Tag Archives: New product development

Publications

Bridging the Chasm between Design and Marketing

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DML_Productdesign_UoT_02Although integrating design and marketing is critical for successful new product development (NPD), there has been a limited attention to the potential problems that arise during the NPD process and their possible solutions in academic literature. In order to narrow this gap, our study conducted a series of surveys of an interdisciplinary class project between marketing and design students over two year periods and identified two major potential problems: (1) conflict from the functional background, and (2) the conflict from imbalanced decision-making authority between design and marketing. In order to resolve such conflict, we found the two contrasting solutions: (1) facilitating communication to enhance cross-functional integration between the two groups and (2) prohibiting communication to protect each group. Our findings contribute to the formation of a theoretical basis for research on the topic of design-marketing integration.

 

Cases

Expert Products, Novice Consumers

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DesignMarketingLab

Crate and Barrel, one of my favorite stores following Pottery Barn and Williams and Sonoma, has a section called “Everything You Never Knew You Needed.” It introduces highly specialized kitchen utensils including jar spatula, melon baller, strawberry huller, avocado slicer, dual citrus squeezer, egg timer, and herb scissors.

At first, they look useless for many who do not cook often. Even if they do so, they can slice avocados and trim herbs using existing kitchen utensils. However, it is true that people often fell in love with a product only after they experience it. For example, I love the salad spinner by OXO, Panini grill by Breville, and wine decanter by Spiegelau. Although I am able to dry vegetables, grill sandwiches, and oxygenate wines without using these products, they make my cooking experience enjoyable. Indeed, I believe most smart kitchen products are the nice marriage of careful observation of people’s behavior in the kitchen with just a bit of technological flavor. If I should slice many avocados and trim a lot of herbs all the time, I may need a slicer and a pair of scissors designed exclusively for them to enjoy my cooking experience.

This leads us to a series of critical questions about new product development. Should designers and marketers ignore the novices’ voices (e.g., I am fine with an existing slicer) but listen to the experts’ voices more carefully (e.g., I need a better slicer for avocados)? If so, how do designers and marketers confirm that there will be a market for highly specialized expert products (e.g., avocado slicer)? Alternatively, how should designers and marketers “educate” novices when launching highly specialized products so that the newly developed products are appealing to novices ?

DesignMarketingLab

Cases

RAPY, a DC motor 3D printer

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DML_3D printerEveryone has dreams but only few pursue them. I love the anecdote of the inventors of the world’s first DC motor 3D printer, RAPY (Rapid Advanced Printing sYstem). I decide to support it at the Kickstarter. I learn how to use this machine now and hope to “play” with it soon. The following is what RAPY is about on the Kickstarter.

… The story goes back to twenty years ago.

In 1993, we were students in an engineering school and obsessed in robots. We organized a group of robot builders. We studied hard and enjoyed school life including group activities. After graduation we were all scattered in diverse areas and experienced how big industries run from products and service planning to launch and after service. After decades of practical experience in industries, we realized that we might build our own 3D printer by ourselves with expertise in control. Decades of industrial experience definitely helped a lot in designing, developing and planning for a production. Robots can be defined as a machine to perform pre-programmed activity and adjust its action in accordance with environmental change. By this sense, RAPY system is a robot. Now we are stepping our first foot in making robots. With our system we continue to push our limits to bring more sophisticated system within our lives.

With the help of position feedback control system, RAPY has an ability of disturbance rejection, which means it can resists against not only external shock but also internal mis-tracking caused by build up errors. 3D printers operate not only for a couple of minutes but for several hours to print out a single object.  As a result your printer may run dozens of hundreds of hours in total to meet your need. The situation is quite different from that of using 2D printers. This is why 3D printers need a rigid structure for its stability against long run.

 

*Event

Jan Chipchase @ Seoul

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Jan Chipchase

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Hidden in plain sightSpeech at Seoul by Jan Chipchase (Executive Creative Director of Global Insights at Frog, Author of Hidden in Plain Sight)

Title: “Leap of Faith”

Synopsis:  “Drawing on over a decade working for Fortune 500 and Korean clients Jan’s talk will explore the use of real-world insights to inform and inspire design, strategy, challenge minds and flutter hearts. The talk will cover a sample project all the way through to cutting edge techniques in obtaining insight and discuss why sometimes, against the better judgement of the organization it requires a leap of faith.”

Time: October 28, 2013 (Mon) 4-6PM

Place: Conference Hall, Administration Building, Kookmin University

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관찰의 힘얀 칩체이스 서울 강연 (프로그 디자인, 크리에이티브 디렉터 / 관찰의 힘, 저자)

제목: 믿음의 도약

시놉시스: 얀 칩체이스는 지난 10년동안 포춘 500대 기업과 한국 기업들을 대상으로 프로젝트를 수행하면서, 현실 세계에서 발굴한 인사이트가 디자인과 전략을 개선하고, 틀에 갇힌 사람들의 생각에 도전하며, 심지어는 사람의 마음을 움직일 수도 있다는 점을 보여주었습니다. 본 강연에서는, 기존에 수행한 프로젝트 뿐만 아니라 인사이트 발굴에 사용되는 기법들도 함께 선보일 예정이며, 다양한 사례와 기법들을 통하여 언제, 왜 데이터에 기반한 판단보다 믿음이 조직의 발전에 도움이 되는지 논의하려고 합니다.

시간: 2013년 10월 28일 (월) 오후 4-6시

장소: 국민대학교 본부관 학술대회장

참고 1) 동아비즈니스리뷰 인터뷰 (201308): “르완디 시장조사때 밀수꾼 인터뷰… 극단적 아웃라이어는 통찰의 보고”

참고 2) 조선일보 인터뷰 (20131008): “제품 기능에만 치중하면 실패… 소비자 깊숙한 내면적 욕망 읽어야”

 

 

Welcome Jan! On Oct 28, 2013, he gave a speech at Kookmin University, Seoul. He shared with the attendants his unique perspective and rich insights as an Executive Creative Director of Global Insights at Frog and author of Hidden in Plain Sight. In total, 280 people showed up. This event was run by Ran Yoon who is working at the product development team, SK Telecom, and used to work at the marketing team, Samsung Electronics Canada. One of the attendants, Jaeyong Yi, the president of PXD, a Korean design consulting agency, wrote his review in Korean language.

 

Jan Chipchase @ Kookmin University

Jan Chipchase

Publications

Apple and Samsung took different approaches toward design thinking

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The article presents research focusing on the development of design thinking in business context. It utilizes balancing intuitive and analytical thinking to determine the exploitation of design thinking in organizations. It explores the decision making processes of two electronic corporations including Apple Inc., and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. to offer practical implications to executives who are interested in implementing design thinking in their organizations.

… Samsung is a good example of a “technology push” firm. Samsung has been a late mover in the electronics market. Responding to unparalleled business challenges, the company first expanded its design team from 200 designers in the late 1990s to 1000 designers in 2012. Samsung has made noticeable debuts in winning several international design awards. However, the company’s intuitive and analytic teams needed to work closely before they were able to deeply understand and appreciate each other’s way of working. The forced collaboration produced challenging decision-making conflicts—the types of conflicts that are difficult to resolve without a moderator. Instead, decisions were made exclusively by the intuitive team or exclusively by the analytic team. This issue explains why Samsung has performed well in design awards, but has not yet introduced an iconic product like the iPhone…

… Apple approaches design thinking differently from Samsung. Its design team does not communicate with its manufacturing team. Instead, an independent team (consisting of Steve Jobs and his supporters) made most of the firm’s business decisions. In the process, Jobs limited the decision-making power of the analytic teams in order for them to be comparable with the power of the intuitive team. Note that although Steve Jobs was often criticized for his assertive decisions, he did free the intuitive team from the analytic team. As a result, Apple products are welcomed by a massive number of consumers—even though their individual features do not necessarily outperform the products manufactured by their competitors …

Cases

Wood wick for soothing sound

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20130427_Design @ Seoul (3)

When we buy candles, we generally consider how they look or how they smell. Therefore, most candle makers carve their candles artistically or add scents to the candle waxes (e.g., Red Roses of Jo Malone). However, some candle makers pay attention to a different aspect of candle: wick.

A candle wick is usually a braided cotton that holds the flame of a candle. Wicks can be made of material other than string or cord, such as wood, although they are rare (Wikipedia). Recently, I met a candle maker who was selling wood wick candles. She told me her candles make a relaxing SOUND of burning wood. Since I was fascinated by the sound, I bought her candle without considering how it looked or how it smelled.

Designers and marketers are always searching for latent needs, the needs that consumers do not express verbally. Since a wide variety of shapes and scents are existing in the candle market, candle designers and marketers consider innovating their candles by offering different types of burning sounds.

Reference

Urban, G. L., & Hauser, J. R. (2004). “Listening in” to find and explore new combinations of customer needs. Journal of Marketing, 68(2), 72-87.

By “listening in” to ongoing dialogues between customers and Web-based virtual advisers (e.g., Kelley Blue Book’s Auto Choice Advisor), the authors identify new product opportunities based on new combinations of customer needs. The data are available at little incremental cost and provide the scale necessary for complex products (e.g., 148 trucks and 129 customer needs in the authors’ application). The authors describe and evaluate the methodologies with formal analysis, Monte Carlo simulation (calibrated on real data), and a “proof-of-concept” application in the pickup-truck category (more than 1000 Web-based respondents). The application identified opportunities for new truck platforms worth approximately $2.4 billion–$3.2 billion and $1 billion–$2 billion, respectively.