Co-creation DG508. Michelle van Lieshout. University of technology Eindhoven Department of Industrial Design

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1 Co-creation DG508 Michelle van Lieshout University of technology Eindhoven Department of Industrial Design

2 Project of the approach of Prahalad that exists within the current society, at the festival the way the market works is rejected. The fact that the way the market works is rejected, I take to be a warning of the possibilities within this market. I am researching if it is possible to make a shape of clay (integrated with extremely small magnetic particles) and read out the magnetic field this shape creates. When putting a new piece of clay in another shape in a magnetic field that is recreated from the first field, this should lead to forcing this clay into the same shape as the original clay. It could be used to design statues together with the people currently being in the neighborhood changing the statues a bit when new people live together. This would be an example that is more of designing the experience of one and follows from Prahalads approach. The user takes part in the process of interaction with the statue. But I rather see the application of this technology as a design tool. You propose shapes by making them with your hands and your co-workers or companies somewhere else in the world can easily make a small adjustment and send it back. The tool can help create beautiful and valuable products by giving people that are not skilled in 3D modelling a chance to participate and easily give feedback. This is more the approach of Mättelmaki, where you focus on involving a user in part of the design process. I feel this approach is can better withstand the influences of the current market. The burning man would be an example

3 The concept System architecture There is a gap between designers and users when communicating. Users, most of the time, are not able to easily visualize ideas and show them to the designers. The concept gives users the opportunity to share in their ideas and to give companies the opportunity to keep innovating while learning from their users what they want. There are different companies that want inspiration for new ideas of validation of their ideas, companies can also want to expand and then they are looking for new user groups, often missing the expertise about what their new users value. (Look at Health Buddy, also having different hands on the market so there is a back-up plan) Having an independent company binding these companies with different user groups creates an opportunity for input for the companies. The users can easily create and communicate their ideas and take part in design competitions, gain valuable feedback and improve themselves. The users create value together by creating ideas or (easthetical) designs they want to see on the market and giving each other feedback. But they also create value together with the company by together making it possible that the products they want will be produced. The system as it is designed right now knows four points of interaction, the first is a forum where the community can interact and send and receive feedback, the second is a site the community can share, vote and get public exposure, the third are the cool or funny actions and activities to stimulate an active community and the fourth is the device where they can upload and download their clayed objects. Key to the system is an active community that comes up with and votes for ideas. The fourth point of interaction can be argued upon. The fourth, the device is not really intelligent (no internet connection). As the device is a design tool ideas should be protected from being hacked. The plan is to let the device work in combination with a computer or USB. The forum should therefore be built to easily work with the device software. The device and the forum or site are therefore together one point of interaction. The device is not only from My Company but is a tool I see people have in their homes in the future, just like printers. Giving feedback (which is possible within the system) is an opportunity for people to create value together. When people are monitored this can work the other way around, people don t feel responsible and give less relevant feedback or are dishonest (Behavioral theories). Preferably the system would work without a server that filters the data. This will keep the transparency high and make the system seem trustworthy. There is one pitfall however, people can leave bad comments and create an uninviting environment to participate in. My company relies on the self-monitoring of an active and involved community to solve this.

4 Example given There are different companies, in this case the HEMA, that want inspiration for new ideas of validation of their ideas, companies can also want to expand and then they are looking for new user groups, often missing the expertise about what their new users value. HEMA wants to produce a new headphone. Than you have users, who most of the time have a lot of ideas. Like Maartje, she has a good idea for a headphone. But she has no idea on how to communicate this or how to get it in production. Most of the ideas of the users are quite rough. With experts feedback and the feedback of other users some ideas can be worked out in detail. The community of expers, idea clayers and other people with ideas can do this together (on a forum). Maartje makes a model of her clayed headphone and shares this in the community. The community downloads her model and helps her make changes by changing the model and sending it as a suggestion or write her some feedback. In return HEMA gets the best design proposals, the community members vote for this. Maartjes proposal is one of the winning proposals. To reassure the quality of feedback the experts will be hired by my company and the feedback givers get credit determined by the relevance of the feedback. Maartje can say how much the feedback helped her. The key element to the business model is an active and engaged community. To keep the community engaged my company will organize events like a TEDx or discussion evenings for different user groups. Maartje actually thought of the headphones while going to a music event organized by my company. And Tom who gave her a lot of valuable feedback received enough credits to get a thank you gift from the HEMA for helping maartje come up with the idea. HEMA is now in contact with Maartje to see what her further ideas for the headphones are. She will receive 500 euro from HEMA since she won the design competition. But if Maartje starts communicating with HEMA the HEMA can just use her idea without giving her credit and if she shares her idea everywhere, who owns the design than? Especially since the community helped her design. This is where my company comes in. My company receives Maartjes idea and the intellectual property. At the same time HEMA can pay to make use of the idea or initiate a competition my company spreads for her members.

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6 Dialogue Access The main dialogue that is being held is between the people with the ideas and the companies that want the ideas or proposed a contest. My company facilitates here, they help the other companies in making their choice by also giving the users the opportunity to vote. At the same time my company protects the users from potential harm. The quality of the dialogue is influenced by the quality of the companies maintenance of an active enthusiastic community. Another dialogue that is being held is one in the community, giving each other feedback. Here the company maintains the quality of the feedback by using experts. Everyone with a subscription to my company has access to the system in the same way. They will be put in different user groups however to benefit the companies my company works for. The companies and the people part of a user group are the only ones who can see or upload ideas but also to vote for ideas. My company owns the ideas after people submitted them (not when asked for feedback). This to partially protect people from companies stealing their ideas (we have contract). People get money for their ideas when they are picked (kind of how it worked at Threadless). At the forum only my company (by means of the experts) and the people who clay or give feedback (people with an account) have access.

7 Risk Transparency There are a few risks you need to take into account when establishing this model. The people profiting from feedback but not submitting ideas for instance, they can profit from the service without actually participating in the main dialogue. The system as it is designed right now is quite transparent. All data is posted and maintained by the users. What happens after the voting on ideas however is unclear as this is mostly up to the company who wants to continue with your idea. Another risk is that the community is not alive or companies are not satisfied with the outcome and this creates a lot of financial risk. I tried to solve this with voting and therefore creating a more reliable vision on what people value. I also tried to make it more accessible, satisfying and engaging by organizing events and giving feedback that makes this a more inspiring and valuable experience. The risk of users being harmed by stolen ideas I already tried to solve by having an independent company that contracts the businesses. I believe those are the most important risks, other smaller risks I explained within the system architecture choices.

8 Clients Experts Intelectual property management Networking Problem solving Motivating Feedback / learning opportunity Newness Co-creation Site and forum Feedback Communities Forum and events Multi-sided platform People who love working with their hands Experts (Designers) Site builders Intelectual property of the data (and employees who fix this) Convenience of new products Design Status and Design Site and forum Events People with design ideas Experts (Different kinds of designers) Companies looking for input/ feedback Experts Site builders and employees Usage fee for the Companies (volume dependent) Advertising

9 Networks (Wielinga) Reflection I believe co-creation (Mättelmaki) looks a bit like the theory about alive networks from Wielinga. This is actually kind of logical since for co creation you most of the time also use a multi-sided business model involving multiple users. (Coyote is the only company I believe who didn t use multiple parties) The users form a network where co-creation starts. Those multiple parties create value together, as in the theory of Wielinga you will be in the healthy zone of the network; To be in the healthy zone you should have the right feeling of transparency (to avoid a hierarchy or suppression) but also access can be sort of found in Wielingas model (isolation or autonomie). To create a viable business model you should people give enough access to participate and co-create but having no rules, and only leaders you also won t create value easily (as everything takes extremely long to be discussed). The initiator therefore can be the inspiration or mediator as well as someone who makes the rules depending on what is needed at the moment. Dialogue and risk are harder to find within the model of Wielinga, the dialogue takes place everywhere in the network determining who is needed (a mediator, inspiration etc.) The company facilitating the co-creation can be any of these. The risks can t be found in my opinion, I believe this is because they are spread through the network, with the company solving some but also creating some. Since the company is a stakeholder the risks are most of the time buried under the amount of transparency. Within the assignment I wanted to learn where the values of a company lie and how to find them. As well as learn the differences between co-creation, co-design and co-reflection and where and when and how to involve the user within a design process. This last goal, when and how to involve the user within a design process, now rather seems something to be put into perspective. You should critically evaluate why certain choices fit and what you want to achieve since there are many different approaches and all approaches have a different fit. The two main approaches of co-design that we discussed: Mättelmaki and Prahalad made it clear to me that I like to work with Mättelmakis approach. Involving users at places within the process but free to make your own choices apart from that. I learned to critically look at the information that is given (easily). In the meetings I most of the time found a lot of information about the companies enabling me to analyze the companies, this made me appreciate the companies. We discussed several companies and their structures (value flow). This made me able to recognize different forms of co-creation. Before the discussions I had a clear opinion about the companies. The meetings made me able to critically evaluate this opinion, finding new risks and information that is less transparent. When I look at companies now I want to look further and see the real company so I can form a more distinguished opinion.

10 I made basic steps to understand the business model canvas. Although I can recognize customer segments and value propositions I believe I could have learned more about this. Filling in more business model canvases would probably have helped to gain a better understanding. To better understand the business model and how to fill it in I want to read the book business model generation and use this to fill in three more business model canvases. I found it hard to include all information and knowledge I gained and discuss this at an abstract level. Handing in several drafts of the report and having someone look at them helped me to shorten the text. Still I think I should even take this a step further and dare to take away more information. This abstract writing also made me aware that totally working abstract isn t the right way to explain, you should balance between subjective and abstract. Explaining a scenario to get this balance works for me. Balancing can help to clearly structure a report but also to structure a reflection. Peoples ability to emphasize and put the story into context (phenomenology) helps people to easily understand you, using less words. In the future using Toulmins structure or discussing what has to be explained with fellow students might help me to find this structure sooner. In short I learned to visualize business models by visualizing those of various co-creating companies. By analyzing them and discussing them in class I created my personal vision on terms such as co-creation, co-design and innovation And I learned to critically assess the information that is given by a company. By making a business model for my own project I now can evaluate the different perspectives using various frameworks. Writing drafts and handing them in for evaluation helped me to focus my writing and find a better balance between subjective and abstract writing. And last I learned that a business model can accompany so much more than just money, co-creation is about creating value. Thank you for reading! Sincerely, Michelle van Lieshout