Using customer ideas to help develop realistic and appealing new products

Crowd sourcing can produce a rich pool of exciting product concepts, as the unfettered thinking and creative time that consumers enjoy means that they often come up with more innovative designs. Plus you’re getting NPD ideas that the consumers themselves have already endorsed as a good concept. But how do you balance desirable innovation against keeping the ideas realistic, and how do you spot the winning ideas? The answer is by combining crowd-sourcing, co-creation and standardised product testing.

Using crowd-sourcing in technology NPD

A recent crowd-sourcing study, run by GfK NOP in partnership with co-creation community eYeka.com, recently asked consumers to imagine their “ideal communication technology of the future”. Participants had the freedom to create a new device, a new service for an existing device, a piece of software or an application. Their solution could be designed to make their lives easier, more fulfilling, more productive, or just more fun – the only limit was that it had to be something that could conceivably exist in the next five years.

Common themes reveal consumer needs

Providing a broad brief ensured that we received a smorgasbord of ideas, but even so, some common themes were found amongst the entries. These reiterated themes illustrate consumer frustrations with current devices and lifestyles, helping to give clear direction to manufacturers on what needs are still not being met in the market:

• All-in-one devices that integrate payment, keys and other gadgets into typical Smartphone functionality
• Slim devices, where the interface would be a clear, thin screen that could be disposable / easily replaceable
• Translation into other languages on the go (including into sign-language) via speaking into a microphone
• Remote working/ presence
• Holograms – either a projection of the handset display, or as virtual video

As well as the unique, yet realistic ideas, co-creation can also generate more ‘idealistic’ approaches, which can help to stretch the minds of designers and researchers alike.  For example:

• Telepathy or communication wired directly to a user’s brain
• Teleportation – of objects or even persons
• Solar powered devices were also a popular mention, as current handsets draw heavily on battery life and the shift towards greener lifestyles continues.

Clearly this innovative research approach can be used to help technology brands develop unique product concepts that resonate strongly with consumers’ current needs and wants.

Identify the successful concepts through TechTest

Creating innovations in a theoretical space is fair enough, but product developers need to identify how appealing and believable concept ideas would be in practice. To answer this, we took four of the concept ideas – those with the greatest potential – and ran them through GfK TechTest. This standardised methodology tests new technology products, benchmarking them against key measures for appeal and likely success.

The concepts selected for testing were:

• A music sharing service, whereby users can share what they’re listening to with other users near to them, by streaming their music wirelessly
• An all-in-one mobile that integrates keys, credit, debit, loyalty and ID cards, as well as typical Smartphone functionality – mp3 player, e-book reader, camera, games, internet, apps, and of course, calls and texts
• A hologram phone that attaches to your wrist like a watch and can be controlled with a stylus with information projected onto any chosen surface
• A ‘brain centre’ mobile phone system with remote touch screen. In this concept, all data is stored in a small ‘brain centre’ which is attached to your person, in a ring or watch, and accompanied separately by an easily and cheaply replaceable touch screen

GfK TechTest identified the all-in-one mobile device as the concept likely to be the most successful, proving it to be both appealing and easy to understand amongst consumers. It also met the current consumer problem of many of us having several electronic gadgets, showing the need for integrated devices.

Naturally, Early Adopters found these technologies most appealing and men were particularly interested in the all-in-one-device – having to carry around less in their pockets most likely being the key motivator. However, this benefit is also the biggest drawback, with concerns of losing everything in one go and the security risk associated with it.

The winning “all-in-one device” proposition  bodes well for Smartphone manufacturers, as we’ve seen that Near Field Communication (NFC) is likely to  take off this year, with many new handsets equipped to be used as a method of payment via NFC.

Conclusion

Co-creation is a powerful NPD tool that taps into the creativity of social media in a socialised panel space at the early stages of the NPD process. It helps manufacturers identify and understand needs and desires in the market, producing current, realistic product solutions as well as more futuristic ideas. While holograms and teleportation may be beyond our current capabilities, or remain forever in the realms of Star Trek, consumers often produce useable innovations that manufacturers’ more restricted product view wouldn’t have considered. By developing these ideas and benchmarking them against known success criteria, we can pinpoint the product concepts that are believable, actionable and desirable.

Footnotes:

The research

As a joint venture with eYeka, GfK posted a design brief on their website for a ‘communications innovation’. eYeka panel members were invited to contribute any entries from 28 September to 12 October 2010, in the format of video, pictures or PowerPoint. Of the 67 entries submitted, 11 winners were chosen of which 3 were further developed into tangible concepts and standardised stimuli. These were tested quantitatively using GfK TechTest via online methodology in the UK from 13 to 20 December 2010.

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Tags: co-creation, consumers, crowd sourcing, Mobile Payments, NFC, NPD, Research, Smartphones, Social Media, socialised panel, TechTest