Tag archives: muji
Crowdsourcing 101
Posted by Shaun Abrahamson on Sunday, 1 March 2009
Guest Post. Geng Tan, joined Mutopo forJanuary 2009, as part of MIT’s externship program. Geng Tan is a junior at MIT majoring in Mechanical Engineering and Management Science. Although he is a mechanical engineer by training, he is also interested in marketing and business development, especially through web 2.0 tools. In the past, he has interned at Hakuhodo Inc. one of Japans leading marketing consultancies and is currently leading up a crowdsourcing project at MIT related to education and technology.
Crowdsourcing
From the start, people have used the Internet to collaborate – the first research communities would use tools like e-mail to share information more quickly. In recent years, as global online participation has surged and connectivity costs have dropped, new forms of group collaboration have emerged as organizations try to harness the power of many connected people.
Earlier forms of these include the Linux “free-software” movement, but in the recent years more and more value, in the forms of Wikipedia articles, Youtube videos, Yelp reviews, Istockphotos’ pictures, SETI’s massive calculation power, just to name a few, are generated over the web through contribution of the “crowd,” the increasingly active internet users.
In this post, I would like to propose a framework for “crowdsourcing,” a term describing, according to wikipedia, “the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call.” According to Jeff Howe, the author of Crowdsourcing, the foundation of crowdsource is the concept of spare cycles, the spare time people naturally spend on hobbies and leisure, such as playing baseball with kids, taking pictures, web-surfing and blog posting. Crowdsourcing is achieved by harnessing people’s spare cycles to generate value.
Some Examples
Businesses are paying more attention to this phenomenon because it has been shown time and again that these projects can produce products of superior quality (such as Mathwork’s competitions, Wikipedia, myStarbucksidea, Muji.net) and generate contributions such as content , computing resources or donations of massive scale (such as Yelp’s review systems, Istockphotos, Dell ideastorm, Kiva, Skype’s model of data processing) even compared to the most successful corporations. It also provides a few other advantages, such as reducing expenses associated with marketing, distribution as well as customer support.
I’ll first introduce how crowd source is used to generate quality and/or quantity of work, build a framework for businesses that attempt to crowdsource, and then list a few examples of successful crowdsourcing projects. I’ll conclude by listing the dos and the don’ts in crowdsourcing.
In any crowd sourcing project, users gather around an issue/task/topic and each work on a small portion of the project. Even though each person is working on a very small portion, the web allows for a massive accumulation of work. The crowd often forms a self-perpetuating community as well, and they can generate a lot of ideas, build upon each other’s ideas, and self improve the inferior ideas to form a better one. This almost resembles web games, such as the World of Warcraft, where users competitively build superior characters. As a result, there exist a myriad of characters and competitiveness nature of the system forces the superior characters to surface.
One key point to be noted here is that if the purpose of the project depended on diversity of ideas, such as in the case of brainstorming or producing reviews, the project manager needs to limit the interactions among the users. Too much interaction tends to form a trend within the community and such crowd-mentality trend to weed out the less main-stream ideas (imagine a forum where people nominated presidential candidates. Everyone chat about candidates and people agree on obama as a good candidate. Nominations of other candidate from this group seems very unlikely). However, if the project really wanted to produce a single quality idea, the manager want to encourage as much interaction among the crowd to encourage the crowd to build upon each other’s ideas (encouraging everyone on a forum to debate about who’s a superior candidate in the election.).
A proposed framework for making crowdsourcing work for your organization
1.Identify a crowd, a goal, and a method of contribution
The crowd can be preexisting or created. Pre-existing community can be internally marketed, and the existing rules can be imported.
If a new community is to be created it needs to be organized and encouraged. The new rules need to be created, and culture need to be formed. Relationship management is the key
The goal or goals needs to be clear and practical
Method of contribution needs to be simple and easy to use. Good user interface is the key, because it makes it easy for people to contribute their free time and wont get in the way of the primary experience, such as contributing and communicating.
2. Motivate contribution, motivate peer review/revision, collaboration, and consolidate the community
Motivate contribution by giving people the recognition for their work. People want to be heard, be appreciated, be recognized. This can be done by creating special “power user” status, giving front page coverage, etc. linked to specific measures of success.
Motivate peer review by encouraging discussion among users. “everyone’s equal on the web.”
Show that contributions make a difference and are appreciated – by other participants and/or by the organization.
Consolidate community by encouraging personal interactions. Easier for localized websites, such as yelp and facebook. Sponsored/hosted events may be helpful. i.e. yelp (yelp’s night’s out) and istockphoto (istockalypses).
You can check community health by looking at metrics such as number of posts, repeat traffic versus new, what percentage of people are contributing versus browsing, etc.
Also remember that people participate in different ways. For example perhaps only 1% of users will actively generate content while the majority might simply observe.
3. Market to a larger crowd and repeat 2.
Market via word of mouth. i.e. other people’s blog posts, forum posts, reviews, etc.
Market via scandalous/controversial/disruptive content. Lots of coverage from existing media, lots of people talk about it, lots of buzz.
Rely on sudden burst of publicity – people discovering an active community are more likely to try it out. If there are no signs of life already, no amount of promotion will help to seed.
4. Measure how you are benefiting
Does the community feel exploited? Its important to constantly monitor whether or not the organization is doing its part for the community in return for their contributions. If value is not fairly exchanged, you are likely to fail.
Use generated ideas for commercial purposes.
Revenues from advertising associated with generated content.
Get donation like Wikipedia personal messages, appealing to people’s interest, who other people that you are getting donated.
Ask your community how you should benefit and how they would like to benefit, too!
Some examples of these ideas in action
Manga Helpers
1. Identify a crowd, a goal, and a method of contribution
i.e. manga lovers, translation of Japanese manga, a manga data base
2. motivate contribution, motivate peer review/revision, collaboration, and consolidate the community
i.e. personal messages, grant special status, public acknowledgement, individuals can contribute different translations, and formation of clan/ranking of clans, paid trips to anime convention, etc.
3. Market to more crowd and repeat 2.
i.e. blog reviews, word of mouth, media coverage
4. Financial return
Gain enough data for commercial use, sell the data
Gain enough traffic, earn revenue from advertisement
Be disruptive enough to the existing big companies to be bought out
Get donation like Wikipedia style
Mathworks Competition
http://www.mathworks.com/contest/furniture/about.html
1. Identify a crowd, a goal, and a method of contribution
i.e. Coders, Superior Algorithm, Competition Style,
2. motivate contribution, motivate peer review/revision, and loosely consolidate the community
i.e. publicity via niche distributors, such as university prof, professional publications, blogs, etc. Open up the winning code, and frequently comment/update the competition website, generate hype among competitors and their friends via granting them publicity
3. Market to more crowd and repeat 2.
i.e. blog reviews, word of mouth, media coverage
4. Financial return on the capital
Gain good enough data for commercial use, sell the data
Build brand with students
Identify potential talent
Wikipedia
1. Identify a crowd, a goal, and a method of contribution
i.e. Specialists, Encyclopedia, Write articles,
2. motivate contribution, motivate peer review/revision, and loosely consolidate the community
i.e. ask professionals to write few articles, give people tools for revision, encourage discussion between professionals
3. Market to more crowd and repeat 2.
i.e. blog reviews, word of mouth, media coverage
4. Financial return on the capital
Currently just accepting donations, although there is constant suggestions to monetize using advertising.
Failed Examples
CurrentTV – TV programs created from feedback by users for the users failed because it overestimated crowd’s capacity to generate large professional grade content. Hence few contributions and little to talk about.
Assignment Zero – crowd source journalism and publish the content created by the crowd. Failed to build a seed community
So what can we learn from these?
Dos
Encourage community building among users
Think of ways to serve and help the users. In turn, they will help you
Separate the tasks into small distinct bits
Have a clear objective for the users to perform
Guide the crowd along the way
Listen to the crowd
Donts
Take the crowd for granted, they are your equal
Go against the will of the crowd, they have power
Leave the crowd alone, they need your guidance
Ask crowd to do too much at once, they don’t have time
Complicate the process, they don’t have patience
Exploit the crowd, they are not stupid.
In conclusion, crowdsourcing has promising potential for content creation (quality and quantity) and marketing. It has also been shown that ventures based on crowdsourcing, the whim of the crowd, can be self-sustaining and profitable. It also saves money and time for the existing companies. Effectively used, crowdsourcing can generate more ideas and form a strong brand loyalty for the company.
[UPDATE- we have expanded this idea to create www.colaboratorie.org]
Posted in: Crowdsourcing | Tagged: Crowdsourcing, dell, externship, manga helpers, mathworks, MIT, muji, starbucks, wikipedia | 8 Comments
MUJI – Just Enough Design by Everyone
Posted by Shaun Abrahamson on Thursday, 23 October 2008
MUJI began life humbly, as a store brand sold in Japan’s Seiyu LTD stores in the early 80s. In 1989 it was spun off as its own company. The idea, still embraced today was simply to make what is necessary, nothing less and nothing more.
MUJI was conceived to be different from the start. The complete name MUJIrushi Ryohin means “No Label. Good Products”, which is at the core of what the business is about. MUJI was conceived to be different from the start. It was one of the first brands to spell out a Japanese word in English (English characters are not uncommon in Japan, but usually they are used to spell English words).
Beyond the name, the process of creating products was different. MUJI product developers would survey 1000s of customers to understand what they needed. And then they would try to meet these needs in the simplest, cheapest ways possible. The slogan for “R&D” was to “make what you want, as a customer”.
The approach proved very successful. During Japan’s recession, MUJI flourished while other floundered. But between 1999 and 2001, the company suffered through a spectacular financial crisis. The company had expanded quickly into new lines and abandoned much of the focus on customers. Towards the end of the decline and just before their remarkable comeback, the product development team was ordered to oversee the dumping of their unsold product inventory as a sign that they would be starting again to refocus on what customers wanted.
Today, the focus on the product development is evident in a number of ways, from Investor messages to the unbranded products which are increasingly recognizable by their simple forms and deliberately absent logos. Beyond the products themselves is a focus on the experience of buying these products.
MUJI is not just a creator of products, they also take great pains to provide the right environment to show and sell their products. Many people who visit the stores, have commented on the sense of calm they feel when entering and walking around the stores. Try visiting MUJI online – its an experience unlike any online retailer, conveying the same peaceful this-is-enough-not-too-much philosophy of its products and stores.
Perhaps most interesting, is what evokes the fanatical following they have developed, which caused much chatter and celebration in NYC when they finally launched their store here. Although not everyone believes MUJI’s approach will work in the US against the likes of Target and Walmart. We’ll see – MUJI’s prices are higher since they dont have much footprint in the US yet. Companies like Zara have had similar market entry economics issues.
Perhaps most interesting is that MUJI shares openly their design philosophy at their core of their success. And they encourage others to help them create according to these rules. They actively seek out ideas from anyone who touches their business and then work hard, with employees and partners alike to design products to instantiate these ideas.
The Best Ideas from Everyone
MUJI has a systematic way to constantly harvest the best ideas and present them, ultimately to the design team, for he creation of new products. The process makes use of all touch points. In stores, employees are encouraged to make and collect notes. MUJI.net has almost 500,000 members and is used as another source of ideas. And then anthropological opportunities are presented when people go to MUJI camps where people can be observed using products so that additional insights might be gained.
Enough Design
At the core of the MUJI culture, is simple design – or more specifically, just what is necessary, simultaneously creating beautiful, simpler to manufacture and therefore cheaper, products. The cutting board example, explains nicely how MUJI approaches design to reduce products to their essential functions.
Can you spot the difference? Its still a cutting board, just more so, or less so, depending on your perspective, but for sure it is likely cheaper, or for the same price, it can use better materials.
I see some parallels with some of Apple’s recent work, as they talk about their latest Macbook in terms of simplifying, reducing the unnecessary and the focus on materials. Unlike Apple, MUJI will not allow disclosure of their designers, in keeping with the strong no-branding policy. But there is much speculation that many of its items are designed by some of the best desigers in the world.
Finally, to get even more ideas, the Muji Award has been running for 3 years (although MUI ran prior competitions, I believe). The entries are solicited globally and has resulted in a number of products that have found their way into stores.
If We Build It, Will You Come?
MUJI takes advantage of many opportunities to figure out what people want. But it goes a step further. Even when MUJI has a design, it takes the final step of checking who will by it, before it is produced. Easy way to avoid a complete flop.
In 2006, business week covered how MUJI.net, is used to solicity and select new product and design ideas. And then:
MUJI then tests the market by soliciting customer pre-orders rather than conducting a focus group or survey, or using other traditional market research methodology. Simply put, if 300 customers pre-order an item online, it goes into production.
As the MIT Sloan researchers point out. MUJI in effect collaborates with customers to plan their products. By getting commitments upfront to buy, MUJI gets a definitive commitment beyond anything they might get through surveys and estimation. One might suspect that these initial commitments might correlate with lifetime value much like opening box office weekends can be good predictors of the lifetime value of movies.
So enough with the boring analysis, lets just see what all the fuss is about. Buinessweek has a good slide show featuring some of the better known products.
Special thanks to Makoto Arai (fellow Berlin School participant) for his help in researching, analyzing and translating coverage of MUJI in Japan.
Posted in: Product Development | Tagged: collaboration, crowdsourced, design, MIT, muji, Product Development | 1 Comment