear.
When AJAX was the latest trend in web development,
few realised that it would unlock user-generated content.
Of course, we now refer to user-generated content simply
as social media. And when Mobile first appeared, we had
to wade through generations of weather and gimmick apps
to discover Airbnb and Uber.
With public blockchains, new technological infrastruc-
ture is being built while the use cases aren’t obvious. People
view blockchains with caution or they project old ideas onto
them. This article aims to open your mind to the possibility
that we are collectively underestimating the potential of
blockchain technology. What if ‘Crypto is for money laun-
dering’ is the new ‘the Internet is for porn’?
Bending the mind towards web3
Crypto has polarised the tech world. There are inter-
esting ideological and cultural reasons for this, but this arti-
cle focuses on another topic. Web3 is a difficult topic to wrap
 SHIFT 22 Through the web3 looking glass

G
CLIENT
DATABASE

SERVER
CLIENT
DATABASE

80 CLIENT 81

A
DATABASE
CLIENT

THE
SERVER

DATABASE
CLIENT
one’s head around because it challenges our assumptions

INTERNET
F
CLIENT
about how the Internet should work. Let’s start there.
DATABASE
While the Internet started as a grassroots movement
SERVER

TODAY
CLIENT
DATABASE and an open architecture, it slowly evolved into a set of
CLIENT closed silos. Under the dominant paradigm of web2 apps,

A
DATABASE
context does not travel from one app to another. The im-
CLIENT
Client-server architectures
SERVER plicit assumption is that a single economic actor controls the
DATABASE business logic on reading from or writing to its applications.
CLIENT
on centralised platforms. This architecture has many impli-
cations. You need an account for each
entity and your data is not interoperable Tradeoffs/
with other applications in the system. As client-server
CLIENT
DATABASE
a user, you have to trust many different architecture on
SERVER companies to ensure the integrity of your centralised
CLIENT
DATABASE data. platforms
CLIENT Then there are economic conse-

CLIENT
SERVER
DATABASE quences. When you upload a picture Pros
to a social network, you transfer some
DATABASE • Network effects
CLIENT rights to the network. The social network
• Scalability
is entitled to aggregate the data of their
CLIENT
DATABASE
users and monetise it. Usually, the plat- • Fast iteration
SERVER
CLIENT form doesn’t share. Why is that?
Cons
DATABASE
A lot of value and power accrues
CLIENT

DATABASE
to a few centralised platforms that dic- • No shared state
CLIENT
SERVER
tate the rules of the game. When these • Single point of fail-
platforms are small and competing for
CLIENT
DATABASE
ure, data integrity
users, their relationship with other net-
is not guaranteed
work participants is positive-sum. As
they move up the adoption curve, their
• Economic incen-
power increases and the relationships tives lead to mo-
change to zero-sum. Examples include nopolistic behavior
Facebook and social game developers • Platform risk
 SHIFT 22 Through the web3 looking glass

82 WHY 83

DECENTRALISATION
MATTERS
like Zynga or Twitter and third-party clients like Tweetdeck.
The latter parties invested a lot of time and money in their
ventures to find themselves de-platformed when their host
system no longer needed them.
We landed on this set of trade-offs when we were up-
loading cat photos to these platforms. The question is: do
we want or need to make different trade-offs when we are
talking about money or identity?

01
What does web3 have to offer?
The key feature of web3 is codified trust. In 2008,
Platform’s
­Satoshi Nakamoto famously resolved an age-old compu- relationship to
tational issue known as the Byzantine Generals Problem: complements
how do you get nodes in a peer-to-peer network to coor-
dinate and reach consensus when nobody knows or trusts (developers, creators,...)
each other? The answer, it turns out, is through a consensus
algorithm that incentivises the participants to cooperate.
Bitcoin miners, for example, are rewarded with the BTC
token to secure the network and avoid double-spending.
Public blockchains also have disadvantages. Current-
ly, they consume a lot of energy, and it’s tough to scale writ-
ing to them. Ethereum can only handle seven transactions
per second right now. Many problems remain to be solved.
And yet, a lot of smart people are very excited about this
tech. Why? 02
One obvious extrapolation of codified trust is the
Platform’s
­so-called creator economy. If groups of strangers can come
relationship

Source: Chris Dixon

together to make decisions without needing to trust each
other, they can take out the middleman. Or rather, replace to users
the middleman with a permissionless and immutable al-
gorithm. Under web2 rules, platforms like Spotify, Medium,
 SHIFT 22 Through the web3 looking glass

84 85
FAT
PROTOCOL YouTube, Patreon or OnlyFans control the rules of distribu-
tion and allocation of proceeds. In web3, creators could set
these rules and codify them into immutable smart contracts.
WEB 2 Furthermore, in web3, context can travel. Instead of an
account per silo, you now have a wallet. The metaphor isn’t
perfect; your web3 wallet does not store any funds — it holds
the keys to your funds. Banking on asymmetric encryption,
VALUE CAPTURED

APPLICATIONS you can share your public key with others to receive trans-
LAYER
actions. You must never share your private key as it can be
VALUE CAPTURED

APPLICATIONS used to sign transactions on your behalf. The point is your

LAYER
wallet lets you log into any web3 app and bring along any
funds available to it.
PROTOCOL LAYER
Once you have a wallet, all friction around logging in
PROTOCOL LAYER and paying online disappears. In other words, payments

WEB 3
APPLICATION LAYER
are a native feature of web3. This new ability of software
to channel money is an exciting prospect for creators of
digital products.
VALUE CAPTURED

APPLICATION LAYER
It’s not just your payment data that becomes owned
and portable; blockchains such as Ethereum can store
VALUE CAPTURED

PROTOCOL
LAYER and execute any combination of data and business logic.
Ethereum is quite literally a world computer. This is what trips
PROTOCOL
LAYER up a lot of people. Our existing mental models have not
prepared us to think about the possibilities of a distributed,
global computer with a shared state.
Another way to approach it is to think of web2 as hav-
ing a ‘fat’ application layer on top of a ‘thin’ protocol layer.
The Internet stack, in terms of how value is distributed, is composed of ‘thin’ protocols Facebook, Google and the like, capture and re-aggregate
and ‘fat’ applications. This relationship between protocols and applications is reversed most of the data and resulting value in their applications.
in the blockchain application stack. Value concentrates at the shared protocol layer Web3 reverses this. It stores user data on the protocol level.
and only a fraction of that value is distributed along at the applications layer. It’s a One of the consequences is that applications will not have
stack with ‘fat’ protocols and ‘thin’ applications. the same moat they have in web2; barriers to entry are
Source: Joel Monegro, Fat protocols lower and apps are more interchangeable.
 SHIFT 22 Through the web3 looking glass

86 87

Another surprising new capability is apps and u

­ sers­­
A CONCISE
can explore the blockchain to see what is happening.
­Imagine you want to hire a DeFi-expert (DeFi is short for
HISTORY
decentralised finance). Instead of checking their resume,
you could check their on-chain transactions. You could even
OF THE INTERNET
write an app that ranks wallets based on the yield they gen-
erated in certain DeFi-domains. Public on-chain data is a
treasure trove of information on what’s happening in web3: Web 1 • Static web pages
analysts can predict token price evolution, see which com-
• Portals & directories
munities are getting traction and monitor token liquidity etc. READ • Low bandwidth
• Passive consumption of Internet
Financial incentives are not limited to the DeFi space.
• Killer app: e-mail
Any digital product can now choose to create a digital to-
ken and integrate an economic incentive structure into its
design. One successful example is Axie Infinity, a block- Web 2 • Interactive Internet
chain-based game that lets players buy, breed and fight • SaaS, 2-sided markets,
monsters called Axies against each other to win in-game READ advertising
currency. The difference with Pokémon is that these mon- • Broadband
sters are registered on-chain as non-fungible tokens or NFTs WRITE • Mobile, cloud, ML
and that players can exchange the in-game currency for • Killer apps: social
cash. An economy has emerged around Axies, and the networks, IM....
game is clearing $1.5 billion in annualised revenue. This is
on par with AAA games in the traditional gaming business.
The design space of programmable money and smart Web 3 • Decentralised networks
(no single entity controls it but all
contracts is limitless. One interesting road to explore is that
of machine-to-machine interaction. Our houses are turning READ can trust it)
• Permissionless, composable,
into switchboards for energy, managing subsystems like so-
lar panels, heat pumps, cooling and ventilation systems and
WRITE censorship-resistant
• Ubiquitous broadband & 5G
charging stations. Web3 may bring our houses the ability to OWN • Metaverse, IoT
autonomously coordinate these systems while buying and • Killer apps: Bitcoin, NFTʼs, DeFi,..
selling electricity on a decentralised energy grid.
Not all benefits of web3 revolve around economics.
Software developers and other inventors tend to get more
 SHIFT 22 Through the web3 looking glass

88 89

excited about composability: the ability to take existing When you combine a permissionless ecosystem with com-
programmes and adapt or build on top of them. Let’s take munity standards and open source, composability emerges.
a quick look at DeFi to understand how composability emer­ Suddenly anyone can take existing programmes or
ges­and how it gathers pace. primitives and build on them without having to reinvent
In a few short years, the world of DeFi has managed the wheel. Once a problem is solved, its solution becomes
feature parity with traditional finance: yield generation, a digital Lego block, ready for the next developer to use or
lending, borrowing, hedging, futures and derivatives etc. change at their bidding. To illustrate the point; at one web3
Every financial primitive has seen a web3 counterpart arise university you can take a beginner course called: ‘Building
since 2017. Even more impressive, DeFi is creating new fi- a bank that isn’t a toy’.
nancial products, like lossless lotteries, self-repaying loans We are still in the early stages of this innovation; time
and savings accounts that generate actual yield. Caveat will tell how transformative all this turns out to be. This
emptor. How is this possible? First of all, web3 is permission- ­author never bets against the Internet but as they say in
less. You don’t need anybody’s permission to build an app web3: do your own research. 
on a public blockchain; you just do it.
Ethereum, for example, issued standards
to facilitate this. ERC-20 is an important Web3 is permission-
standard, enabling smart contract pro- less. You don’t need
grammability and interoperability be- anybody’s permis-
tween (fungible) tokens. sion to build an app
Another quality attribute of web3 on a public block-
is that it is immutable. A smart contract,
chain, you just do it.
once deployed, cannot be updated. It
can only be forked. The sword of immu-
tability cuts both ways. In the creator example, it reassures
our creators that the network won’t change the algorithm
that redistributes the proceeds. On the other hand, immuta-
ble smart contracts do not let you go back to fix a bug or
a vulnerability.
This permissionless and immutable nature is an incen-
tive for developers to open source their code. If you were
going to play around in DeFi, would you rather lock your
funds in an open or a closed source, smart contract? Exactly.
 SHIFT 22 Meditations on the Metaverse

90 91

MEDITATIONS
ON THE
METAVERSE Kenny Deriemaeker
XR Tech Lead 10
 SHIFT 22
Do you remember where you were on July 14th
92 2021? The day when suddenly everyone started­
talking about the Metaverse? Zuckerberg’s bold
proclamation to ‘transform Facebook into a
Metaverse company’, followed a few months
later by the name change from Facebook to
Meta, sent out shockwaves that are still rever-
berating in the tech world as you’re reading
this. Instead of joining the party of shouting
bold claims, let’s figure out what in the (virtual)
world is going on.
TLDR There’s no way around it: we need to talk about the
Metaverse. Apparently, everyone has a strong opinion
on Mark Zuckerberg’s plans for the future and feels the need to shout
it as loud as possible. Are we doing the same right now? Hopefully
not. Let’s try to separate the facts and reality from all the noise.
Meditations on the Metaverse
93
The Metaverse is not a new concept: it
was popularised 30 years ago in classic
cyberpunk novels like Snow Crash and
Neuromancer, and more recently in
Ready Player One. These works depict
the Metaverse as a digital world you
can disappear into, through the gateway of a fancy-looking
VR headset, and where you can do anything you want and
be anything you’ve ever dreamt of. They present an escapist
fantasy that doesn’t intersect with the real world that much.
Zuck’s Meta is pitching the idea quite differently: they
see it as an evolution of the mobile Internet where our digital
and physical realities begin to blend seamlessly thanks to
advanced and ubiquitous Augmented and Virtual Reality
technology. In Zuckerberg’s vision, we’ll be connecting to
services, products, media and each other in a shared holo-
graphic space that effortlessly mixes all these realities into
a comprehensive, futuristic, screen-less world... with Meta’s
hardware and platforms at the centre.
There are more interpretations of what the Metaverse
is or should be. The word itself is almost a Rorschach test for
tech-minded thinkers to project their own visions and as-
pirations onto. Epic Games, makers of Fortnite and Unreal
Engine, talk about how the Metaverse will enable a vibrant
 SHIFT 22
94
creator economy and break down the walled gardens of
the tech giants. Microsoft, on the other hand, sees it as the
future of work, with a population now accustomed to work-
ing remotely thanks to Covid-19 ready to fully embrace the
virtual workplace. The crypto/web3 enthusiasts see a pros-
perous green field for blockchain, NFTs and decentralisation
of all kinds. And the list goes on and on...
Zuckerberg’s gamble
A lot has been said about why Facebook/Meta specif-
ically is betting so heavily on the Metaverse as a vision and
as a brand. Recent scandals, increasing regulatory scrutiny
and the fact that their main product is being largely ig-
nored by Gen Z, can be interpreted as good reasons for the
company to rebrand and refocus with an eye on the future.
The other reason is Oculus, which was acquired by Face-
book in 2014. Their Quest 2, a consumer VR headset that has
sold surprisingly well, is the closest thing
we have to a mass-market XR device to-
‘That virtual concert
day, and it is about to become a promis-
in VR with a crowd of
ing playground for Meta to start fleshing
thousands will hap-
out the Metaverse concept with millions
of actual users. pen someday, but
No coin is one-sided. The ‘coming not anytime soon.’
out’ of Meta also shows how far we’re still
removed from some of the concepts out there. For example,
virtual meetings and events on the Quest work fine but are
limited to just a dozen participants for performance rea-
sons. That virtual concert in VR with a crowd of thousands
will happen someday, but not anytime soon. At In The Pock-
et, we are not quite ready to make any predictions about
Meditations on the Metaverse
95
what the true meaning of ‘Metaverse’will ultimately end up
being. That would be like someone in the early nineties try-
ing to predict what the Internet would look like in 2022. But
we do think there are some parallels to be drawn between
the mobile revolution of the 2010s and this next Big Thing.
Riding the curve
Big technological shifts tend to follow an S-curve: very
slow adoption and growth in the beginning, followed by
a steep acceleration towards mass adoption and greater
value, and finally a tapering-off as the technology becomes
fully mature and integrated. At that point, the technology
may become the staging ground for the next S-curve, just
like the VR and AR devices we have today, which only be-
came possible thanks to displays and sensors developed
and commoditised in mobile’s acceleration phase.
Having said that, better hardware alone is not enough
to put your foot to the floor on the Metaverse S-curve.
­Interoperability standards, content creation and delivery,
payments, networking, privacy, accessibility, responsive-
ness and many other aspects still pose many big unsolved
challenges.
Where will the content come from? Concept videos
from companies like Meta and Microsoft show a world of
realistic avatars, holograms and other rich interactable 3D
content, but these assets are not easy or cheap to produce.
Despite the ongoing consumerisation of 3D content crea-
tion with technologies like LiDAR and photogrammetry, the
vast majority of digital media today is still flat and screen-
based. How do we manifest all that valuable 2D content in
a spatial 3D context?
 SHIFT 22 Meditations on the Metaverse

96 97

How do we deal with the less photogenic aspects of are unknown. Whoever is behind the steering wheel — Mark
online life in a spatial environment? The concept videos Zuckerberg, Tim Cook or company X — is likely to matter a
don’t show any ads, toxic online interactions, breaches of lot in the short term and less in the long term. It’s going to
privacy or technical issues; all things that are very much be an interesting ride up the S-curve either way. 
present on today’s Internet. These will need to be factored
in and dealt with, preferably more effectively and trans-
parently than the way companies like Facebook have dealt
with them in the past.
Can the Metaverse be made as responsive as the
Web? As supporting hardware and infrastructure evolve, it
will take time to become globally available and accessible.
There will likely be levels, with a low-fi Metaverse experience
on less-capable hardware and in bandwidth-constrained
environments, and the full Pixar treatment on expensive
headsets with ultra high-bandwidth connections. How do
we organise interactions between users with a $199 Meta
headset and a $1,299 Apple Glass (hypothetically) without
compromising on features and UX?

Prototyping the future

Our XR team has been exploring these kinds of ques-
tions since 2016, working with our clients and partners to find
valuable use cases and the best ways to deliver solutions.
Doing that work has convinced us Augmented, Mixed and
Virtual Reality are already capable ways of tackling real
challenges today, especially around visualisation, learning,
training and marketing — and that list is poised to grow
as all the factors we outlined above keep improving. The
Metaverse, whatever it ends up looking like, seems to be
the destination these technologies and trends are driving
towards, even if the exact coordinates and time of arrival
 SHIFT 22

98

Colofon Thanks for reading Shift, the annual report by the

people at In The Pocket.

Written by
Koen Boncquet, Bo Smet, Emma Braeye,
Stephanie Depuydt, Thijs Van de Broek,
Louis De Jaeger, Rémi Delanghe, Kenny Helsens,
Ilja Strobbe, Jonas Goderis, Jonathan De Moor,
Bram Vandenholen, Christophe Rosseel,
Kenny Deriemaeker

Contributors
Niels Dewelde, Louis Ghekiere, Hannes Van de
Velde, Jeroen Lemaire, Michiel Dheedene

Graphic design
Koen Surmont
www.windwaait.be
In The Pocket creates digital
products that make people
happy and businesses
grow. We work on the inter-
section of AI, AR, mobile,
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