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Bridging the gap between technological possibilities and people:
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 74 (2007) 1758 – 1772
Bridging the gap between technological possibilities and people: Involving people in the early phases of technology development Stefanie Un ⁎, Nick Price 1 Philips Design, P.O. Box 218, 5600 MD Eindhoven, The Netherlands Received 3 October 2006; received in revised form 19 January 2007; accepted 1 May 2007
Abstract Technology provides endless promising possibilities to support people's lives. In reality, it is not a matter of what is possible, but rather a matter of how and when technology will be integrated, accepted and adopted by people. However, conventionally within organizations the areas of technology development and market research are not closely related nor applied in the process of innovation and do not always share the same scope. In that sense there is a gap between the potential of technology and humankind's preferences. This paper discusses the current areas of technology development and market research in a business environment and proposes an integrated approach to bridge the gap between technology and people, in which people, rather than market sizes become central in the development of technology. In addition, it also describes how this approach of people-driven innovation is brought into practice through the development of early experience demonstrators. The core focus of this paper is on the processes and practices regarding innovation within an organization, rather than the adoption of innovation by users or the rate of the adoption of a marketed solution (Rogers, 1995 [E.M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, The Free Press, New York, 1995. [1]]). © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Experience prototypes; Foresight; Innovation in an organization involving people in technology development; Market and people research; Multiple encounter approach; People driven innovation; Personas
⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 40 27 59205. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S. Un), [email protected] (N. Price). 1 Tel.: +31 40 27 59126. 0040-1625/$ - see front matter © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2007.05.008
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1. Demystifying the gap Before taking a closer look at the gap between technology development and market research, it is worth considering the closeness of technology foresight and market research. Foresight is typically thought of as a perception of events that have yet to occur. Another view, used in the world of business strategy, is that ‘Strategic Foresight is the ability to create and maintain a high-quality, coherent and functional forward view, and to use the insights arising in useful organizational ways. For example to detect adverse conditions, guide policy, shape strategy, and to explore new markets, products and services' (Slaughter, 1999 [2]). Market research on the other hand is an endeavor that collects data about customers, competitors and markets to analyze it to find patterns and trends. The aim of market research is to attain a higher degree of predictability, certainty and understanding of a certain market. In that respect, foresight and research are ways of improving the view of what is to come, i.e. our possible future, albeit in different ways. Foresight then seems more aligned with the generation of breakthrough developments – discontinuities- and research aligned with incremental – extension of existing paradigms. Both of these combinations are very powerful and complimentary to realize opportunities though ideation – creating the idea, innovation – making it accessible to a wider audience. Whilst foresight and market research offer objective and macro level views of the potential future, ‘people’ research can provide a view of the meaning of technology at the personal level, as it provides an approach aimed to understand people, their values and needs, in the context of their daily lives, rather than sizing up potential markets and competitors as in conventional market research. Understanding the meaning of people's lives and the role technology can play in it is central in this approach, both for the present as well as the perceived meaning it can bring in the future. This type of research can be applied to breakthrough or incremental technologies, as it focuses on people's core values and needs that in general will not change dramatically over time. It provides a granular perspective that can uncover possibilities of technology that may not have been thought about that fits into people's lives. So, how have technology and people been linked together over the past? 2. Understanding the gap between technology development and people research In the past, innovative leaps were highly visible as the world became more connected and industrialized. There was room to grow and learn, particularly as the world emerged from the dark ages – when there was hardly any technological development – into a more enlightened period. As the Industrial Table 1 Innovations throughout the centuries Period
Example of types of innovations
1700–1799 1800–1899
Steam engine; telegraph; steamboat; gas turbine; gas lighting; battery Steam locomotive; printing press; photograph; electro magnet; microphone; typewriter; sewing machine; electric dynamo; mechanical calculator; telegraph; telephone; moving pictures; light bulb; steam turbine; vacuum cleaner 1900–1999 Radio receiver; airplane; ignition system; robot; mechanical and color television; computer; microwave oven; Video tape recorder; computer hard disk; cellular phones; DVD; Web TV Beyond 2000 From single products to networked solutions; from single personality to second or alternative identities in the virtual world Source: http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa121599a.htm:[3].
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Revolution took hold, gradually more and more technical solutions were introduced. Through the years, these solutions have grown from mechanical, to electronic, to digital, as shown in Table 1 below. This technology evolution has increasingly empowered individuals to innovate creating a bloom of new ideas and solutions to problems. Today, with so many solutions available everywhere, the endless creativity of innovators and the technological possibilities offered, only a small number of innovations introduced on the market actually succeed. Although technology seems to offer endless possibilities, reality shows that it seldom appeals to people's preferences or does not live up to their expectations. The gap between technology and people's demands is currently vast. In our view, this gap is due to the different phases of innovation in which technology and market research traditionally play a leading role, which we will discuss in his paper. 3. Different phases of innovation for technology development and market research The specific phases of the innovation process in which technology development and market research are applied vary. Conventionally, technology development occurs in the very early phases of innovation, the so-called ‘fuzzy front’, see Fig. 1. In this phase, the focus lies on exploring, expanding and developing the possibilities and potentialities of what technology can offer. The development of technology is mainly aimed at longer term growth and provides support to the development for new markets. In addition, as engineers commonly ‘steer’ such a process, the resulting innovation very often finds its origins in technology. This in turn causes – intentionally or unintentionally – a technology-driven momentum throughout the entire innovation process. The development and implementation of new technology can take over a decade before any actual specific applications become commonplace on the market. However, today it is increasingly becoming
Fig. 1. Phases of innovation.
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important that technological applications will be developed with an eye to the near future – three to five, or five to eight, years – before an actual technology can be made applicable to, and accepted by, a larger audience, many years can easily have passed. Well-known examples of this are the World Wide Web and VoIP as described below. The American ARPA-net, which originated in the 1960s, had the core function to safeguard a means of communication in the event of a nuclear war. It went on, however, to evolve into one of the most groundbreaking ‘technological inventions’ of all, becoming better known in the late 90s as the Internet. Whilst the nascent Internet grew from a defense project, its enablement of people might be seen to propel it forward. Its potential as a connector for digital idea exchange grew from researchers to students, from larger groups of education facilities and out into the commercial and public worlds. As this community has grown so have facilities to ease its use and accentuate the exchange of meaning. The technological concept of standards and the co-creative ecology of the Internet have lead to vast leaps in individual empowerment. Another example is Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), which enables people to make telephone calls by transmitting their voice in data packages sent via the Internet rather than over the conventional copper telephone lines. From a technological viewpoint, VoIP has been possible for some time. But it is only in the past couple of years that it has begun to increase in popularity with a growing number of home PC users who have access to (broadband) Internet services and want to telephone others more cheaply. Skype, in particular, has become a notable VoIP success. As a standalone technology VoIP struggled to breathe, as the potential appeared to emanate from the world of business efficiency, and to fully guarantee good quality at all times was difficult. Coinciding forces were needed to release its potential. In the world of the individuals this facility was freed to find its place and meaning in new social relationships; a world of webs not hierarchies. This demand taps into the needs of many different people; it is a platform for connection. The success of Skype can be considered as an example of Disruptive Innovation (Christensen, 1997 [4]). As a disruptive innovation, Skype is a “low-end disruption” where a product is introduced with perhaps poorer quality but is more readily available to a wider consumer base. Further to this the product then goes through rapid improvement is quality to widen its appeal. Most innovative ideas and solutions come to the attention of business when something tangible has been developed, for example, in the form of a technological prototype. The process involved in reaching such a prototype requires intensive investment in time, money, and human resources. Looking at the other spectrum of technology, when triggered by its technological possibilities, the business at that point needs to understand the market potential behind it, so market research is undertaken to test and evaluate the market potential of a specific concept or prototype in ‘end phase’ of the innovation process. For example focus on the evaluation of a specific prototype: what do people like about a specific concept or prototype; what do they think about the color; do they use specific functions? What it does not do is find out how, what and why people feel or experience a certain prototype. Nor does it answer the question of what happens when people do not like the prototype, just as it does not provide answers as to why and how people will like a certain prototype. Unfortunately, in most cases, by the time market research is undertaken, it has become too costly to reject the prototype: too much money has been invested to disregard it and its possibilities. So, what often happens is that the investors decide to adapt the prototype and turn it into an actual product to be put on the market. In the conventional field of market research, it remains difficult for to investigate and explore people in a future context because market research is essentially concerned with supporting the current core business and it mainly focuses on growth based on today's or next year's market, rather than a few
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years in the future. Although many attempts have been made to ask people about their dreams, aspirations, feelings and thoughts in the future, both the method and the outcomes of such an approach remain questionable and debatable. So whereas technological development happens mostly at the fuzzy front of innovation, market research is usually applied in later end phases of innovation. This results in a gap between technological development and people's needs with the result that the possibilities that technology has to offer rarely match the desires, wishes, and needs of people. Due to changing circumstances of a much faster-paced market and industry, resulting in the need for faster means of innovation, it is vital to bring technology development and people research closer together. And a first step towards the successful introduction and adoption of new technology by people is to base the development of such new technology around the needs, wishes, demands and desires of people. So how can this gap – between technological development and market research – be bridged? How can a closer link between people and the potential for new or emerging technologies be ensured? 4. Providing people with meaningful solutions rather than technological possibilities When talking about technology and innovation, it is not solely a matter of all the possibilities of a technological development. Rather than approaching innovation from a singular technological point of view, a more holistic approach to innovation is needed that incorporates technology, people, design and business goals. In this holistic view, it is people, and their needs, desires, wishes and aspirations that should drive technological innovation within a business environment; people and their everyday context should be taken into account. Whereas traditional market research is aimed to gather and analyze data and trends about market segments, competitors and brand preferences at a certain moment in time, in a ‘people research’ approach people, their values and needs, their lives –rather than technology – are central to understand. People research in this sense can be seen as an extended way of conducting research on and with people, in which daily life, its dynamics and interactions are taken into account. Implications of these people research outcomes are applied to the development and design of innovative solutions. How can people's needs, desires, wishes and aspirations drive technological innovation? • Firstly, people insights should be already used at the fuzzy front of innovation, rather than solely at later phases of innovation to provide inspiration and create an understanding of people in the context of everyday life. • Secondly, a continuous integration of people insights should be guaranteed throughout the innovation process: people insights need to be incorporated in an iterative manner throughout the process, to – in effect – create a dialogue between developers and researchers. • Thirdly, bridging the gap between technological development and people research also entails a closer collaboration between people from different disciplines, and this collaboration requires a better understanding of the different languages connected with the different disciplines. 4.1. Incorporating people insights at the fuzzy front of innovation Ensuring a closer link between technology and people means that, in addition to understanding the full capabilities and potential of technology, we also need to understand people – in the context of
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their own lives – to bring these two ‘ingredients’ closer together. In the early phases of innovation it is not so much a matter of understanding how and what people think of a certain technology or product; rather, it is about understanding people's everyday contexts of life, the dynamics in it and considering these with regard to the technology being developed. What are the routines and rituals in their lives? What problems do they encounter in life and how are these solved, or not solved? And how can these issues be anticipated, starting already in early phases of innovation? In the early phases of innovation, people insights can be used to understand people's values, needs and experiences in their everyday context. Throughout the process, these values, needs and experiences need to be ‘kept alive’ to ensure people driven innovation. Last but not least, people research can be applied to test and validate whether the insights, incorporated into an actual demonstrator fits into the lives of users, see Fig. 2. It is important for developers to understand the topics as mentioned above – topics often considered obvious and so taken for granted – to learn what drives people in their daily lives. Because we are looking for personal meaning and experiences, it's also important to include people's stories of their lives, to examine the way they build, control and change their own identities and how they express those identities to other people (Baumgartner, 2002 [5]), which has to be anticipated in technology. An understanding of people in the early phases of innovation will make it possible to build future technological solutions that incorporate genuine insights into people.
Fig. 2. Integrating Innovation and people research.
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4.2. Continuous insights throughout the innovation process: a Multiple Encounter Approach It is not only important to understand people in the early phases of innovation: it's also just as important to ensure that the insights into people are kept alive throughout the entire process of innovation. For this reason the Multiple Encounter Approach has been developed (Rameckers, Un, 2006 [6]); an approach based on multiple encounters with people over a period of time – either face-to-face or online – for the purposes of research (Fig. 3). It differs from the usual one-off user studies common in traditional market research in several ways. The Multiple Encounter Approach aims to involve people throughout the entire development and creation process. It enables to create an ongoing dialogue and two-way interaction with the people who are, in essence, the potential future users of our technological innovation. During the encounters, the focus lies on capturing the dynamics in their everyday life rather than observing the ‘facts’ of what they do, providing deeper insights about their lives and the interactions and changes within them. To help our researchers follow the participants' lives closely, we use storytelling as a technique to capture the richness and breadth of the way they experience their world, as well as studying how they integrate on-going experiences with memories from the past and aspirations for the future (Atkinson, 1998 [7]). Some of the features that characterize the Multiple Encounter Approach are listed below: • People and their everyday life context are taken into account in earlier phases of innovation; • A deliberate focus on understanding the dynamics, interactions and changes in people's lives (as opposed to static information); • People become co-creators by becoming researchers of their own lives. They thus influence the technology, design and, ultimately, the end solution; • An ‘ongoing dialogue’ is created through multiple encounters.
Fig. 3. Multiple Encounter Approach.
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The Multiple Encounter Approach has been developed in the AMIGO (Ambient Intelligence in the networked home environment) and AMEC (Ambient Intelligence Ecologies) projects. Both AMIGO and AMEC are consortium projects that were set up with different partners in a European Union-subsidized program. Approximately 150 people were involved and 75 home visits made in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands. In the course of several encounters, regular contact was maintained with the research participants to help develop an understanding of their daily lives, routines and rituals. Physical (‘early experience’) prototypes – based on this research – were then produced to embody possible future solutions. More specifics of the research set up and outcomes are elaborated on in the illustrative case ‘Lifestyle Home: Shaping your own experiences in the home’ as described in paragraph 7. 4.3. Collaboration between people from different disciplines At the same time, involving and engaging people in innovation through the Multiple Encounter Approach also implies and creates a closer collaboration within an organization: between researchers, designers and engineers as they work closely together to understand and involve people in innovation. The professionals from these disciplines have to combine methods to better understand and engage users in the creation and development of new products; such methods include participatory design, usercentered design, ethnography and contextual design (Kujala, S., 2002 [8]). 5. Translating people insights into implications for innovation Prevailing in most innovation practices is that it is mostly steered by the potential of technology. To prevent solutions becoming purely technological or design driven, conducting research on and with people from early phases onwards should be an important aspect of the innovation practice. But just as crucial is the understanding of such insights and their specific implications for innovation to be able to develop a tangible outcome that actually fits people's lives. Creating a better understanding of research insights amongst professionals from different disciplines collaborating on innovation is essential. For this reason, it's of importance to involve people from different disciplines more in the research process, and researchers should better understand how to makes sense of data specifically for the sake of innovation and design (Beyer, H., Holtzblatt, K., 1997 [9]). Translations have to be made cross-disciplinary and collaboratively to explain what the researchers' insights ‘mean’, so developers can produce tangible, effective solutions that fit into and anticipate the particular context of people's daily lives. Where market researchers traditionally talk about intangible aspects, such as people's needs and values – engineers need to understand what these intangible aspects mean for the functionality and tangibility of their applications and technology. There is no shared jargon in these two different disciplines, nor is there one particular way of working. Through involvement and collaboration, steps in translation should be made that bring market researchers and developers closer together, so that effective collaboration throughout the process of development and innovation can be realized. These steps in translation – see Fig. 4 – are necessary to turn intangible aspects such as e.g. behavior, attitudes, needs and values into tangible aspects such as e.g. functionalities, applications. Whereas this might sound as a simple and most logical thing to do, in reality it is difficult to realize such a way of working within a corporation as in many organizations different departments, such as marketing, research, development or design, focus on different aspects. Putting effort in
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Fig. 4. Translation process model.
collaboration, understanding each other's jargon and thus translating research outcomes so people from different disciplines understand and can act upon these outcomes is crucial. For example, when market researchers talk about people's need for control in their lives because of the information and media overload they experience daily, engineers need specific directions for what they need to develop; it is not enough simply to talk about ‘helping to combat the information and media overload’. What is the issue that people do in their everyday life, what value drives it, what main goal and need does a person have in his or her daily life to tackle this issue and what does it imply for the solution in technical or design terms in that particular context? The same approach counts for the second example in Table 2, related to the need for youngsters to be able to continuously Table 2 Example: From Insights to Implications People insight Information Information overload makes people want to be able to manage the amount of information coming to them via diverse media: newspapers, radio, TV, internet, advertisements, etc. Communication Youngsters need to be continuously connected with peers. They want to be up-to-date about each other's whereabouts at any given time, and if desired they can contact each other and get together, using different and diverse means of communication.
Core value/ need
Main daily user goal
Daily need
Implication for design/ technology
Need to be in control
Be on top of things through planning and organizing
To structure, collect, document and share information
To make information accessible and tangible
Need to belong and feel part of a group
To feel connected with others
To be updated or notified on whereabouts of friends
To align planning of multiple people and combine diverse communication means
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connect with peers when desired as it is essential for youngsters to feel part of a group. Belonging in this particular context doesn't mean youngsters need to be in contact continuously, but they would rather have the possibility to align and plan with multiple people simultaneously. This particular need has other implications in the development of innovative solutions than the need to be continuously in contact. 6. Making insights tangible: creating experience prototypes In understanding people, it becomes crucial at a given point to translate their values and insights into specific design and technological considerations, so that they can then be applied to the production of actual (‘early experience’) prototypes. Such prototypes are not end products; rather, they are tangible visualizations of experiences based on interesting concepts. The main purpose of an early experience prototype is to make the conceptual idea tangible by showing the hoped-for user experience. That is why such a prototype is not the same as the more conventional prototype or technical demonstrator, both of which are more focused on the end product and technology rather than on the user. Through building early experience prototypes based on people insights it is aimed to trigger specific user experiences rather than that what is conventionally the primary aim, demonstrating technological possibilities. As mentioned earlier, experience prototypes make visible what future solutions might be like. They help people not only to imagine but also to actually experience what a future solution can be like as they can feel it, see it and use it today. For a business it means that it becomes possible to feel and to see not only what the possible solutions could be, but also the experiences they could generate for the user. Furthermore, experience prototypes can also function as a starting point for identifying new business opportunities (Gardien, 2006 [10]), either in line with, or beyond, current business. And in addition to embodying future solutions, they also represent a closer collaboration between professionals from different disciplines throughout the innovation process. For example, because researchers and designers have to work closely together in the research phase, so all parties involved get a feel for what they are developing for and, most importantly, for whom they are developing. The experience offered by an experience prototype is often completely – or partly – based on simulations. This is due to the fact that the required technologies can only be properly realized in the future. Thus, the major advantage of such a demonstrator is that it allows us to collect feedback on something that does not yet exist, both from potential users and product developers within a corporate environment. This feedback can then be used to understand why such a solution would, or would not, fit into people's lives. An example of how this process has come to live, you can find in the illustrative case as described below. 7. An illustrative case: Lifestyle Home, shaping your own experiences in the home Technology wise, the amount of possibilities and opportunities for the future of living is so wide that it remains unpredictable what the future might be like. In the search for how technology can support and improve the quality in people's lives, it becomes increasingly challenging for companies to have a good understanding of what the ‘future of connected living’ will be. Understanding what is happening around us today, understanding what might be possible and preferable in the future allows a better anticipating of the future to come and ideally, even a better way to co-create the future.
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7.1. The future of connected living For a company to be able to explore and shape future experiences; an understanding is needed of what drives people's behaviour and what is technology wise feasible in the future. For ‘the future of connected living’ it is about creating an understanding of people – in the context of their daily lives – as well as technological possibilities – what is technologically feasible in 3 to 5 years-to eventually come up with tangible future solution directions. Such an exploration has been done for ‘Lifestyle Home’, a project that aims to present a vision for the future of connected living that embraces a diversity of tastes, habits and needs. The aim of Lifestyle Home is to show that the future can be experienced today with the help of experience prototypes. It embodies a future vision, and makes it possible for people to imagine and understand possible future solutions. The vision proposes that people will value solutions they can easily adapt to match as closely as possible their personal requirements. People are free to select, tailor and enjoy their digital media and connected experiences to best suit their unique situation. This is vividly illustrated by a set of three experience prototypes they can adapt to match their personal requirements. Each prototype targets a different type of person, and illustrates how a family of solutions can be adapted to support many lifestyles. 7.2. User experiences in the ‘Lifestyle Home’ The starting point for Lifestyle Home was a clear focus on user experience, and was based on the complexities and dynamics of potential users' lives. Using an approach called ‘Multiple Encounters’, we involved people more fully throughout the fuzzy front of innovation, so helping to develop solutions that were better attuned to people's needs and abilities and that make sense in their everyday lives. The main principles of the Multiple Encounter Approach are about (1) involving people in earlier phases of innovation, rather than solely at the end and (2) capturing the dynamics and interactions in people's lives through a ‘dialogue’ with people over a period in time by encountering with them on multiple occasions. To arrive at conclusions on people's core values and needs and translate those into specific user experiences, about 150 people from the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands have been involved, through 75 initial home visits, followed by a variety of other encounters over a period. In a first encounter, people were asked to research their own lives, by collecting textual and visual information in a booklet or life-story poster as homework assignment. The purpose of this homework assignment was to make people aware of their own routines & rituals, dynamics & interactions in their lives as well prepare the interview team for the home visits in a second encounter. For the second encounter, participants were interviewed and observed in their own homes to create a better understanding of people in their own environment. Through the homework people were more willing to express themselves personally about their lives. Flexible and open techniques, such as storytelling were used to trigger people about their experiences, needs and values – in essence their perspective – rather than going through a fixed set of questions. The information from these encounters was analyzed; concluding insights were shared within the organization amongst a team of professionals with different disciplinary backgrounds. Additional questions arising from this team were asked in a third encounter to a sub-selection of participants, to provide us with additional insights and created a continuum of the dialogue that started in previous encounters.
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7.3. Making the future of connected living tangible The encounters as described above provided very rich insights into people's lives and enabled the involvement of people in innovation in an iterative way. However, understanding people and their lives is one thing, but integrating it into innovation and making it tangible is of importance as well. After the third encounter, first concept ideas were developed and taken back to people for early feedback in which possible user experiences played a central role, rather than a product or technology. The aim of this home visit was to validate assumptions and insights of the concept ideas, as well as test the readiness of people to adopt such an idea. Additionally, possible insights for new application areas were identified. Based on people's feedback on these ideas, the most interesting concept ideas were developed further into early experience prototypes that are physical embodiments of possible future solutions, in which the user experience in emphasized. Experience prototypes were developed for this project around three core archetypes of people, also called Personas, as distinguished through research. The prototype allowed the gathering of feedback – in a fifth encounter – on a solution that does not exist yet, enabling people to imagine what a future solution might be like. From personas to experience prototypes: the process of concept ideation To incorporate people insights into experience prototypes, a process of several steps is needed to come to the right concept ideas. The people insights gathered throughout the research are used as a starting point. These insights are communicated through an illustrative tool, Personas that are archetypical representations of the (types of) people involved in the research, their specific needs, values, attitudes, behaviours and their daily lives. These Personas are used to go through ‘a day in their life’, looking at specific moments of their lives to identify specific core needs and user experiences during that moment in life. For the ‘Lifestyle Home’ about 20 core user needs and experiences were identified, based on an exercise as described above, of which eventually about 6 user experiences were selected as it was expected that it will provide the user most added value. Added value in this context means that something supports people in their daily life, helps them improve the quality of their lives and does not exist yet. Based on these experiences, core functions of a possible solution can be identified, from which 4 concept directions were identified. Within these 4 concept directions about 21 concepts were created in workshops by a multi-disciplinary team consisting of designers, engineers and researchers with the aim to realize the targeted experiences. In a technical analysis that has been carried out, a fit with the most promising experiences for the different partners has been made to conclude on the final experience for the ‘Lifestyle Home’ that were developed into three experience prototypes, which are attuned to three different types of Personas as described in the ‘Lifestyle Home’ case. Making insights tangible through experience prototypes is a way to visualize what a future solution could be like and could be either a fully working prototype or partly simulated. It differs from a conventional prototype, as it is not an end product. But it reflects on possible future experiences for people as well as provides a developmental aid to the business organization to imagine and understand the concept
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behind the prototype, see experience prototypes attuned to different user experiences (Andrews, 2006 [11]) described below. “The digital domain made simple” Persona Alexandra Alexandra is a 51-year-old estate agent. Her daughters left home to study and she and her partner live separately. She is highly conscious of her home interior, likes to share stories with her daughter and enjoys hosting dinners and relaxing in the garden. She can cope with e-mail and her digital camera, but has no inclination and no time for complex, unsightly technologies.
“Convenient and mobile access to content” Persona Simone Simone is a busy magazine editor aged 34, who lives with er partner Joel and daughter (4) and is pregnant with her second child. As sociable person, she likes to enjoy and share content together with others. She is comfortable using digital media and likes innovative products if they enhance her lifestyle. She is selective in her choices and values functionality, clarity and quality.
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“Gaming and music on demand” Persona Justin Justin is 29, a hip young professional with a passion to music and games. Always on the cutting edge, he spends a lot of his income on the latest cool acquisitions, from designer furniture to snowboards and audio gear. He buys his tracks online, likes to share music and photos with his friends and is always at the centre of his social network.
The experience prototypes of ‘Lifestyle home’ focus on the three key user experiences of easy personalization, intuitive use and content-free flow, as based on the main outcomes of the research conducted. Each user experience is build around a specific Persona, an archetypical description of a person that represents a specific segment of the target group. Each of the prototypes makes use of a host of new and emerging (Philips) technologies. And wherever possible, standards have been used to increase the chances of innovations being more widely adopted. These experience prototypes have been evaluated by users and based on their feedback adaptations and refinements for the experience prototypes have been made. It has allowed potential users to imagine as well as experience future solutions and comment on it. At the same time, it shows within a business environment what is technologically feasible within a few years ahead and possible ways of executing the technological possibilities to create solutions that fit people and their lives. 8. Bridging the gap between technology and people: embodying the future Although bridging the gap between technology and people might sound a logical thing to do, in reality it is not easy to accomplish. To provide people with truly meaningful solutions, rather than technological possibilities, the needs of those people need to be taken into account from the earliest phases of development onwards. Starting at the fuzzy front of innovation ‘people insights’ should be combined with technological possibilities, and result in the production of early experience prototypes that explore and embody possible future solutions. These explorations of the future need to be taken into account by corporations so that they will be able to provide solutions that harness technology that will genuinely improve the quality of people's lives. To be part of, and to help create, this preferred future, it's not sufficient simply to put technologically advanced systems in place to make the future happen. If we are to embody and realize a future that is driven by people, it is people that need to be placed right at the heart of innovation.
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E.M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, The Free Press, New York, 1995. R.A. Slaughter, Futures for the Third Millennium. Prospect Media, St. Leonards, NSW Australia, 1999, p. 287. http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa121599a.htm. C.M. Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma, Harvard Business School Press, USA, 1997. H. Baumgartner, Toward a Personology of the Consumer in Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 29, 2002. L. Rameckers, S Un,: People insights at the fuzzy front of innovation. How to achieve human centered innovation? In: Excellence 2006 World research papers, p. 479-493. R. Atkinson, The Life Story Interview, Sage Pubications Inc, Thousand Oaks, 1998. S. Kujala, User involvement: a review of the benefits and challenges, in: T. Soininen (Ed.), Preprints Software Business and Engineering Institute, Helsinki University of Technology, Report number: HUT-SoberIT-BI. Espoo, Finland, 2002. H. Beyer, K. Holtzblattt, Contextual Design: A Customer-Centered Approach to Systems Designs, The Academic Press, London, 1997. P. Gardien, Breathing life into delicate ideas, Developing a Network of Options to Increase the Chance of Innovation Success, Positioning Paper Philips Design, 2006. A. Andrews, Lifestyle Home, Shape your own connected experiences, Positioning paper Philips Design, 2006.
Stefanie Un is a Senior Research Consultant at Philips Design, the Netherlands. She joined the strategic research and design group in 2001. The focus of her work lies in the area of ‘People, Trends and Foresight’, in which the human aspects play a central role in exploring the future of innovation. Applying research outcomes into the design and creation processes of innovation is a driving factor in her work: translating insights into different levels within the company and incorporating these to ensure that people are placed at the heart of design and innovation processes. Stefanie Un graduated in 1999 in Social Sciences – specializing in the social aspects of using new media – from the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. Prior to graduation, she attended the School of Communication Arts and Journalism of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, in the United States of America. Before joining Philips, she worked at KPN, a Dutch telecom company, on future and strategic market research. Nick Price is a Senior Consultant at Philips Design, the Netherlands. He joined the ‘People, Trends and Foresight’ research group in 2005. His focus is the integration of foresight approaches that compliment the people focused orientation of the group. Nick proposes that whilst technology is an important enabler of human evolution, it is part of a dance with the level of the consciousness that conceives and realizes it. The mediation of the relationship between human development, meaning and technological capability is one of his key interests. Nick graduated from Swinburne University with a Master of Science in Strategic Foresight in 2005.
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Bridging the gap between technological possibilities and people: Involving people in the early phases of technology development Stefanie Un ⁎, Nick Price 1 Philips Design, P.O. Box 218, 5600 MD Eindhoven, The Netherlands Received 3 October 2006; received in revised form 19 January 2007; accepted 1 May 2007
Abstract Technology provides endless promising possibilities to support people's lives. In reality, it is not a matter of what is possible, but rather a matter of how and when technology will be integrated, accepted and adopted by people. However, conventionally within organizations the areas of technology development and market research are not closely related nor applied in the process of innovation and do not always share the same scope. In that sense there is a gap between the potential of technology and humankind's preferences. This paper discusses the current areas of technology development and market research in a business environment and proposes an integrated approach to bridge the gap between technology and people, in which people, rather than market sizes become central in the development of technology. In addition, it also describes how this approach of people-driven innovation is brought into practice through the development of early experience demonstrators. The core focus of this paper is on the processes and practices regarding innovation within an organization, rather than the adoption of innovation by users or the rate of the adoption of a marketed solution (Rogers, 1995 [E.M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, The Free Press, New York, 1995. [1]]). © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Experience prototypes; Foresight; Innovation in an organization involving people in technology development; Market and people research; Multiple encounter approach; People driven innovation; Personas
⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 40 27 59205. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (S. Un), [email protected] (N. Price). 1 Tel.: +31 40 27 59126. 0040-1625/$ - see front matter © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2007.05.008
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1. Demystifying the gap Before taking a closer look at the gap between technology development and market research, it is worth considering the closeness of technology foresight and market research. Foresight is typically thought of as a perception of events that have yet to occur. Another view, used in the world of business strategy, is that ‘Strategic Foresight is the ability to create and maintain a high-quality, coherent and functional forward view, and to use the insights arising in useful organizational ways. For example to detect adverse conditions, guide policy, shape strategy, and to explore new markets, products and services' (Slaughter, 1999 [2]). Market research on the other hand is an endeavor that collects data about customers, competitors and markets to analyze it to find patterns and trends. The aim of market research is to attain a higher degree of predictability, certainty and understanding of a certain market. In that respect, foresight and research are ways of improving the view of what is to come, i.e. our possible future, albeit in different ways. Foresight then seems more aligned with the generation of breakthrough developments – discontinuities- and research aligned with incremental – extension of existing paradigms. Both of these combinations are very powerful and complimentary to realize opportunities though ideation – creating the idea, innovation – making it accessible to a wider audience. Whilst foresight and market research offer objective and macro level views of the potential future, ‘people’ research can provide a view of the meaning of technology at the personal level, as it provides an approach aimed to understand people, their values and needs, in the context of their daily lives, rather than sizing up potential markets and competitors as in conventional market research. Understanding the meaning of people's lives and the role technology can play in it is central in this approach, both for the present as well as the perceived meaning it can bring in the future. This type of research can be applied to breakthrough or incremental technologies, as it focuses on people's core values and needs that in general will not change dramatically over time. It provides a granular perspective that can uncover possibilities of technology that may not have been thought about that fits into people's lives. So, how have technology and people been linked together over the past? 2. Understanding the gap between technology development and people research In the past, innovative leaps were highly visible as the world became more connected and industrialized. There was room to grow and learn, particularly as the world emerged from the dark ages – when there was hardly any technological development – into a more enlightened period. As the Industrial Table 1 Innovations throughout the centuries Period
Example of types of innovations
1700–1799 1800–1899
Steam engine; telegraph; steamboat; gas turbine; gas lighting; battery Steam locomotive; printing press; photograph; electro magnet; microphone; typewriter; sewing machine; electric dynamo; mechanical calculator; telegraph; telephone; moving pictures; light bulb; steam turbine; vacuum cleaner 1900–1999 Radio receiver; airplane; ignition system; robot; mechanical and color television; computer; microwave oven; Video tape recorder; computer hard disk; cellular phones; DVD; Web TV Beyond 2000 From single products to networked solutions; from single personality to second or alternative identities in the virtual world Source: http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa121599a.htm:[3].
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Revolution took hold, gradually more and more technical solutions were introduced. Through the years, these solutions have grown from mechanical, to electronic, to digital, as shown in Table 1 below. This technology evolution has increasingly empowered individuals to innovate creating a bloom of new ideas and solutions to problems. Today, with so many solutions available everywhere, the endless creativity of innovators and the technological possibilities offered, only a small number of innovations introduced on the market actually succeed. Although technology seems to offer endless possibilities, reality shows that it seldom appeals to people's preferences or does not live up to their expectations. The gap between technology and people's demands is currently vast. In our view, this gap is due to the different phases of innovation in which technology and market research traditionally play a leading role, which we will discuss in his paper. 3. Different phases of innovation for technology development and market research The specific phases of the innovation process in which technology development and market research are applied vary. Conventionally, technology development occurs in the very early phases of innovation, the so-called ‘fuzzy front’, see Fig. 1. In this phase, the focus lies on exploring, expanding and developing the possibilities and potentialities of what technology can offer. The development of technology is mainly aimed at longer term growth and provides support to the development for new markets. In addition, as engineers commonly ‘steer’ such a process, the resulting innovation very often finds its origins in technology. This in turn causes – intentionally or unintentionally – a technology-driven momentum throughout the entire innovation process. The development and implementation of new technology can take over a decade before any actual specific applications become commonplace on the market. However, today it is increasingly becoming
Fig. 1. Phases of innovation.
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important that technological applications will be developed with an eye to the near future – three to five, or five to eight, years – before an actual technology can be made applicable to, and accepted by, a larger audience, many years can easily have passed. Well-known examples of this are the World Wide Web and VoIP as described below. The American ARPA-net, which originated in the 1960s, had the core function to safeguard a means of communication in the event of a nuclear war. It went on, however, to evolve into one of the most groundbreaking ‘technological inventions’ of all, becoming better known in the late 90s as the Internet. Whilst the nascent Internet grew from a defense project, its enablement of people might be seen to propel it forward. Its potential as a connector for digital idea exchange grew from researchers to students, from larger groups of education facilities and out into the commercial and public worlds. As this community has grown so have facilities to ease its use and accentuate the exchange of meaning. The technological concept of standards and the co-creative ecology of the Internet have lead to vast leaps in individual empowerment. Another example is Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), which enables people to make telephone calls by transmitting their voice in data packages sent via the Internet rather than over the conventional copper telephone lines. From a technological viewpoint, VoIP has been possible for some time. But it is only in the past couple of years that it has begun to increase in popularity with a growing number of home PC users who have access to (broadband) Internet services and want to telephone others more cheaply. Skype, in particular, has become a notable VoIP success. As a standalone technology VoIP struggled to breathe, as the potential appeared to emanate from the world of business efficiency, and to fully guarantee good quality at all times was difficult. Coinciding forces were needed to release its potential. In the world of the individuals this facility was freed to find its place and meaning in new social relationships; a world of webs not hierarchies. This demand taps into the needs of many different people; it is a platform for connection. The success of Skype can be considered as an example of Disruptive Innovation (Christensen, 1997 [4]). As a disruptive innovation, Skype is a “low-end disruption” where a product is introduced with perhaps poorer quality but is more readily available to a wider consumer base. Further to this the product then goes through rapid improvement is quality to widen its appeal. Most innovative ideas and solutions come to the attention of business when something tangible has been developed, for example, in the form of a technological prototype. The process involved in reaching such a prototype requires intensive investment in time, money, and human resources. Looking at the other spectrum of technology, when triggered by its technological possibilities, the business at that point needs to understand the market potential behind it, so market research is undertaken to test and evaluate the market potential of a specific concept or prototype in ‘end phase’ of the innovation process. For example focus on the evaluation of a specific prototype: what do people like about a specific concept or prototype; what do they think about the color; do they use specific functions? What it does not do is find out how, what and why people feel or experience a certain prototype. Nor does it answer the question of what happens when people do not like the prototype, just as it does not provide answers as to why and how people will like a certain prototype. Unfortunately, in most cases, by the time market research is undertaken, it has become too costly to reject the prototype: too much money has been invested to disregard it and its possibilities. So, what often happens is that the investors decide to adapt the prototype and turn it into an actual product to be put on the market. In the conventional field of market research, it remains difficult for to investigate and explore people in a future context because market research is essentially concerned with supporting the current core business and it mainly focuses on growth based on today's or next year's market, rather than a few
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years in the future. Although many attempts have been made to ask people about their dreams, aspirations, feelings and thoughts in the future, both the method and the outcomes of such an approach remain questionable and debatable. So whereas technological development happens mostly at the fuzzy front of innovation, market research is usually applied in later end phases of innovation. This results in a gap between technological development and people's needs with the result that the possibilities that technology has to offer rarely match the desires, wishes, and needs of people. Due to changing circumstances of a much faster-paced market and industry, resulting in the need for faster means of innovation, it is vital to bring technology development and people research closer together. And a first step towards the successful introduction and adoption of new technology by people is to base the development of such new technology around the needs, wishes, demands and desires of people. So how can this gap – between technological development and market research – be bridged? How can a closer link between people and the potential for new or emerging technologies be ensured? 4. Providing people with meaningful solutions rather than technological possibilities When talking about technology and innovation, it is not solely a matter of all the possibilities of a technological development. Rather than approaching innovation from a singular technological point of view, a more holistic approach to innovation is needed that incorporates technology, people, design and business goals. In this holistic view, it is people, and their needs, desires, wishes and aspirations that should drive technological innovation within a business environment; people and their everyday context should be taken into account. Whereas traditional market research is aimed to gather and analyze data and trends about market segments, competitors and brand preferences at a certain moment in time, in a ‘people research’ approach people, their values and needs, their lives –rather than technology – are central to understand. People research in this sense can be seen as an extended way of conducting research on and with people, in which daily life, its dynamics and interactions are taken into account. Implications of these people research outcomes are applied to the development and design of innovative solutions. How can people's needs, desires, wishes and aspirations drive technological innovation? • Firstly, people insights should be already used at the fuzzy front of innovation, rather than solely at later phases of innovation to provide inspiration and create an understanding of people in the context of everyday life. • Secondly, a continuous integration of people insights should be guaranteed throughout the innovation process: people insights need to be incorporated in an iterative manner throughout the process, to – in effect – create a dialogue between developers and researchers. • Thirdly, bridging the gap between technological development and people research also entails a closer collaboration between people from different disciplines, and this collaboration requires a better understanding of the different languages connected with the different disciplines. 4.1. Incorporating people insights at the fuzzy front of innovation Ensuring a closer link between technology and people means that, in addition to understanding the full capabilities and potential of technology, we also need to understand people – in the context of
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their own lives – to bring these two ‘ingredients’ closer together. In the early phases of innovation it is not so much a matter of understanding how and what people think of a certain technology or product; rather, it is about understanding people's everyday contexts of life, the dynamics in it and considering these with regard to the technology being developed. What are the routines and rituals in their lives? What problems do they encounter in life and how are these solved, or not solved? And how can these issues be anticipated, starting already in early phases of innovation? In the early phases of innovation, people insights can be used to understand people's values, needs and experiences in their everyday context. Throughout the process, these values, needs and experiences need to be ‘kept alive’ to ensure people driven innovation. Last but not least, people research can be applied to test and validate whether the insights, incorporated into an actual demonstrator fits into the lives of users, see Fig. 2. It is important for developers to understand the topics as mentioned above – topics often considered obvious and so taken for granted – to learn what drives people in their daily lives. Because we are looking for personal meaning and experiences, it's also important to include people's stories of their lives, to examine the way they build, control and change their own identities and how they express those identities to other people (Baumgartner, 2002 [5]), which has to be anticipated in technology. An understanding of people in the early phases of innovation will make it possible to build future technological solutions that incorporate genuine insights into people.
Fig. 2. Integrating Innovation and people research.
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4.2. Continuous insights throughout the innovation process: a Multiple Encounter Approach It is not only important to understand people in the early phases of innovation: it's also just as important to ensure that the insights into people are kept alive throughout the entire process of innovation. For this reason the Multiple Encounter Approach has been developed (Rameckers, Un, 2006 [6]); an approach based on multiple encounters with people over a period of time – either face-to-face or online – for the purposes of research (Fig. 3). It differs from the usual one-off user studies common in traditional market research in several ways. The Multiple Encounter Approach aims to involve people throughout the entire development and creation process. It enables to create an ongoing dialogue and two-way interaction with the people who are, in essence, the potential future users of our technological innovation. During the encounters, the focus lies on capturing the dynamics in their everyday life rather than observing the ‘facts’ of what they do, providing deeper insights about their lives and the interactions and changes within them. To help our researchers follow the participants' lives closely, we use storytelling as a technique to capture the richness and breadth of the way they experience their world, as well as studying how they integrate on-going experiences with memories from the past and aspirations for the future (Atkinson, 1998 [7]). Some of the features that characterize the Multiple Encounter Approach are listed below: • People and their everyday life context are taken into account in earlier phases of innovation; • A deliberate focus on understanding the dynamics, interactions and changes in people's lives (as opposed to static information); • People become co-creators by becoming researchers of their own lives. They thus influence the technology, design and, ultimately, the end solution; • An ‘ongoing dialogue’ is created through multiple encounters.
Fig. 3. Multiple Encounter Approach.
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The Multiple Encounter Approach has been developed in the AMIGO (Ambient Intelligence in the networked home environment) and AMEC (Ambient Intelligence Ecologies) projects. Both AMIGO and AMEC are consortium projects that were set up with different partners in a European Union-subsidized program. Approximately 150 people were involved and 75 home visits made in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands. In the course of several encounters, regular contact was maintained with the research participants to help develop an understanding of their daily lives, routines and rituals. Physical (‘early experience’) prototypes – based on this research – were then produced to embody possible future solutions. More specifics of the research set up and outcomes are elaborated on in the illustrative case ‘Lifestyle Home: Shaping your own experiences in the home’ as described in paragraph 7. 4.3. Collaboration between people from different disciplines At the same time, involving and engaging people in innovation through the Multiple Encounter Approach also implies and creates a closer collaboration within an organization: between researchers, designers and engineers as they work closely together to understand and involve people in innovation. The professionals from these disciplines have to combine methods to better understand and engage users in the creation and development of new products; such methods include participatory design, usercentered design, ethnography and contextual design (Kujala, S., 2002 [8]). 5. Translating people insights into implications for innovation Prevailing in most innovation practices is that it is mostly steered by the potential of technology. To prevent solutions becoming purely technological or design driven, conducting research on and with people from early phases onwards should be an important aspect of the innovation practice. But just as crucial is the understanding of such insights and their specific implications for innovation to be able to develop a tangible outcome that actually fits people's lives. Creating a better understanding of research insights amongst professionals from different disciplines collaborating on innovation is essential. For this reason, it's of importance to involve people from different disciplines more in the research process, and researchers should better understand how to makes sense of data specifically for the sake of innovation and design (Beyer, H., Holtzblatt, K., 1997 [9]). Translations have to be made cross-disciplinary and collaboratively to explain what the researchers' insights ‘mean’, so developers can produce tangible, effective solutions that fit into and anticipate the particular context of people's daily lives. Where market researchers traditionally talk about intangible aspects, such as people's needs and values – engineers need to understand what these intangible aspects mean for the functionality and tangibility of their applications and technology. There is no shared jargon in these two different disciplines, nor is there one particular way of working. Through involvement and collaboration, steps in translation should be made that bring market researchers and developers closer together, so that effective collaboration throughout the process of development and innovation can be realized. These steps in translation – see Fig. 4 – are necessary to turn intangible aspects such as e.g. behavior, attitudes, needs and values into tangible aspects such as e.g. functionalities, applications. Whereas this might sound as a simple and most logical thing to do, in reality it is difficult to realize such a way of working within a corporation as in many organizations different departments, such as marketing, research, development or design, focus on different aspects. Putting effort in
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Fig. 4. Translation process model.
collaboration, understanding each other's jargon and thus translating research outcomes so people from different disciplines understand and can act upon these outcomes is crucial. For example, when market researchers talk about people's need for control in their lives because of the information and media overload they experience daily, engineers need specific directions for what they need to develop; it is not enough simply to talk about ‘helping to combat the information and media overload’. What is the issue that people do in their everyday life, what value drives it, what main goal and need does a person have in his or her daily life to tackle this issue and what does it imply for the solution in technical or design terms in that particular context? The same approach counts for the second example in Table 2, related to the need for youngsters to be able to continuously Table 2 Example: From Insights to Implications People insight Information Information overload makes people want to be able to manage the amount of information coming to them via diverse media: newspapers, radio, TV, internet, advertisements, etc. Communication Youngsters need to be continuously connected with peers. They want to be up-to-date about each other's whereabouts at any given time, and if desired they can contact each other and get together, using different and diverse means of communication.
Core value/ need
Main daily user goal
Daily need
Implication for design/ technology
Need to be in control
Be on top of things through planning and organizing
To structure, collect, document and share information
To make information accessible and tangible
Need to belong and feel part of a group
To feel connected with others
To be updated or notified on whereabouts of friends
To align planning of multiple people and combine diverse communication means
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connect with peers when desired as it is essential for youngsters to feel part of a group. Belonging in this particular context doesn't mean youngsters need to be in contact continuously, but they would rather have the possibility to align and plan with multiple people simultaneously. This particular need has other implications in the development of innovative solutions than the need to be continuously in contact. 6. Making insights tangible: creating experience prototypes In understanding people, it becomes crucial at a given point to translate their values and insights into specific design and technological considerations, so that they can then be applied to the production of actual (‘early experience’) prototypes. Such prototypes are not end products; rather, they are tangible visualizations of experiences based on interesting concepts. The main purpose of an early experience prototype is to make the conceptual idea tangible by showing the hoped-for user experience. That is why such a prototype is not the same as the more conventional prototype or technical demonstrator, both of which are more focused on the end product and technology rather than on the user. Through building early experience prototypes based on people insights it is aimed to trigger specific user experiences rather than that what is conventionally the primary aim, demonstrating technological possibilities. As mentioned earlier, experience prototypes make visible what future solutions might be like. They help people not only to imagine but also to actually experience what a future solution can be like as they can feel it, see it and use it today. For a business it means that it becomes possible to feel and to see not only what the possible solutions could be, but also the experiences they could generate for the user. Furthermore, experience prototypes can also function as a starting point for identifying new business opportunities (Gardien, 2006 [10]), either in line with, or beyond, current business. And in addition to embodying future solutions, they also represent a closer collaboration between professionals from different disciplines throughout the innovation process. For example, because researchers and designers have to work closely together in the research phase, so all parties involved get a feel for what they are developing for and, most importantly, for whom they are developing. The experience offered by an experience prototype is often completely – or partly – based on simulations. This is due to the fact that the required technologies can only be properly realized in the future. Thus, the major advantage of such a demonstrator is that it allows us to collect feedback on something that does not yet exist, both from potential users and product developers within a corporate environment. This feedback can then be used to understand why such a solution would, or would not, fit into people's lives. An example of how this process has come to live, you can find in the illustrative case as described below. 7. An illustrative case: Lifestyle Home, shaping your own experiences in the home Technology wise, the amount of possibilities and opportunities for the future of living is so wide that it remains unpredictable what the future might be like. In the search for how technology can support and improve the quality in people's lives, it becomes increasingly challenging for companies to have a good understanding of what the ‘future of connected living’ will be. Understanding what is happening around us today, understanding what might be possible and preferable in the future allows a better anticipating of the future to come and ideally, even a better way to co-create the future.
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7.1. The future of connected living For a company to be able to explore and shape future experiences; an understanding is needed of what drives people's behaviour and what is technology wise feasible in the future. For ‘the future of connected living’ it is about creating an understanding of people – in the context of their daily lives – as well as technological possibilities – what is technologically feasible in 3 to 5 years-to eventually come up with tangible future solution directions. Such an exploration has been done for ‘Lifestyle Home’, a project that aims to present a vision for the future of connected living that embraces a diversity of tastes, habits and needs. The aim of Lifestyle Home is to show that the future can be experienced today with the help of experience prototypes. It embodies a future vision, and makes it possible for people to imagine and understand possible future solutions. The vision proposes that people will value solutions they can easily adapt to match as closely as possible their personal requirements. People are free to select, tailor and enjoy their digital media and connected experiences to best suit their unique situation. This is vividly illustrated by a set of three experience prototypes they can adapt to match their personal requirements. Each prototype targets a different type of person, and illustrates how a family of solutions can be adapted to support many lifestyles. 7.2. User experiences in the ‘Lifestyle Home’ The starting point for Lifestyle Home was a clear focus on user experience, and was based on the complexities and dynamics of potential users' lives. Using an approach called ‘Multiple Encounters’, we involved people more fully throughout the fuzzy front of innovation, so helping to develop solutions that were better attuned to people's needs and abilities and that make sense in their everyday lives. The main principles of the Multiple Encounter Approach are about (1) involving people in earlier phases of innovation, rather than solely at the end and (2) capturing the dynamics and interactions in people's lives through a ‘dialogue’ with people over a period in time by encountering with them on multiple occasions. To arrive at conclusions on people's core values and needs and translate those into specific user experiences, about 150 people from the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy and the Netherlands have been involved, through 75 initial home visits, followed by a variety of other encounters over a period. In a first encounter, people were asked to research their own lives, by collecting textual and visual information in a booklet or life-story poster as homework assignment. The purpose of this homework assignment was to make people aware of their own routines & rituals, dynamics & interactions in their lives as well prepare the interview team for the home visits in a second encounter. For the second encounter, participants were interviewed and observed in their own homes to create a better understanding of people in their own environment. Through the homework people were more willing to express themselves personally about their lives. Flexible and open techniques, such as storytelling were used to trigger people about their experiences, needs and values – in essence their perspective – rather than going through a fixed set of questions. The information from these encounters was analyzed; concluding insights were shared within the organization amongst a team of professionals with different disciplinary backgrounds. Additional questions arising from this team were asked in a third encounter to a sub-selection of participants, to provide us with additional insights and created a continuum of the dialogue that started in previous encounters.
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7.3. Making the future of connected living tangible The encounters as described above provided very rich insights into people's lives and enabled the involvement of people in innovation in an iterative way. However, understanding people and their lives is one thing, but integrating it into innovation and making it tangible is of importance as well. After the third encounter, first concept ideas were developed and taken back to people for early feedback in which possible user experiences played a central role, rather than a product or technology. The aim of this home visit was to validate assumptions and insights of the concept ideas, as well as test the readiness of people to adopt such an idea. Additionally, possible insights for new application areas were identified. Based on people's feedback on these ideas, the most interesting concept ideas were developed further into early experience prototypes that are physical embodiments of possible future solutions, in which the user experience in emphasized. Experience prototypes were developed for this project around three core archetypes of people, also called Personas, as distinguished through research. The prototype allowed the gathering of feedback – in a fifth encounter – on a solution that does not exist yet, enabling people to imagine what a future solution might be like. From personas to experience prototypes: the process of concept ideation To incorporate people insights into experience prototypes, a process of several steps is needed to come to the right concept ideas. The people insights gathered throughout the research are used as a starting point. These insights are communicated through an illustrative tool, Personas that are archetypical representations of the (types of) people involved in the research, their specific needs, values, attitudes, behaviours and their daily lives. These Personas are used to go through ‘a day in their life’, looking at specific moments of their lives to identify specific core needs and user experiences during that moment in life. For the ‘Lifestyle Home’ about 20 core user needs and experiences were identified, based on an exercise as described above, of which eventually about 6 user experiences were selected as it was expected that it will provide the user most added value. Added value in this context means that something supports people in their daily life, helps them improve the quality of their lives and does not exist yet. Based on these experiences, core functions of a possible solution can be identified, from which 4 concept directions were identified. Within these 4 concept directions about 21 concepts were created in workshops by a multi-disciplinary team consisting of designers, engineers and researchers with the aim to realize the targeted experiences. In a technical analysis that has been carried out, a fit with the most promising experiences for the different partners has been made to conclude on the final experience for the ‘Lifestyle Home’ that were developed into three experience prototypes, which are attuned to three different types of Personas as described in the ‘Lifestyle Home’ case. Making insights tangible through experience prototypes is a way to visualize what a future solution could be like and could be either a fully working prototype or partly simulated. It differs from a conventional prototype, as it is not an end product. But it reflects on possible future experiences for people as well as provides a developmental aid to the business organization to imagine and understand the concept
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behind the prototype, see experience prototypes attuned to different user experiences (Andrews, 2006 [11]) described below. “The digital domain made simple” Persona Alexandra Alexandra is a 51-year-old estate agent. Her daughters left home to study and she and her partner live separately. She is highly conscious of her home interior, likes to share stories with her daughter and enjoys hosting dinners and relaxing in the garden. She can cope with e-mail and her digital camera, but has no inclination and no time for complex, unsightly technologies.
“Convenient and mobile access to content” Persona Simone Simone is a busy magazine editor aged 34, who lives with er partner Joel and daughter (4) and is pregnant with her second child. As sociable person, she likes to enjoy and share content together with others. She is comfortable using digital media and likes innovative products if they enhance her lifestyle. She is selective in her choices and values functionality, clarity and quality.
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“Gaming and music on demand” Persona Justin Justin is 29, a hip young professional with a passion to music and games. Always on the cutting edge, he spends a lot of his income on the latest cool acquisitions, from designer furniture to snowboards and audio gear. He buys his tracks online, likes to share music and photos with his friends and is always at the centre of his social network.
The experience prototypes of ‘Lifestyle home’ focus on the three key user experiences of easy personalization, intuitive use and content-free flow, as based on the main outcomes of the research conducted. Each user experience is build around a specific Persona, an archetypical description of a person that represents a specific segment of the target group. Each of the prototypes makes use of a host of new and emerging (Philips) technologies. And wherever possible, standards have been used to increase the chances of innovations being more widely adopted. These experience prototypes have been evaluated by users and based on their feedback adaptations and refinements for the experience prototypes have been made. It has allowed potential users to imagine as well as experience future solutions and comment on it. At the same time, it shows within a business environment what is technologically feasible within a few years ahead and possible ways of executing the technological possibilities to create solutions that fit people and their lives. 8. Bridging the gap between technology and people: embodying the future Although bridging the gap between technology and people might sound a logical thing to do, in reality it is not easy to accomplish. To provide people with truly meaningful solutions, rather than technological possibilities, the needs of those people need to be taken into account from the earliest phases of development onwards. Starting at the fuzzy front of innovation ‘people insights’ should be combined with technological possibilities, and result in the production of early experience prototypes that explore and embody possible future solutions. These explorations of the future need to be taken into account by corporations so that they will be able to provide solutions that harness technology that will genuinely improve the quality of people's lives. To be part of, and to help create, this preferred future, it's not sufficient simply to put technologically advanced systems in place to make the future happen. If we are to embody and realize a future that is driven by people, it is people that need to be placed right at the heart of innovation.
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E.M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, The Free Press, New York, 1995. R.A. Slaughter, Futures for the Third Millennium. Prospect Media, St. Leonards, NSW Australia, 1999, p. 287. http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa121599a.htm. C.M. Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma, Harvard Business School Press, USA, 1997. H. Baumgartner, Toward a Personology of the Consumer in Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 29, 2002. L. Rameckers, S Un,: People insights at the fuzzy front of innovation. How to achieve human centered innovation? In: Excellence 2006 World research papers, p. 479-493. R. Atkinson, The Life Story Interview, Sage Pubications Inc, Thousand Oaks, 1998. S. Kujala, User involvement: a review of the benefits and challenges, in: T. Soininen (Ed.), Preprints Software Business and Engineering Institute, Helsinki University of Technology, Report number: HUT-SoberIT-BI. Espoo, Finland, 2002. H. Beyer, K. Holtzblattt, Contextual Design: A Customer-Centered Approach to Systems Designs, The Academic Press, London, 1997. P. Gardien, Breathing life into delicate ideas, Developing a Network of Options to Increase the Chance of Innovation Success, Positioning Paper Philips Design, 2006. A. Andrews, Lifestyle Home, Shape your own connected experiences, Positioning paper Philips Design, 2006.
Stefanie Un is a Senior Research Consultant at Philips Design, the Netherlands. She joined the strategic research and design group in 2001. The focus of her work lies in the area of ‘People, Trends and Foresight’, in which the human aspects play a central role in exploring the future of innovation. Applying research outcomes into the design and creation processes of innovation is a driving factor in her work: translating insights into different levels within the company and incorporating these to ensure that people are placed at the heart of design and innovation processes. Stefanie Un graduated in 1999 in Social Sciences – specializing in the social aspects of using new media – from the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. Prior to graduation, she attended the School of Communication Arts and Journalism of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, in the United States of America. Before joining Philips, she worked at KPN, a Dutch telecom company, on future and strategic market research. Nick Price is a Senior Consultant at Philips Design, the Netherlands. He joined the ‘People, Trends and Foresight’ research group in 2005. His focus is the integration of foresight approaches that compliment the people focused orientation of the group. Nick proposes that whilst technology is an important enabler of human evolution, it is part of a dance with the level of the consciousness that conceives and realizes it. The mediation of the relationship between human development, meaning and technological capability is one of his key interests. Nick graduated from Swinburne University with a Master of Science in Strategic Foresight in 2005.