The Bloggomist: Design in the Blood
Technology Opinion

Social media has opened up an unprecedented mode of communication where ideas, images, events, inspiration and all kinds of content can spread like wildfire. So it was only a matter of time before the bells went off in the corporate ranks as they woke up to the 21st century; a world where market feedback came to their doorstep. Tapping social networks is fast becoming a significant resource for information, and what better way to receive free, fast and essentially instantaneous feedback from a broad demographic (depending on which channels you promote through).

Behind the anonymity of comment-leaving and discussion boards lies a window to unrestrained opinion-making and observations which can, if filtered correctly, outline a general reaction to a new product. By giving sneak-peeks via places like Facebook fan pages or Twitter followings, a company can soft-launch their product bereft of the multi-millions of dollars traditionally spent on releasing their latest into the wild. This of course can be anything: a new beverage, phone, shoe, TV, car or whatever we’re being told that we need to upgrade. These quiet reveals aren’t new to industries like film; test audiences can leave feedback that quite often leads to the re-editing and even re-shooting of a mostly complete movie, for better or for worse.

When it comes to design though there’s a different kind of complexity involved. Of course it’s clever to open up your product to the court of public opinion, and the perfect way to do this is to preview concepts of what you’re planning to release; a pretty picture of what might one day become a real thing. The auto industry is usually the best at doing this, as a lot of time and money goes into lavish concept cars that are meant to ignite excitement towards a brand but to also gauge the reaction to a design direction. However this fleshed-out and physical manifestation of an idea can often still be very early on in the design process; it is preceded by research and brainstorming, sketches and refined proposals. But going forward and making a mass-produced product real requires millions upon millions of dollars, thousands of man hours and a severe level of commitment to make the leap from the page and into the market, so you’d better believe the company responsible is confident in their creation…or at least they should be.

Recently on Facebook however, Honda learned the hard way that generating excitement about a forthcoming product has it’s problems. Creating a fan page for their forthcoming Crosstour seemed like a good idea; getting people to comment and discuss the new car’s looks as well as providing initial feedback and gut reactions was definitely what they were after. What they didn’t expect was the diatribe and whip-cracking backlash that rolled in after they unveiled the first image. It was so bad that Honda USA had to scramble to explain themselves, one spokesman even suggested that maybe it was like “a bad yearbook photo”. “Never fear” they said, “releasing more images will clear all this up.” And surprise, it did clarify a lot; namely that from every angle imaginable the car was absolutely horrific. If you’ve seen The Simpsons episode where Homer unveils his car design, you know it only got worse as the thing rotated 360 degrees to reveal every shocking detail.

In this case, a little bit of trust and transparency can go a long way. If the people you are designing for are involved early on, there’s a lot of useful feedback that can be garnered, if, as I said earlier, it is done through the right channels and at the right time. Once a product is rolling off the production line, it’s a little late to ask people what they think of it. Internal discussions, back-patting, closed-door meetings and so called ‘market research’ have resulted in an irreversible chain of events, and all they can do is try and force it down your throat with a spoonful of sugar.

There is however, a right way to do this, a way to properly tap the common consciousness, involving the community instead of dictating to it. This open source method won’t be applicable to every product in every market, but it can change the way this process unfolds and result in better products for us all.

(To be continued, Part 2 next Wednesday)

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To see more from Leon, visit http://evilmonito.com/author/leon/.

Published on 11 November 2009 | |