The Future Consumer: Co-creating the 2020 Kitchen
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Wed, Oct 28, 2009
Darren Lewis and Koen van der Wal of MetrixLab discussed co-creation at the 2009 ESOMAR Online Research conference. Three emerging themes for product innovation are democratic innovation, Web 2.0 possibilities and active consumers.
Why Co-creation? Consumers make more informed decisions, thanks to unparalleled access to comparative information. Lego provides a great example of co-creation: consumers can build and upload their own ideas for Lego kits and receive a royalty if their idea becomes a product.
Online Qualitative: Research has been more successful at using the Internet for quantitative research than qualitative research. E-groups and bulletin boards require new skills in research moderation; many qualitative researchers argue that much of the value of the focus group dynamic is lost using such methods.
Our Co-Creative Methods: MetrixLab begins with a self-administered depth interview with the results unavailable to other participants, prompting greater candor. The MetrixLab co-creative process engages customers, unleashes creativity and discovers opportunities. Interaction is limited to seeing other participants' contributed ideas. The phases (often space a week or more apart):
- Problem analysis and individual idea generation
- Idea sharing and enrichment
- Evaluation by customer
- Evaluation by professional
- Selection
Kitchen 2020 Case Study: One hundred and fifty participants in the UK and Netherlands worked to develop the future kitchen. A video introduction to the project provided a more personal description of the project. Participants could create a "moodboard", a bulletin board with images and colors to capture their thinking. Tools channel different creative techniques: pictures and associations, document current frustrations, explore future scenarios, ask "what if?" Participants also wrote descriptions of their moodboards. Themes were the Clean Kitchen, the Green Kitchen, the Flexible Kitchen, the Connected Kitchen and the Automatic Kitchen. The Green Kitchen might incorporate herb gardens and hydroponics, for instance.
Recommendations:
- Do's
- Use social media to recruit (e.g., cigar lovers were recruited from Facebook)
- Involve a diverse group of people
- Inspire and motivate people to join your project
- Make the process fun, personal and engaging
- Share the results and give feedback to customers
- Don't's
- Don't leave everything open and unstructured
- Don't present a challenge that is too broad or too vague
- Don't forget to involve the client
- Don't judge ideas too fast
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