End-User Revolution

Want to make music?

2007-08-04T15:07:00.000-05:00

You want to make music? Traditional use of samplers and archive of samples doesn't feel intuitive or effective enough? I just came across scrambledhackz, and it has shown me a mind blowingly cool vision of how end-users might be able to participate in the music making process in the future. You must watch the video!!

Mass production

2006-09-17T23:43:00.000-05:00

One of the things touched on by the toolkit business model is the ability to mass produce the design put forth by end-users. So staying in the area of my main interest, software, I found a few interesting links (here, here, here and here) about mass production and software. At the moment I'm inclined to say that if history is any indication, software will inevitably follow the general craftsmanship to mass production trend. I am interested in looking into this further, though.... Narrowing the topic further I think I'll be looking into 3 main industries (automobile, building construction, and hardware circuit board) that benefitted greatly from mass production and see what the correlation software will have with them...

The toolkit model

2006-07-16T23:36:00.000-05:00

So I'm creeping up to the inevitable step of any thesis writing process: scoping. Joe has graciously volunteered to take a look at what I get to write about the topic, which is great since Joe has the expertise and a historical perpsective that I can only wish I had. =D

As I've been reading some of Eric Von Hipple's (the man when it comes to the topic of end-user innovation) work, especially his latest book titled "Democratizing Innovation" where he talks about the toolkit business model. That just might be the particular area I focus on. To quote from the text:

Present practice dictates that a high-quality toolkit for user innovation will have five important attributes. (1) It will enable users to carry out complete cycles of trial-and-error learning. (2) It will offer users a solution space that encompasses the designs they want to create. (3) It will be user friendly in the sense of being operable with little specialized training. (4) It will contain libraries of commonly used modules that users can incorporate into custom designs. (5) It will ensure that custom products and services designed by users will be producible on a manufacturer’s’ production equipment without modification by the manufacturer.

The obvious recent case studies would be lego and roomba, and more traditional DIY folks and car enthusiasts fit into this model as well. But I should narrow it down for my thesis to one industry... Probably software since I know most about it? Plus the rising sophistication of firmware is blurring the boundary between hardware and software which makes it quite powerful.... Then I would ask the question I'm most interested in. Can this be a mainstream activity rather than for a niche market gig (i.e. there's financial incentive to be had by firms)? If it isn't quite en masse, then would it be enough to force firms to change their business model? Any fortune tellers among our readers? =)

The question

2006-07-09T14:48:00.000-05:00

So I've been reading, thinking, and doing general brainstorming to get this party started. The question I'm honing in on is the following:

End-users are becoming more and more vocal in the market. They're also becoming increasingly savvy (think kids these days already versed in using GUIs, accessing the internet, etc...). They are progressively taking the form of producers, or at least collaboraters rather than staying as simply consumers. Some are considered nich market audiences, but through the power of the internet these audiences are grouping up stronger than ever. Can these folks affect the future of the producer/consumer market? Should corporations pay more attention?

I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Scion tC base spec - fueling the end-user revolution

2006-05-27T13:25:00.000-05:00

Car tuning probably has one of the longest history of end-user involvment, and it looks like with Toyota announcing the Scion tC base spec, they're going directly to the end-users. $15,000 for it, and it's clear that they cut corners in all the places end-users would have put in their 2 cents anyway. no rims, subpar interiors, etc... Yummy...

Is Sony desperate or are they really behind the end-user revolution?

2006-05-16T01:42:00.000-05:00

So I just came across an interesting phenemonon... While it's just one instance, I thought it was significant enough to mention. According to an article posted on Gamastutra on the latest on PS3, Sony is going to be allowing homebrew Linux games to be developed more easily for the PS3. This coming from a company who goes out of their way to make this hard to do for thier PSP is pretty interesting. Are they proactively taking the steps to prepare themselves to adopt to the wave of change and help fuel the end-user revolution or is this just a desperate attempt at implementing a solution that may eventually prove to be somewhat half-assed as a marketing stunt?

Fascination with making

2006-05-09T15:03:00.000-05:00

It seems that since the dawn of time we human beings have been making things. The distinction between producer and consumer or manufacturer and end-user are somewhat artificial. The nature provides us with ingredients, human beings somehow pick up on things and start to build stuff out of them. That seems like the essence of "end-user" involvement. The gap simply has become greater as the compleixty of manufacturing has grown ever more great. With recent efforts to close that gap, it seems to have tagged along that artificial titles of "manufacturer/producer" and "end-user/consumer".

Mick pointed me to an interesting bird called the bower bird which seems to be exceptionally interested in building things. Well, "exceptional" because it's very human-like. They build things to get chicks. ;) You should read it, it's quite fascinating. ^^

Why do we like to make things? What is our fascination? Is it the challenge? Is it the control? Is it the power? Is it the curiosity? Is it in the genes and evolution just happened to keep those willing to "innovate" alive longer until the economy as a whole was able to sustain those less willing to innovate? Does the fact that companies are providing tools to build things significant? If so, in what sense? Is it simply a nice-to-have for the end-uers willing to innovate? or is it a real booster for those who were less willing? What about the people who will build tools out of those tools to help others who are even less willing to build stuff (wow, what a sentence!)? I leave you with my hero Feynman's quote:

What I cannot create, I do not understand.

Lego Mindstorm Joins in on the End-User Revolution

2006-04-28T01:20:00.000-05:00

A lil late on the news, but it looks like Mindstorm is joining in on the end-user revolution! I also noticed an interesting conference called CustomerMade. The conference seems to have featured the international editor of OhMyNews. Although I read OhMyNews regularly, I never realized that it was run the way it was described... Interesting...

The medium of end-user involvement

2006-04-11T00:00:00.000-05:00

People have been sending me e-mails pertaining to a rather wide areas of end-user involvement in surrounding technologies. The categories range from how people have taken their physical surroundings (urban settings, agricultural environments, etc...) all the way to how users customized their "My Whatever" home page and adapted it to their needs. There also seems to be a great amount of interest in 3D printing technologies in relation to the self-manufacturing mode of things. It's certainly got the "cutting edge technology" character to it. There seem to be a new book coming out in the realm of end-user tailorable software systems as well.

I sense that there's something interesting about the amount of end-user involvement in the various technologies that we're surrounded by. Perhaps it's simply low cost of entry (i.e. skill and/or resources required), or perhaps it's the magnitude of the challenge itself... Maybe it's just sheer survival instinct? What makes you wanna take matters into your own hands?

Growing list of references

2006-04-09T18:34:00.000-05:00

The list you see on the sidebar is growing! I've come across great books that sound quite promising in terms of convering a lot of the things I'd like to look into. Jinsuk, a friend of mine at MIT, has sent me this article on iRobot "sanctioning" the end-users tinkering with the roomba. I think the subject of both "sanctioned" end-user innovation and "unsanctioned" end-user innovation may be an interesting area to cover!

Right now I'm tempted to say that the end-users involved in both the "sanctioned" and "non-sanctioned" hacking activities belong to the early-adopter category. Primarily because it is non-trivial to engage in end-user innovation for these high-tech toys. Regardless, I think there may be some slippery slope creation that can lure others in when manufacturers provide tools to make the job somewhat simpler. If that is indeed the case, then it seems logical to say that unless a large population of early-adopting hackers will work on unsanctioned hacking activities because they give them a high of "coolness" (cuz you're going against the grain and potentially sticking it to the "man"), "sanctioned" hacking will just help to grow the population of hackers (at the cost of the manufacturer actually having to spend some amount of effort, of course). I suppose if the cost-benefit analysis yields convincing argument for doing this, the manufacturer will do it, but otherwise they'll either just look the other way or come down hard and stomp on them. Being the red-blooded guy that I am I may be quick to think that it is "evil" to stomp on such activities, but I wonder if there are good arguments from the other side of the fence....

Gonna get to the bottom of this

2006-04-08T17:28:00.000-05:00

So I'm finally starting to get really serious about my MBA indepdendent studies thesis. That's the last thing I need to do to be done with my MBA. ^^; I've entertained various topics in the past, one of which was going to be about the future of the music industry. Then a great book on the topic of the future of music was published by Gerd (who was a professor of mine at Berklee Extension School) and David Kusek. So I scrapped that idea. Now I have another topic I'm fascinated in and would like to take this opportunity to learn more about. To keep me motivated and to also serve as a place where I quickly jot down my findings on the topic I'm starting a blog. Hopefully this will allow me to interact with experts in the field that would like to educate this humble student as well. =)

The topic is about the "End-User Revolution". What exactly am I interested in? Well, when I look at the trend in which technology has been introduced to the market, it seems like it started off as being all about the technology itself. Lots of cool inventions that allowed people to do things that were never before imagined possible. But, things were centered around the system in which the technology did its magic. What you saw was what you got, and you just kinda had to bear with it. Then the industry started to study how human beings can more effectively use tools. It seems like various industrial design efforts, ergnomics, etc... were all about this. Then there were also notions such as market research, usability study techniques and other related user research that all basically gave more focus on how the users interacted with technology. This is where we throw in the buzz words such as user-centered design, etc... I want to cover that spectrum of history along with a survey of current state of research into the subject of end-user involvement in innovation. I would then wrap up with a conjecture for the future.

As I begin to gather my resources, my current hypothesis is that the industry will have to once again make a leap, but this time to provide end users with a much greater power to create their own experience, which makes the model not simply user-centric, but something much more flexible. It goes without saying that there is a big community of hackers and DIY folks that have taken this to their own hands, but I'm talking about it becoming adopted at a more full-blown mainstream level. I see gilmmers of the potential for this happening, but I could be wrong, of course. =) That's what I'm trying to find out. I'm also thinking that I need to cover quite a bit about the notion of "paradigm shifts" and how it relates to the industry as well as the market.

To start, I'm putting together a list of all the books I'm going to have to read (or re-read even if I had read it previously) on the sidebar. If you believe there are other books I should look into, please lemme know! Magazine articles and other forms of references are welcome, too! I'm hoping to be done with the thesis by the end of the year 2006 (December)~ Alright, let's start the journey!