Unto This Last is a furniture studio and workshop, based on two sites in London. Its name comes from the title of a book by John Ruskin, published in 1862, in which he advocated a return to localised, craftsman/artisan workshops as an antidote to the conditions which industrialisation had imposed on much of Britain’s working class. As a fore-runner of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement, Ruskin’s thoughts were influential, but the rising standard of living which mass manufacturing brought to the West meant that his pleas were ultimately seen as anachronistic. But according to Olivier Geoffrey, founder of Unto This Last, CNC machining and on-demand manufacturing open up possibilities for the craftsman in the community which may yet see Ruskin’s vision realised.

D Chair © Unto This Last

For the last month or so I have been teaching on the MA Industrial Design course at Central St Martins in London, on a project titled “manufacturing and consumption futures”. The project  is intended to encourage students to research the opportunities which new production methods allow for more personalised products, to propose and refine a system of their own, and ultimately to prototype the system itself. I hope to show some of the outcomes in a later post, but as part of the research for the project students were invited to Unto This Last’s Brick Lane workshop, to look around and to quiz Olivier about his philosophy.

Facet Sideboard © Unto This Last

Olivier began by explaining how, if you’re engaged in design, you’re inevitably bound up in the distribution systems of the products you’re designing. A designer working at Ikea, for example, doesn’t design flat pack furniture just for the sake of it, or even because it’s part of the Ikea brand experience. Flat pack systems allow customers to transport their purchases home from the store and then assemble the furniture themselves, which is crucial for keeping costs down. Whereas a designer working for Cassina knows that the assembly and transportation costs will be tied up in the price the furniture, and can therefore rely on skilled craftsmen using specialised tools to build a piece of furniture, rather than an untrained consumer with an allen key.

Honeycomb Shelves © Unto This Last

Unto This Last’s designs are similarly a reflection and a result of distribution systems and logistics. A customer who visits the store can see some examples of the products on sale, but with the exception of a few small gift items, no products are held in stock, instead they are manufactured to order. This reduces the costs of storage and inventory, whilst also allowing the company to carry more than 2000 items its catalogue. Orders are made in-store and delivered pre-assembled, and because the furniture is shipped direct from the store it means packaging is also greatly reduced. In this way, by using digital manufacturing processes and some of the techniques recognisable from other mass customisation initiatives, Unto This Last can offer custom-made furniture at close to mass-production prices.

Nurbs Coffee Table © Unto This Last

Unto This Last uses laminated birch ply for all its products. Clearly the material has properties, both visual and functional, which many designers in the past have found interesting, and it would probably be naive to suggest that the only reason for using the material is its fit within Unto This Last’s distribution chain. Nonetheless, it is remarkably suitable for helping Olivier realise his vision. To begin with plywood is very dimensionally stable, and has uniform properties in all directions (unlike natural timbers, where grain and knots affect the strength and shape of the material). It also doesn’t shrink. This means that parts can be machined on a CNC router with a high degree of accuracy (typically Unto This Last manufacture to tolerances of 0.1mm); such precision also simplifies the process of assembling the finished furniture piece – less finishing is required, and glue dries under the natural pressure of the fit, without the need for clamping. Using laminates also allows Unto This Last to effectively design its own materials – both workshops (in Brick Lane and Battersea) have presses for applying ‘standard’ veneers of oak, walnut, maple and a melamine coated surface, as well as allowing experimentation with bespoke surfaces such as fabric, leather and paper.

The CNC router used at Unto This Last’s Brick Lane workshop

The use of birch ply laminates undoubtedly plays a part in the consumer acceptance of this way of working – because the material is relatively uniform it means a customer can be confident that the piece of furniture delivered to them will be virtually identical to the one they saw on display. But the material also has a significant impact on the both the designs of Unto This Last’s furniture, and the process of design which leads to them. Parts are designed which anticipate the requirements of production, they incorporate tapers, chamfers, clearances etc which can be machined rather than relying on a furniture maker to create joints and fixtures by hand. Design elements which are proven to work on one product are reused in new products, and so a vocabulary, both technical and aesthetic, has built up. All of Unto This Last’s products are built in Solidworks, and by using equation driven parameters a design can easily be modified such that changing one dimension will cause all other critical dimensions to update. The company has also put a significant amount of effort into developing custom API’s to calculate the most efficient way of laying out parts before they are machined.

Pierre, a designer at Unto This Last, demonstrates a CAD model of a table

How the constituent parts of a fully assembled piece of furniture are machined turns out to be a significant issue for Unto This Last. Not only does it make sense to save costs by wasting as little of a laminated sheet as possible, businesses in London have to pay per kg of waste, which provides another incentive to make efficient use of each sheet. Typically the workshop will take two weeks worth of orders, computer software then creates a ‘cutting map’ for each sheet of laminate required. Where it’s not possible to use an area of the sheet for furniture that has been ordered, smaller gift items are incorporated into the cutting map to fill up the empty space. Again this demonstrates how Unto This Last are almost obsessive in the use of digital technologies to refine the manufacturing process; this is the key difference, Olivier explained, to more expensive furniture makers where a significant amount of cost is tied up in waste and poorly optimized logistics.

Tea-Light Candle Holders © Unto This Last

Certainly the concept of a craft workshop in the centre of a city, enabled by digital technologies, where customers can see and hear and smell custom furniture being made, seems to have struck a chord: 40% of customers come from the recommendations of past clients, and a further 40% are people who just happen to see the store and are interested enough to look in. But Unto This Last goes against the flow of most mass customisation enterprises, which tend to be impersonal and usually offer no contact with the designer, and where cost reductions are achieved by off-shoring to faceless factories rather than opening an atelier in the middle of London. Just how successful Unto This Last is at realising Ruskin’s vision remains to be seen, but we’d have more interesting cities, and more interested customers, if it showed the way for others to follow.

Thanks to Olivier and Pierre for their time, and Ben Hughes for arranging the visit.

Detail of Tapered Ply Table © Unto This Last

Day two of the conference started with a keynote by David Gross and Jeff Beaver of Zazzle, together with James Johnson of Avery Dennison. Zazzle and Avery have recently launched a collaborative effort, the first example of which allows consumers to customise and order ring binders in a minimum quantity of one. In this instance Zazzle is acting as a ‘gateway’ to Avery’s manufacturing capabilities, with Avery producing the custom binders at their own facilities. James Johnson described clearly some of the challenges involved in setting up a mass customisation enterprise inside a business which has always excelled at mass production – Avery had already tried it’s own MC initiative before collaborating with Zazzle, but three days after the partnership launched there were 60 times the number of user-created designs than Avery had attracted in a year.

Looking back at my report on 2007′s MCP conference, I can see that I was somewhat disparaging of Zazzle, who I compared unfavourably to Ponoko and Threadless. Following this presentation I was much more impressed by what Zazzle has achieved and how fast they are advancing the benchmark of what consumers expect when customising products. For example, Zazzle has invested in body mapping capabilities more commonly used for special effects in the film industry, this allows custom clothing to be presented in a much more realistic way, with designs mapped onto folds in the fabric. And within the Zazzle system, users can open their own stores, setting their own prices for products and (in some cases) running a full time business by customising, and allowing others to customise, their designs.

Vintage Player by the3rdbase, printed on Heather Grey American Apparel T-shirt. The custom graphic maps over the folds of the fabric (click for larger image)

The first session I attended focussed on mass customisation in the shoe and footwear industries. The first paper, by Sergio Dulio, presented the case of Pakerson shoes, a traditional Italian shoemaker which has introduced a concept it calls Tailor Made – made-to-measure footwear based on a system of mass customisation which is largely invisible to the customer. At its first concept store in St. Petersburg, customers have their feet scanned and a computer model is generated of each foot. The customer is then able to choose from a menu of styles and see exactly how the shoes would look, the shoes are then handmade from a ‘library’ of existing lasts and patterns, and delivered in four weeks.

Next Matt Head and Andre Salles presented two papers, both concerning the Elite to High Street (E2HS) project at Loughborough University. This is a major research project running across the University’s Innovative Manufacturing and Construction Research Centre, the Sports Technology Institute and the Department of Design and Technology where Matt and Andre (and myself) are based. Matt’s paper presented his work with focus groups to establish exactly which aspects of a running shoe consumers are interested in customising, whereas Andre’s presentation detailed his research in understanding which anthropometric foot measurements need to be taken and how to evaluate discomfort, performance and injury risk. But since Matt has been promising for a while now to write a piece for this blog, I won’t go into these presentations too much, and hopefully it will give him a kick up the arse to do something

From the Elite to High Street (E2HS) project © Loughborough University)

Following Andre’s presentation, I left mid-session to rush up eight floors in order to catch Kate Herd’s presentation. Kate is researching the consumer customisation experience, the tangible and intangible elements from the point at which the customer decides to engage in the purchase of a customised product to the point at which the product is delivered, and beyond. The problem of course, is that this experience takes place over many weeks and at times which are ‘personal’ to the consumer: it’s not something which can be easily researched in a ‘laboratory’ environment. And simply asking people about their experiences doesn’t work either – memories are subjective and can be coloured by what the subject thinks the researcher wants to hear, or how they wish to represent themselves. To overcome these difficulties, Kate’s research has incorporated the use of ‘design probes’, a method which encourages users to self-document their actions and emotions in order to give insights into their opinions and feelings.

Freitag packaging, from Kate Herd’s Flickr set PhD in Mass Customisation

One of the key factors in using design probes is that they themselves have to be designed. Since the research subjects are documenting their experiences alone, without direct input from the researcher, the probes need to encourage the user in certain directions, to record information that is valuable and ignore what is superfluous, even when the subjects themselves do not know what is valuable and what is not. Kate revealed how, in a pilot study subjects had been encouraged to keep a diary, but the entries were often repetitive or simply said “nothing has happened”. In the revised study participants were given more specific instructions such as “Capture it”, “Describe it” or “Tell me stuff” together with tools such as a dictaphone, a digital camera and printer , sticker books etc. Whilst the study is still ongoing, it seems to be revealing some interesting insights into the way that consumers perceive brands which offer mass customised products.

A “Who did I tell map” from the pilot study, from Kate Herd’s Flickr set “Design Probes”

The revised design probe, from Kate Herd’s Flickr set “Design Probes”

After lunch Frank Piller presented a keynote speech. Frank’s presentations are always full of interesting anecdotes, one of my favourites this time concerned Adidas, who he has worked with extensively. Regarding miAdidas, the company’s venture into mass customised sports shoes, Frank recounted how Adidas have come to realise that people don’t go to miAdidas to improve their shoes, they go there to improve themselves (since a better fitting shoe will improve its owners performance). And so Adidas have introduced miCoach, a customisable coaching system intended to better improve your training.

Adidas miCoach © Adidas (click for larger image)

After the keynote I attended the Co-Creation and Open Innovation session. First to present was Martijn Pater, whose paper discussed some of the work of Fronteer Strategy, an Amsterdam based consultancy specialising in the facilitation of co-creation initiatives. Fronteer Strategy very much believes in Eric von Hippel’s notion of lead users as the key generators amongst consumers of innovative solutions, and their five guiding principles are to 1. Inspire Participation, 2. Select the Very Best (People and Ideas), 3. Connect Creative Minds, 4. Share Results, and 5. Continue Development.

The next presentation, by JanWillem Hoftijzer, was particularly interesting for me. JanWillem’s research is in a similar area to mine, looking at which products or product features consumers are most interested to customise and co-design, and then attempting to understand how consumers might be enabled to engage in that co-design. I’m hoping that we might be able to work more closely in future.

The final presentation of the session, by Katharina Braun, detailed her work looking at the Threadless community, and the ways in which advice and feedback affect the submitted designs. Katharina’s research has some interesting findings, specifically that the number of number of comments and degree of engagement are a predictor of the design’s success (regardless of the quality of the feedback, ie whether it is positive or negative). After the presentation I asked whether it was known if designs are successful because they change according to comments (ie respond to the market) or whether designs that are good to begin with attract the most comments. Right now it seems the research cannot answer that question, but it’s something Katharina plans to address.

In the final session I attended, the standout presentation was by Jouni Lyly-Yrjänäinen who entertainingly recounted his frustrations in trying to get hold of 12 black Teema dinner services from the Finnish Housewares company Iittala. When he first approached Iittala he was told the minimum order was 600 for a custom colour, though many other people had also asked for black. Unfortunately Iittala had no way of recording the level of demand – everyone who enquired was told the minimum order was 600. A couple of years later, when Iittala did release the Teema range in black, they didn’t include some plates in the range. And despite complaining and making personal contact with Iittala’s customer service manager, when the plates were released as a ‘limited time offer only’, Jouni only found out by accident. Luckily this frustration seems to have been fruitful – Iittala are now working with Tampere University of Technology where Jouni is based, and the Teema range is available in full, in black!

The Mass Customisation and Personalisation conference here in Helsinki marks a couple of milestones for me. Firstly it means I’m a couple of years into the PhD, my progress in which is probably best characterised as ‘fitful’. At times it’s been racing ahead, but in the last few months it’s taken a back seat due to my professional workload. Secondly it’s the first conference where I’ve given a paper, but more about that in a later post. These next few entries are really a personal overview and reflection on the conference and some of the points raised.

The opening welcome was given by Matti Alahuhta, who I guess was technically my boss at one point at Nokia, and is now CEO of Kone. He gave a brief presentation of the ways in which Kone lifts can be customised, but disappointingly it wasn’t much more than a corporate gloss-over. He showed a few slides comparing Kone’s relatively ‘industrial’ products of just a few years ago to current products which show much more evidence of an ‘interior design’ approach, and I would have been interested to learn what this meant for the way the company and its designers worked.

The opening keynote speech was given by Joe Pine, who of course introduced a lot of people to the concept of Mass Customisation in his 1993 book. I had been looking forward to his presentation, because his speech at the previous MCPC in Boston had been one of the highlights of my conference. But to a large extent this was just a repeat of what was presented two years ago. I spoke to a few people who hadn’t been in Boston who thought the presentation was really interesting, but personally I felt a bit cheated.

The first sessions of the conference began just before lunch, and I presented in the ‘Success Stories: Mass Customization in Practice’ session. I was a bit surprised to be in this session – calling my work a success story is a bit premature! – but it seemed to go down well  and certainly raised some interest judging by the number of comments and questions I got during the rest of the conference. Also presenting in the same session was Gregor Jawecki of Hyve AG, who showed the competition which Swarovski recently ran, inviting users to submit jewellery designs. The competition ran in two parts – in one section users were able to use a configuration tool and build designs from pre-existing chains, pendants and gems; whereas an alternative section allowed users to upload freely created designs. 1790 participants created 3180 designs, of which 2200 were configured and 980 freely designed. What I found interesting was that the freely submitted designs were judged by a jury of ‘experts’, whereas the configured designs were judged by the competition community – this obviously suggests a prejudice on the part of the organisers as to what constitutes ‘real’ design (as does the difference in prizes for the two competitions). It would be interesting to know why Swarovski opted for the jury system – was it because they didn’t trust the community to identify the best designs, or instead that they thought ‘real’ designers would be put off submitting if their work was judged by interested amateurs rather than industry professionals? Whatever the reason, by placing configured designs so closely next to freely created designs, the competition clearly highlights the limitations of configurators in terms of the freedom they allow the user, and in that sense my own presentation fitted quite nicely into the session.

1st prize in the ‘Basic Passion’ category of freely uploaded designs © Isabelle Lopes France

1st and 2nd prizes in the ‘Configured Designs’ category © Mehmet Genc and Mônica Maués

Following lunch, Bruce Kasanoff presented a keynote speech on the theme of ‘The Emerging Personalization Economy’. Kasanoff, who runs the Now Possible blog, believes that in eight years the world’s economy will be driven by personalization, and he used a number of examples from the fields of education, healthcare and security to reinforce this belief.

To be honest the Monday afternoon sessions didn’t have that much to interest me. The standout presentation, which I attended almost by accident, was by Fabrice Alizon, who talked about the Model T Ford as one of the first examples of mass customisation. This is a somewhat provocative assertion, since Henry Ford and the Model T are generally thought of as the paradigm of mass manufacture. But as Alizon explained, the Model T underwent so many modifications throughout its life that it is almost impossible to attribute any one model to any one year. Around 5% of Model T’s were customised, i.e. modified versions of the standard offerings, and for much of its life the Model T was available in a range of colours other than black. This isn’t to say that Ford itself mass customised products – it had a number of models based on a standard platform – but by also selling that product platform (chassis, engine and drivetrain) as a stand-alone item, it allowed customers or third party body shops to create the customised vehicle. In many ways, this is close to the way I imagine user-designed products might be realised in future – a manufacturer sells a core product and the consumer prints out a ‘shell’, either one that has been self-designed or a design bought from someone else. It was kind of interesting to realise that one of the ways I’ve been envisaging the future of product design and manufacture was actually pioneered by henry Ford almost 100 years ago. Alizon’s full paper is available here (subscription required).

The Model T product platform, Clymer, F. (1955), Henry’s Wonderful Model T, Bonaza Books, NY

Customised Model T’s. All images © Model T Ford Club of America

I recruited three study participants, Stephanie, Corey, and Jordon, who are Industrial Design students at the Savannah College of Art and Design. The study has a slight bias since the students all said they would not have participated in the study if not given a fifty dollar compensation fee. As college students, they found the shoes to be expensive, but seized the opportunity to receive compensation so that they could purchase custom shoes at a lower price and have the experience of using their imagination to design customized footwear. At this stage in the development of customization, the early adopters are predominantly creative consumers who tend to be leading edge, and are intrigued by experimentation (Hippel, 2005). Although Nike is a brand that has a broad appeal, the NikeiD experience is clearly targeted to a younger demographic who are particularly interested in style. Therefore, it can be strongly argued that design students are ideal candidates for the study.

NikeID © Nike

The three students who participated in the study had never customized a product before, nor were they aware of MC before a description was provided during their introduction to the project. They began the process by opening an email which contained a listing of shoe websites that allow for customization. Each participant explored each site before deciding from which brand they wanted to work with. Both their interaction with the websites and the computer screen were simultaneously videotaped; this enabled me to review their actions as well as their facial expressions. Since the intention of the study was to conduct the research in context, the process took place in the participants’ homes at their computer desks, ie where they typically did online shopping. Interference to their normal routine was minimized: if they would normally snack, play music, or take breaks to chat with their friends online, they were free to do so. The idea was to create a comfortable, natural experience rather than for it to feel like a laboratory experiment.

Rbk Custom © Reebok

In the days following the creation/purchase process, Stephanie, Corey, and Jordon were asked to leave voicemail messages describing how they were feeling while they were waiting for their shoes to be delivered. This method of leaving voicemails was chosen for its simplicity and convenience rather than writing me emails explaining their emotions. When they thought about their shoes, they immediately called my cell phone and left voicemails expressing their excitement. The first few days after the participants made their purchases, they would leave messages at least every day. After about a week, they began to forget about their purchase, until they received update emails from the manufacturer. The emails stated where the company was in their process, such as when the order had been received, the time in which manufacturing had begun, and when the product was shipped. Once the participants received their shoes, they were anxious to see their creations so I immediately returned to their homes to capture on video their first impressions and watch their experience of opening the package. Lastly, interviews were conducted about the experience of wearing their new shoes, and whether they chose to share the story with their friends and family.

Stephanie’s Experience
Stephanie began by looking at Puma’s website Mongolian BBQ. She felt that the theme was “cute”, but found it difficult to use a site that was overloaded with slow Flash applications when trying to get something accomplished. After weighing her options, Stephanie selected a pair of Reebok high tops since she preferred their styles to the other brands. She felt the 3D images looked more realistic on Reebok’s website than Nike’s.

Stephanie with her shoe collection

Stephanie wished that there had been more friends around her to ask for their opinions regarding material and color. She would e-mail her potential designs to family members, and couldn’t help but ask me for my input. This lack of guidance, reassurance, and indecisiveness led her to work for over six hours on her design. Stephanie would take breaks so that she could come back to the computer screen with a fresh perspective. She even started over a few times so see if she could come up with a new design that she preferred. This strategy seemed to work for her creation process.

Stephanie’s first few voicemail messages showed her excitement for her purchase, but as time went on, she was a little worried at not receiving any emails from Reebok. She was not sure if the transaction went through. Eventually she did receive an email saying her shoes had been shipped, and expressed much joy the moment the shoes were delivered.

Stephanie received her Reebok shoes within 10 business days, compared to Nike’s four to six week time frame. The colors, specifically the metallic finish, did not match up to her computer screen, but she was happy overall with the results. She likes wearing her shoes, and says that many friends have asked where she purchased them. She tells them with pride that this is her design, and suggests that they can design their shoes to represent their own personal style. Knowing that her shoes are one of kind added to her satisfying experience.

Corey’s Experience
Corey glanced through the various websites quickly, and decided customize a pair of Nike’s, one of his favorite shoe brands. Like Stephanie, Corey also felt unguided throughout the process. It took him quite some time to pick out a shoe that most suited his style. Once he selected a style, he decided to use a color theme to represent his home state of North Carolina. Though he was only working with two colors, the process still took quite some time. He asked his friends that had stopped by what they thought of his shoe, providing him with reassurance and confidence in his design.

Corey with his shoe collection

Corey left the most messages out of all the participants due to his excitement to get his custom shoes and show them off to his friends. Quickly, his mood changed when he checked UPS online and saw tracking his shoes had been delivered, yet they were nowhere to be seen at his apartment’s doorstep. NikeiD does not require a signature to receive the package, and Corey had to file a claim with Nike. The excitement he expressed for his personally designed shoes turned to disappointment as he realized he would never see his customized shoes. He decided not to reorder his shoes, and looks back at the experience with frustration and bitterness.

Jordan’s Experience
Jordan’s customization experience was delayed since Nike’s website was down, but he knew before looking at the sites that Nike was the brand he wanted to customize. Jordan was probably the most intensely involved with the creation process and least talkative during his session. He focused intently on working with the website to come up with the “best” design to reflect his personality, taking his time with the experience, and commenting that this is how he would go about the process if he were not being observed. Jordan communicated with his friends through instant messenger, would pause for food breaks, and continued to work on his design the following day. He experienced some major complications in the user interface while making a purchase online, and because Jordan never saved his design on the site it meant he could not go back to view his design. On more than one occasion the shoe had to be completely “re-built”, which was easy because he knew exactly what colors went where, but the process was still time consuming.

Jordan with his shoe collection

Jordan left only a few messages. Like the others, his first few responses to the creation process made him excited about his purchase. However, after a few weeks passed, Jordon began to feel anxious and impatient. Once Jordon received his package, he instantly opened it and within minutes the shoes were on his feet. He wasn’t expecting the materials to all be the same, but was one hundred percent happy with his decision. Corey, his roommate, was frustrated with the situation since he never received his shoes. Jordon finally went to his room so that he could change his outfit to match his shoes, before going to school to complete his homework.

Jordan’s new shoes gave him more confidence and pride. His friends instantly noticed his new addition to his wardrobe, especially because his nickname was embroidered into the shoe. As time went on, Jordon stopped wearing his new shoes every day, as he felt the need to changes things up every now and then.

© Julie Yessin

Experience Study Analysis
Stephanie, Corey, and Jordon came across many of the same obstacles such as difficulties maneuvering around the interface to the point of frustration and the urge to progress to another site. When both Corey and Jordan began their process, they wanted to customize Nike shoes, but the site was down for maintenance, requiring the continuation of the process the following day. Stephanie also was off to a poor start after becoming very frustrated by the slow Flash animations of Puma’s website. In addition, all three participants had trouble understanding how to use the Mi Adidas site: none of them could work out how to select a shoe to customize. What all three overlooked was the text that said they must visit a Mi Adidas store to customize a pair of shoes.

Puma Mongolian Barbecue © Puma AG

Many of today’s user design systems fail to reach their potential to offer products that can be uniquely matched to customer needs. There is a mismatch between the knowledge of the consumers, and the decisions they are asked to make (Randall, Terwiesch, & Ulrich, 2003). Even though Stephanie, Corey, and Jordon are all designers, they felt a lack of direction and guidance in the selection process. They felt a need to ask their friends for opinions and to receive self-reassurance since they knew that once they clicked the purchase button, the shoe could not be altered after purchase. They also found that either there were not enough colors, or were overwhelmed with the amount of colors and materials that can be placed on the different sections of the shoe.

miAdidas © Adidias

Not only did all three students take a lot of time to select a shoe style, but they each spent hours working on a color scheme. They would fluctuate back and forth from frustration to excitement when they felt like they were starting to finalize some of their decisions. Stephanie struggled with not being able to see and feel her shoe, in order to visualize what the shoe would look like Stephanie held one of her own sneakers up to the screen to try to imagine what the new style would look like. She also went to extremes by standing up on her computer, holding her foot up to the screen, and having me hold up a full-length mirror so that she could get the full effect of what her shoes would look like on.

Companies should customize the customization process. It is ironic that companies like Nike and Dell that are at the forefront of the customization movement offer plenty of choices for the color of sneaker soles or the type of processor, but typically have only one choice of user interface for their user experience. During Jordan’s customization experience, he would open up multiple windows to compare a few different designs he was working on. It would be helpful if the website provided a side-by-side comparison to evaluate different configurations of design parameters and attributes. (Randall et al., 2003).

During the study, Stephanie said that she wished she could communicate with someone at Reebok that knew about the shoe styles, materials, and colors. She felt that there was little guidance throughout the process. From my in-store research it seems that NikeiD also sees the benefit of having a customer work with an expert. They allow an appropriate amount of time to meet with each customer individually. They guide them through the process, make suggestions, and reassure the customer that their decisions are sound, making them as comfortable as possible with their choices. The confidence that people gain throughout the in-store experience alleviates the concerns and mistakes that customers might experience.

Adobe Kuler © Adobe Systems Inc.

This kind of guidance could be replicated using online tools. Adobe’s Kuler website for example, could enable users to make more sophisticated color selections. However, this should be an option, so that if a user intentionally wanted to create a shoe that “clashes”, they would be free to do so. One solution to the online process that involves human interaction in real-time would be an instant message chat with a designer; by talking with an actual person through the Internet, the risk of uncertainty could be reduced. This person would act as an aesthetic agent, and could consist of industrial design professionals, “sneakerheads” for a company like Nike, or pro-skateboarders for companies that produce custom decks. An aesthetic agent would also benefit the customer’s experience by providing emotional confirmation about their design.

To understand customization in a retail environment, I visitied a number of shoe stores while in Manhatten. In contrast to Nike and Reebok, Mi Adidas, located in New York’s SoHo, only allows for customization of shoes in their store. Their focus on performance rather than style is evidenced by concerns with correctly assessing the customer’s foot. A three-step process includes measuring the foot, determining where the most pressure is placed on the foot so that proper cushioning can be added, and selecting materials and colors. However, when I first got in the store, I had to ask where the Mi Adidas section was located. A staff member pointed me in the right direction, but said I should first go to the front desk so that I could ask for the staff member that works in the customization department. When I think of customizing a shoe based on the foot’s measurements and stance, I envision advanced technology to enable the creation. However, the equipment did not seem high tech, and even the staff member, Janice, recognized this fact and told me that the store was planning to update the Mi Adidas equipment. The department did not seem to be a very popular part of the store, as no customers had come up to the display during my half-hour inquiry.

miAdidas in-store system © Adidas

Despite this tangible element of having your foot scanned and measured, individual molds are not made for each individual. What miAdidas really offers is measurement of one’s foot size, calculation of where supportive cushioning should be placed, and color options. The staff member selects the first two steps based on the customer’s measurements and the foot scan, and the customer selects the style preferences. To me, extra cushioning and the selection of colors did not warrant paying almost double the price for sneakers. Pine’s observation is salient here when he states that “Customers are not buying individuality; they are purchasing a product or service that fits exactly to their needs and desires.” (Piller et al., 2004) I was left wondering whether MiAdidas is a true form of mass customization when one is not quite configuring the product to meet specific needs, but merely selecting options of size, cushioning, colors, materials, and adding a few letters. Despite my poor experience, a lot of potential lies in people able to talk to an individual one on one about what type of product would fit best. Once I did locate the staff member, she did appear enthusiastic about the process, and gave me her full undivided attention.

Puma Mongolian BBQ in-store system © Puma AG

Puma’s Mongolian BBQ, located just a few blocks from the Adidas store, offered the most variety in terms of choices in colors and fabric swatches. However, once again I could not locate staff to assist me with the customization process. When I asked for assistance, I was told that the computer used for the customization process was not in service. Unlike Nike and Adidas, Puma’s customization was self-service, and it was suggested that I could go online to create my shoe. This made me frustrated, since I was planning on purchasing a pair of custom Puma’s. I was still able to feel the different swatces during my visit which added a tangible element, providing both physio and psycho pleasure. This allowed me to distinguish a relationship between the different materials and colors and determine the ‘best’ combinations. The stand was simple and highly tangible, but did not seem to get a lot of attention within the store, proving that many are still unfamiliar with mass customization. This could be due to the lack of communication of the experience within the store’s display. There was a lack of warmth in the experience, which differed greatly from my next customization experience at NikeiD.

Puma Mongolian BBQ in-store system © Puma AG. Image from Freshness Mag

NikeiD’s approach is quite different from Puma’s. The experience I had there was certainly the most impressive of the three stores that I visited. They had lively music, bright lighting, and a beautiful store display. In order to get in, a reservation needs to be made in advance, though you can see if there is availability if you are browsing within the store as well. Each one-on-one consultation lasts 45 minutes, and I felt much more guided during the process than at Adidas and Puma.

NikeID in-store system © Nike

The consultant made suggestions as to what colors he thought looked best, but did not attempt to sway my opinion from what I really wanted. The consultant I worked with said he never had training on colors; however, in London’s NikeiD store, the design consultants undergo a fourteen week training program that included meeting with a color psychologist (http://www.nikebiz.com/). NikeiD provides a picture printed on a business-card shaped piece of plastic, which provides something tangible that a customer can show their friends. NikeID was previously based in a small store in SoHo, and attempted to cultivate a much more exclusive image than now. Nonetheless, the fact that it is the only NikeiD store in the country and offers shoes that you cannot get on the NikeiD.com website adds a degree of exclusivity. NikeiD shows that, if done well, the in-store system has the potential to be inexpensive and to appeal outside the current ‘early adopter’ demographic.

Bearing in mind I used to work for Nokia, I guess it’s inevitable that I follow what’s going on in the mobile phone world closer than most. But in the last couple of months I’ve seen a few things that are particularly relevant to my research, so this post will look at some of the issues involved with the customisation of mobile phones.

The first deliberately customisable phone was the Nokia 5110. Few people are aware that the initial reason for the 5110′s changeable cover was nothing to do with offering consumers choice though, rather it was an early attempt to employ just in time manufacturing in response to customer demand. Joseph Pine writes in Mass Customization about how just in time (JIT) strategies have often led to companies embracing mass customisation without necessarily realising it at the time.

Nokia 5110 with user changeable cover © Nokia

The 5110 wasn’t the first phone with coloured covers that Nokia offered, however at that early stage the company hadn’t developed its expertise in spotting and understanding trends, and so colour prediction was largely based on intuition. In the past this had led to certain models which were sold out in one particular colour, whilst the same model in another colour sat unsold in warehouses. The thinking behind the 5110 was that a huge reduction in inventory costs could be achieved if it was plastic covers that went unsold, rather than complete phones.

I’m not sure who first realised the opportunity an easily changeable cover offered in terms of the way a phone could be marketed, but I know that it didn’t meet with universal approval. Many of Nokia’s designers, myself included, thought that offering choice in this way was a sign that the company didn’t really know what its customer’s wanted (and in a way we were right). What no-one predicted was the way that the ‘Xpress-On’ covers would take off – the 5110 quickly became Nokia’s best selling phone and for a while almost every phone the company offered had usable changeable covers. But in addition, it spawned a massive industry of third party manufacturers, such that at one point it seemed you couldn’t walk down the main street of any city in the world without noticing the opportunity to change the way your phone looked.

Covers for the 5110, only one of these is an official Nokia cover

The popularity of the user changeable cover seems to be long past its peak now. None of Nokia’s current models offer Xpress-On covers as far as I can tell, and this seems to be the same amongst most other manufacturers. I think there’s probably a few reasons, the main one being that it’s just the inevitable way that trends come and go. And the increasingly disposable nature of mobile phones, particularly when they’re sold as part of a pay-monthly plan which often allow a free upgrade every year, means changing the colour of the cover is no longer such a big deal. But this doesn’t mean there isn’t still a demand for some form of customisation.

One current trend in terms of customisation is the use of crystals to decorate products. Swarovski is currently running a competition where users are invited to either design or decorate a watch; though the competition is due to end this month, so the link may be out-dated soon. (As a side note, it’s interesting that the competition is being run under the name of a Swarovski sub-brand – Signity – I guess Swarovski is worried that its brand name could be damaged by its entry to the ‘lower end’ of the market). This trend has also shown itself in the mobile phone market, with companies such as Bling My Thing offering customised, (Swarovski) crystal encrusted phones.

Customised Apple iPhone © Bling My Thing

Glueing crystals to the body of a mobile phone may be an unconventional jewellery technique, and it’s undoubtedly time consuming. But for those who want a more traditional approach when looking to customise their high-tech products, there are a number of companies who can offer their services. Goldstriker specialise in metal plating using materials such as gold, rose gold and platinum, and offer their services on products as diverse as zippo lighters, golf balls and alloy rims.

Customised LG KE850 Prada edition © Goldstriker

As well as customising products such as the Apple iPhone and many of Nokia’s models, Goldstriker also offer customised versions of the Prada special edition for LG, and the Armani special edition for Samsung. I find these especially interesting, because LG and Samsung have obviously partnered with these brands in order to buy a sense of exclusivity, the kind a high end fashion label can offer but which a mass market consumer electronics company cannot. And yet Goldstriker (and presumably their customers) have decided that Prada and Armani didn’t do the job well enough, and indeed that they can improve on it. I don’t imagine there is a viable business which involves taking suits or dresses from Prada or Armani and ‘improving’ them (though I’m happy to be proved wrong if anyone can point me to this). So what does this say about these kind of collaborations? Who ‘owns’ the product, Prada or LG? And are both brands really gaining?

Customised Blackberry Pearl © Amosu

But if Goldstriker’s offerings don’t advertise your wealth sufficiently, you can flaunt the success of your taste by-pass operation with a phone from Amosu. For £45 000 you can buy one of only 20 gold and diamond encrusted Blackberry Pearls. What I find most bewildering here is that what Amosu do is no different to Bling My Thing, in that there is no attempt to change the basic product. The keys and window are the same plastic parts you get on a standard Blackberry, they just have diamonds next to them. But who imagines that diamonds and plastic are a quality combination? Where is the skill, or even the pride in doing something well?

What the examples I’ve mentioned so far have in common is that although they allow the consumer to customise their phone, there is little opportunity for the user to do any more than choose from an extended menu of aesthetic options. Bling My Thing sells kits of crystals to allow consumers to customise their own products, but doesn’t show any examples. But Crystal Iced, another company which will cover your phone in Swarovski crystals, also offers bespoke customisations to the customer’s own design. Still, this is the kind of thing that’s been around for a long time in Japan, which itself is a development of the kind of customisation I saw in Harajuku in 1998 – individual designs airbrushed onto phone covers, often being done in nail salons. Jan Chipchase, a researcher at Nokia who’s lived in Tokyo for a long time, has made a number of reports on user-customised phones in Japan, personal shrines as he calls them, including one study which revealed personalisation on the inside of the back cover

Back covers of Japanese phones, © Jan Chipchase / Nokia

“Unless the back cover was removed from the phone no-one else would see or would know the photo was there so my assumption is that the photos were for personal consumption, or at the owner’s discretion for sharing with someone else. A number of the photos appeared quite intimate – a couple hugging, a child, friends doing things in privacy of a photo booth.”

What I particularly like about this observation is the way it upsets many of the perceived wisdoms about why people customise products, ie that it’s all about wanting to demonstrate how creative or unique they are. Doubtless this applies to many people, but these examples show there can also be much more private reasons.

Chipchase’s research may have played some part in one of Nokia’s more interesting experiments with customisation, the 3200. This model allowed the user to place templates under the clear plastic front and back covers, allowing the design to be seen from the outside. It came with 3 designs, as well as 10 blank templates onto which the user could print their own design; there was also a template cutter available as an optional accessory.

Nokia 3200 © Nokia

I’m not exactly sure why the 3200 failed as a concept, although on phone review sites it seems to have been criticised for the quality of the camera and display, which implies the customisable aspect wasn’t a significant USP for users. I’d also be interested to know if there were any attempts to build a community around the phone – a place where users could post their designs and download others. All in all I think it’s a shame Nokia abandoned the idea so readily, particularly as the concept of user-customisable phones seems to be gaining interest.

Easy Tiles phone concept

The Easy Tiles phone concept, designed by Tzu-Fu Wang, was receiving a lot of attention a few weeks ago. Despite being decidedly lo-tech, most commenters seemed to understand the rationale behind a phone who’s appearance could be easily changed. Maybe more practical concerns would have been raised if the concept was actually a viable product, but it would be interesting to see how the same commenters would react to some of the designs Leonardo Bonanni has created for the TuxPhone project.

TuxPhone covers © Leonardo Bonanni

TuxPhone is a project to develop an open source GSM/GPRS mobile phone. Though the prototype is crude, it is able to make and receive calls. More interesting from my point of view though, is the thinking behind Bonanni’s concepts for the phone’s covers. In the same open source spirit as the main project, the idea is that the instructions for making the covers should be downloadable, and the covers themselves should be easy to fabricate and modify using relatively crude tools and materials such as wood, aluminium and fabric. My favourite concept though, much better than the Easy Tiles phone, is a cover made from Lego. Bonanni released the design for this on the Lego Factory site, such that anyone could order the bricks required and download the instructions easily. (This also started me wondering whether Lego Factory should be added to the list of simple software which consumers might someday use in the place of CAD.)

Lego TuxPhone cover © Leonardo Bonanni

In the same spirit as the TuxPhone project, OpenMoko from Taiwan first made the software of their Neo 1973 phone freely available, and then in March this year released the CAD files for the product. The files are available as STEP, IGES or native ProE under a Creative Commons Share Alike license: you can change them anyway you like as long as you acknowledge OpenMoko as the original creator and license your creations in the same way.

Neo 1973 CAD model © OpenMoko

It will be really interesting to see the results of this CAD model being released. The complexity of the model means it’s definitely aimed at developers with design and engineering resources, rather than the consumer. On the other hand the product has obviously been designed with customisation as a high priority, from the basic concept of a touch screen interface, which reduces the complexity needed to design a keymat (as well as offering much more scope for UI customisation) to the relatively simple shape and somewhat over-engineered construction, which will make the product more durable. The hole through the bottom of the phone is also interesting: it gives the product a distinctive look, but also implies there is a lot of space to increase the board size and add custom chips and functionality.

Neo 1973 © OpenMoko

Finally I want to end this post with another phone that was getting a lot of attention a few weeks ago, a Nokia N70 customised and quickly labelled the Buddha phone. I’ve read on some sites that this phone is gold plated, though others have said it is painted which seems more likely looking at the finish. The intricacy of the markings is quite amazing, whether they’ve been masked and then spray painted, or something else, it shows a lot of skill. Yes, to my eyes it’s incredibly kitsch, but that’s what’s so interesting because as a professional designer I would never come up with something like this.

Customised Nokia N70 Buddhist Phone

When talking to other designers about the future of mass customisation, the reaction is often one of dismay, or disbelief, that consumers with no taste will be able to design and make their own products. To which my first response is that designers themselves are pretty capable of designing tasteless objects. But regardless, the point is that whether designers (and companies or brands) like it or not, this kind of thing is going to be increasingly common. It doesn’t matter whether most people think the Buddha phone is tasteless or kitsch or crass, what matters is that one person though it was a good idea, and that person went to a huge amount of time and effort to create a unique product. This is only going to get easier as rapid manufacturing technologies bring production close to the consumer. Think of the OpenMoko project, consumer-friendly CAD software and a high quality 3D printer, and then imagine how many Buddha phones might appear.

Customised Nokia N70 Buddhist Phone

So far I have looked at ways in which rapid manufacturing technologies might become available to consumers, and the reasons why product design for rapid manufacturing is easier than for mass manufacturing. In the final part of this extended post I want to address the only other remaining hurdle to consumers designing and manufacturing their own products: the tools they will use to design with.

Consumer co-design, sometimes called co-creation, is a topic that’s been written about at length by design researchers. At it’s purest it involves the end user, or typical representatives of end users, entering the design process and creating products or services as part of a design team. In practice though, co-design is often little more than an enhanced customer research exercise. End users might be asked about their needs and desires, encouraged to offer suggestions, and even invited to critique proposed solutions. But there is no doubt it is the designers who are expert, and who make the final decision.

As a designer myself, I confess I find it difficult to break free of this mindset – surely my training and experience mean I am able to understand what a market of consumers will want better than an individual consumer themself might? But the point is, what I think will end up being irrelevant if consumers are able to design their own products. Why should a consumer care that I think their product is crass or crude, if it’s exactly what they want, and they’ve made it? At the moment though, I have one trick up my sleeve – I can use CAD, to design a product and to communicate that design to the means of production, in a way that no non-designer can. All the time designers and design engineers can monopolise the expertise needed to create CAD data, consumer created products will not happen.

Autodesk AliasStudio, image from Diseno-art.com

Typically CAD software requires a substantial investment in time in order to gain even a basic expertise. With the first professional CAD package I learned, I-Deas (since bought out by Siemens and renamed NX), I reckon it took three years before I felt I was driving the CAD, rather than the CAD influencing the kind of designs I created. Writing about this in ‘Fab’, Neil Gershenfeld notes that “there’s been no compelling reason to make engineering software easy to use; these programs have been written by engineers, for engineers, who make a career out of using one of them.” There’s a reason for the complexity of course, designing and engineering a high technology product is a complex task, and the design of a passenger aircraft was no easier for the average person to understand before CAD software was invented. Nonetheless it’s true that for non-experts, just looking at the UI of a CAD software package such as AliasStudio is intimidating, with its seemingly endless icons and drop down menus.

Whenever reading about CAD software aimed at consumers (whether in theory or actual software products), the word I always come across is ‘intuitive’. The assumption is that anyone not trained in CAD requires software which is easy to use. To my mind this doesn’t really have any value though – saying you want software which is intuitive is like saying you want a car that looks nice. Who is ever going to ask for the alternative: “I want a car that looks rubbish” or “I want software which is difficult to understand.” In any case, intuition doesn’t necessarily mean ‘immediately understandable’, intuition also comes with practice and familiarity. What’s really being asked for is a reduction in complexity.

Cosmic Blobs © Dassault Systemes

Cosmic Blobs, made by Dassault Systemes (who also make Solidworks and Catia) is a perfect illustration of this. When I first tried to use Cosmic Blobs I found it far from intuitive, despite being aimed at children. The lack of drop down menus, no right mouse button clicks and no tool-tips meant I was totally lost as to where to start. Having spoken to a couple of people whose kids have tried Cosmic Blobs, this is also the reaction of computer literate children who are used to a typical Windows interface. But after a few minutes playing around, you start to get the hang of it. Essentially modelling consists of choosing from a few primitives, adding or subtracting them from one another, and pushing or pulling on a surface to deform it. There’s no surfacing commands, no way to analyse curvature continuity, no assembly environment and no finite element analysis. The software becomes usable to a novice because the choice of commands is so limited. Cosmic Blobs isn’t simple because you intuitively understand how it works, it’s simple because it doesn’t take long to find out what everything does.

SketchUp © Google

Of course, the downside of reducing the complexity by reducing functionality is that the capabilities of the software are necessarily reduced. This is obvious when considering another consumer oriented CAD package, Google SketchUp. SketchUp can be downloaded and used for free, and was initially envisaged as an architectural modelling package. Increasingly though, it is being used to model furniture and products. SketchUp uses a combination of solids and surfaces, which it calls faces. Faces can only ever be planar, this means that not only is SketchUp functionally easier to master than a typical CAD package, it is also conceptually easier to grasp (understanding G2 – G4 surface continuity is something most designers struggle with at some point). Of course the kinds of products which can be modelled in SketchUp cannot have the sophistication of surfacing as products modelled in Alias, Solidworks, Catia etc. But they can, and are, being modelled by people not trained as designers, who don’t have the time to master professional CAD even if they have the inclination. An ‘unsophisticated’ tool that works (for them) is better than a sophisticated one which does not.

Alternative design concepts produced using Genoform © Genometri

Stripped down alternatives to professional CAD software are not the only possibility however. I have written before about Genoform iterative design software, which works as a plug-in for Solidworks. It’s primarily intended as a tool for designers, to explore design alternatives based on a number of fixed and variable parameters. So in the example shown above, the designer has chosen a certain size of display, and decided that under the display are three buttons, with another input area below those buttons. On the right hand side are a headset jack and some kind of sliding button. The software has then generated a number of designs, and will keep generating designs up to a maximum of 10,000 variants. But it’s possible to imagine a similar system available to consumers rather than designers. The designer would still decide which parameters are fixed and which are changeable, but the consumer would decide how many variants to generate. The requirement is then no longer for a consumer to learn any kind of CAD, but simply to be able to make a decision about which option they like best.

Spore © Electronic Arts Inc.

I’d like to finish this post by talking about Spore, a computer game by Will Wright (Sim City, The Sims) which is due out later this year. Games have had a significant influence on the computer industry in the past, pushing the limits of hardware as well as experimenting with input devices and UI’s. With Spore it could be that games also influence the computer aided design process. Without going into the full scope of the game, an important part of Spore is the creature editor, shown above. Players can first set the traits of their creature (strength, speed, carnivorous tendencies etc), and then build the creature from a kit of parts. Not having played the game it’s difficult to know exactly how the editor works, but my understanding from reading about it is that the editor has built in intelligence. So if your creature has two legs, the editor knows they should be right and left, rather than both left; it knows that hands go on the end of arms and eyes go on the head etc. It’s not a big jump to imagine this idea of ‘guided design’ being applied to products, such that consumers are prevented from making bad decisions.

The software examples above work in different ways, and would expect different inputs and levels of expertise from consumers. What they have in common is the implication for industrial designers. It’s my belief, and part of my PhD’s hypothesis, that in future the designer’s role will be to define which parameters of any product are fixed, and limit or control which parameters can be changed by the consumer. I’m sure I will be returning to this subject often in the future

The final day of MCPC 2007 started early, but it wasn’t until after lunch that Professor Marvin Minsky gave what I thought was the most interesting keynote speech of the conference, entitled “The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of the Human Mind.”

Minsky is one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, having written extensively on both the science and philosophy of AI. To be honest I’m not sure his keynote had much to do with the theme of the conference, but there were still some choice quotes including

“We have robots to make things, but no robots to fix things”

“There’s no point sending humans to the moon before you’ve sent robots to build a hotel”

“If you understand something in only one way, you don’t really understand it at all”

“Common sense things that robots don’t know: you can use string to pull but not to push; things fall over if not supported; it’s hard to stay awake if you’re bored”

The stand-out session for me was by Bug Lab’s founder Peter Semmelhack. Although I’ve been aware of Bug Labs for a while I’ve not been completely clear about what they’re doing, but Semmelhack described how their open source approach to hardware aims to tap into the long tail of tomorrow’s consumer electronics market. Think of it like a Lego Mindstorms but for ‘real’ products – products which only a hundred or a thousand people might want to buy, rather than the tens or hundreds of thousands typically required for a profitable consumer electronics device. I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to work a Bug Labs product into my PhD, but it’s definitely something I want to play around with at some point.

And so that was the end of the conference. It’s been an excellent in-at-the-deep-end experience for me, really interesting, and encouraging also in terms of the enthusiasm people have shown for my own ideas. Tomorrow I’m flying back to the UK, but not before checking out Mr Bartley’s…

The second day of MCPC 2007 saw keynote speeches from Professor William J. Mitchell from MIT Media Lab and School of Architecture, Kent Larson, also from MIT Media Lab and School of Architecture, and my personal favourite, Professor Eric von Hippel from MIT Sloan School of Management. Von Hippel is well known for being among the first to talk about user innovation – the way that consumers modify, improve or invent products which meet their needs better than manufacturers’ standard offerings – and his presentation today, entitled “Toolkits for Collaborative User Innovation,” talked about ways in which companies can enable and benefit from users’ knowledge and creativity.

From watching von Hippel present, I got the feeling he is an accomplished speaker who deliberately overstates his case in order to create a memorable impression. Thus I took with a pinch of salt his assertion that in future, expert users who freely reveal their designs in the spirit of the open source movement will swamp manufacturers who try to protect their inventions behind patents. Nonetheless he had some interesting examples to back up his argument, in particular the case of the kite surfacing community.

Kite surfing is the sport in which riders use a short surf board and a powerful kite to increase speed and jump into the air, often performing acrobatic tricks. According to von Hippel, it first began as an underground sport, with only a few devotees who freely shared information about the best designs, materials and techniques. As the sport grew in popularity, a number of companies began to produce commercial designs; however at about the same time a website, Zeroprestige.org, was set up to better facilitate the sharing of information among the kite surfing community. The size and expertise of the community, including at least one highly-trained aerodynamicist, was such that designs posted to the site were better than those being commercially released, and many of the companies withdrew from the business.Since there are always two sides to every story, I’d be interested to know if this example has been ‘spun’ to better make a case. I also wonder how successful this approach would be as the market became bigger and expanded outside the expert enthusiasts into those who do not have the time, skill or inclination to build their own equipment. You can read more about this, and other examples, in Eric von Hippel’s book Democratizing Innovation (free download).

Of the breakout sessions that I attended, two in particular stood out. The first was by Xiaoyan Deng of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, who presented an experiment conducted using NIKEiD‘s toolkit for the design of custom sports shoes. Deng’s experiment involved 192 participants, who were asked to customise a Nike sports shoe (the choice of which shoe was restricted). The first, perhaps not surprising result, was that every participant created a unique shoe. The participants were then invited, after either one or four weeks, to follow up the experiment in an evaluation exercise. 30 designs were presented to each participant, one of which was their own, nine of which were professional Nike designs, and 20 of which were designed by other participants. The subjects were asked to identify their own design (over two thirds were able to do this) and which design they preferred. The preference rating for the participants’ own designs was twice the average, but interestingly they also scored other participants’ designs higher than those of the professional designers.

The second session was by Kate Herd of Middlesex University and also concerned a toolkit used to customise sports shoes, this time Puma’s Mongolian Barbecue. Herd’s research is looking at the design of the user experience surrounding customisation toolkits and how this affects the participation of the consumer. The basic premise is that customisation is a valuable brand touchpoint and as such the customisation experience needs to be designed with as much care as the toolkit or the product itself. Herd demonstrated this with the example of Puma, whose Mongolian Barbecue she felt to be innovative and useful in its use of actual materials (in-store) as part of the customisation process. This was let down though by the lack of any uniqueness to the sales procedure (a standard till receipt with no image of the shoe ordered), a number of days wait before a confirmation e-mail is received, and no indication of the exact date the shoes will be delivered. Puma have obviously spent a lot of time thinking about the customisation procedure, it is a shame it’s let down by what is essentially bad service.

It seems somehow appropriate that I should start this blog by writing from MCPC 2007, the Mass Customization and Personalization Conference, which is being held at the Stata Center at MIT. This is the fourth time the conference has been held, and it’s actually split into two parts; the first here in Boston is headlined Research and Innovation, whereas the second part in Montreal (which I won’t be attending) will concentrate on the business and services side of things.

I spent most of today in a pre-conference workshop discussing the MIT City Car concept, a project which is part of Professor William J. Mitchell’s Smart Cities Research Group. But I want to write about this in a future post, so I won’t go into any detail here. After some introductions, the conference proper started with an opening keynote by Joseph Pine.Although Pine didn’t invent the term ‘Mass Customization,’ (that credit goes to Stan Davis, who will speak here tomorrow), he introduced many people to the concept through his 1993 book “Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competition.” In his presentation today Pine talked about the past, present and future of mass customization, and began by showing how mass customised markets had emerged.

Traditionally markets were local, if you wanted something made, you visited a craftsperson, told them what you wanted, and they would make it as best their skill allowed. With industrial production, mass markets offered consumers a deal: you can have this product much cheaper than previously, but it will be exactly the same as every other product – the Henry Ford model. This began to break down with competition, and markets first became segmented, then focussed on niche consumer groups, and finally where we are today, with products mass customised for individual consumers. The notion that as production technologies have become more flexible, so markets have been able to offer more variety, has lead to the belief that mass customisation is just the latest manifestation of mass manufacturing. But Pine argued this is wrong. Variety is mass manufacturing’s last gasp. True customisation demands that you know who the customer is, rather than simply offer them a lot of choices.

Pine went on to talk about customer satisfaction, which he defined as “the difference between what a customer expects and what the customer perceives he gets.” This contrasts to customer sacrifice, which is “the difference between what a customer wants and what he settles for.” Reducing the sacrifice is the goal of mass customisation.

The second keynote speech was by Brennan Mulligan of Zazzle, who is also the guy who set up Timbuk 2 cycle bags. To be honest I didn’t find this talk so interesting, probably because to my mind the products Zazzle sells are derivative crap. I find what Ponoko and Threadless are doing to be much more interesting. Then again, Zazzle definitely shows just how far into the mainstream mass customisation has reached, although perhaps it also serves as a reminder of exactly what the mass market finds desirable.