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There's a trend in innovative circles that's replacing dry, objective,
hard-knuckled research with free-form, product play. It's sort of
like collaborating with the customer.
Instead of the remote and sterile market research exercises we call focus groups, mall
intercepts, phone interviews. Instead of taking such great pains to be objective. Instead
of keeping the customer as far away from real, natural interaction
with the product as possible...
Some companies are beginning to use product prototypes. They're
finding that giving the customer a chance to play with a prototype of a proposed product
amounts to collaborating with the customer in the development of the product.
It turns out that customers are much more likely to buy something they've had a hand in
making. Is anybody surprised?
Of course, there's a lot of turf that likes to be protected on the road from mind to
shelf. And product prototypes are often sidetracked by one of the more possessive parties
along the way.
To succeed, according to
Michael Schrage of the
Los Angeles Times, writing in the
Wall Street Journal, "the prototype can't be seen as the property of the
engineers, the designers, or the marketers—it has to be community
property."
Why not call it customer property? That's what you want it to be in the end. Isn't it?
There's a principle of creativity that applies here. Ideas don't come until you let them
go. Or in product prototype terms—the sooner you give up ownership, the sooner you get
paid. |
