When Nokia released its Morph concept—a stretchable, flexible, solar-powered, self-cleaning handset with a sense of smell—the design crowd went nuts. The YouTube video–some of the best gadget porn to come along since the iPhone demos–quickly went viral.
Now Nokia is asking these same crowds for their own “wild ideas” for designs à la Threadless. According to PCMag, “Nokia plans to use its base of one billion customers to consult on what works, what wows, and what doesn’t.” This is a huge change for Nokia, and handset manufacturers in general:
… the process of developing and testing new phone models was once like a state secret, and the results haphazard.
Wood of CCS Insight said that in the past Nokia would develop products “behind closed doors in a room with no windows. With some products I asked them: had they shown them to anyone?”
While they have come out with some technically impressive handsets like the N95 and the N82, Nokia has been missing out on the mainstream design trends such as clamshells, thin phones, touch screens. The Morph concept came about in a much more collaborative manner, with nanoscientists at
“The ability to include large numbers of users into the development cycle means you can have a much more collaborative approach to development and you can try ideas out, refine them and move forward—or fail fast and get out,” said Nokia’s Iannucci.
This is part of a string of collaborative programs, each more open to the public. Last year they announced Reuters Mobile Journalism, a program like CNN’s iReport that enables journalists to file and publish stories and multimedia news content from handhelds. They have also run initiatives that let bloggers and tech-savvy media specialists brainstorm on future mobile products.
One blogger who attended one of these product development workshop this month made a good point: “As a company you cannot close yourself off from the world anymore. If you’re locked in your ivory tower and there is discussion about you going on, it makes sense to get out there and take part in that conversation.”
So true. The benefit of this crowdsourcing approach to design is multi-tiered. They get:
1) New insights and ideas: from both experts, who will incorporate new innovations, and customers, who will design what they want to buy.
2) The trust of the public: call it entitlement, or a strong sense of democracy, but young people today want to be listened to and have their voices count. Listening to them will gain you credibility, trust, and customers who feel they have a stake in the product.
3) Press: especially when you invite bloggers and media specialists to take part, you are forming a relationship with the very influencers you can spread word of mouth about the brand.
4) Web traffic: As handsets are commoditized and the number of mobile users flattens, Nokia’s margins will shrink. This is essentially a web play (and by web we mean mobile web as well). Nokia hopes to draw those billion users to Nokia’s online services. It seems to be working: its Beta Labs Website, where it puts up software for testing to public, has more than a million visitors a month. Millions of people have downloaded programs or media from Nokia’s new mobile activities site Mosh, also still in beta.
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