Generate new product ideas directly from your target group.

Product development can't exist without the knowledge of the wants and needs of your target group. Most companies, however, limit consumer involvement to evaluating concepts and ideas from the company itself. But why not generate exciting and innovative ideas together with your target group, when they are the ones par excellence to offer you relevant ideas? With CRAFTER©, MetrixLab takes product co-creation to the next level.

Outline

The MetrixLab online brainstorm platform CRAFTER© works by inviting consumers (average and lead-users) to participate in the development of new products and services in an active and creative manner. Participants are not just "consumers," but become co-designers that add value in an online dialogue, sharing their everyday problems and experiences, but also their ideas and dreams. CRAFTER© stimulates participants to think of possible solutions and ideas by presenting them with all kinds of creative and visual assignments. Within their own safe home environment, people are involved in the creation of a wide scope of products, like, for example, new ice-cream concepts, future mobile solutions or personalized financial services.

Methodology and setup

With CRAFTER©, consumers are stimulated to share their everyday experiences within the domain/category of your specifications. How does this work?

1. First, we identify opportunities by using moodboards, online (photo and video) diaries, storytelling and other observational/ethnographic techniques. Consumers are enabled to express their wants, needs and dreams on both a more functional as well as an emotional level.
2. In a workshop, we combine these insights with the client's own market knowledge, identifying gaps in the current product/service offerings on the market. This step provides clear and relevant directions for effective idea generation. Based on MetrixLab's experience with online creative processes, insights are translated into "consumer language" creative assignments.
   

   Outline

   

3. We create a customized online brainstorm experience, using our validated visual and creative techniques. We work with both consumers and your team to co-create and generate ideas and subsequently share, enrich and evaluate them for new products, services, packaging, naming and even advertising messages. CRAFTER© combines both consumer and employee input, building on the creative group dynamics as respondents are challenged to share their best ideas and to develop further the ideas of others. Together with our client, we score and evaluate the output and keep the best ideas.
4. The remaining ideas are selected and clustered based on their feasibility and viability by the client team and MetrixLab team. We use morphological concept maps to transform ideas from consumer needs to detailed concepts. As we are building the concept, we begin to discuss key attributes, including product name, description, attributes, functional and emotional benefits, pricing, etc.

The online co-creation platform CRAFTER© can naturally be combined with our other products like CONFIGURATOR© and CONTEST©.

Your benefits

Active and creative consumer involvement in the early phases of innovation results in more effective and relevant concepts/solutions, simply because consumers are very aware of their wants and needs (including unfulfilled ones) and are also able to show it in a creative way.
With CRAFTER©, MetrixLab offers you

• the right mix between "focus" and "out of the box" within a fixed time frame.
• creative dialogue between companies and their customers, with possibilities to involve customers as well as other consumers.
• a customized approach: the right set of online methods/techniques for each project and the possibility to invite very specific consumers groups and other stakeholders in the creative process.
• a "game-like" online brainstorm environment for fun, inspiring and stimulating participation with a strong visual approach, in which known offline creative techniques are transferred to an online approach.
• experience in managing co-creation projects within a wide range of categories and branches.
• the chance to cost-effectively engage relatively large numbers of consumers in multiple countries (worldwide) simultaneously.

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