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We recently attended a NESTA seminar about 3D printing and the potential applications of having 3D printers in the home. Having such printers within the home, could potentially cause a huge disruption to the manufacturing industry as the internet has disrupted traditional media.
For the uninitiated, 3D printing is using a similar-sized machine to a normal paper printer to print any usable object imaginable, such as cars or flutes, direct from a computer using 3D design software. We may have a future where everyone will use DIY to print all the objects in their homes. With Hewlett-Packard seemingly dipping into the 3D printer market it seems as though some big name brands are taking steps forward to prosper in such an environment.
In terms of research and planning, imagine online communities designing usable objects collaboratively, and the agency rapidly printing out these prototypes in time for co-creation workshops within the same week. This kind of rapid prototyping would be an even tighter-wound feedback loop, similar to the ‘launch and learn’ concept Seth Godin notes in his book Meatball Sundae.
Brands like Adidas, BMW, Timberland and Sony have been using 3D printers in-house for years, to rapidly produce prototypes. Yet the technology has not filtered through into the home environment, despite 3D printers often being the size of a normal office printer. When this happens, as Matt Mason the author of The Pirates Dilemma has noted “there will no longer be any boundaries between producer and consumer. While 3D printing has proven to be extremely useful in the research departments of brands, what will happen to Nike when kids start printing out Air Force 1s at the rate they illegally download music?”
There were three speakers at the seminar we went to, Adrian Bowyer of Reprap, Hadyn Insley of FabLab Manchester and Alice Taylor of Makieworld. Bowyer and his colleagues at the University of Bath have created low cost open source rapid prototyping system that is capable of producing its own parts and can therefore be replicated easily. A 3D printer that prints itself! It takes 2 days to copy itself. Replication means potential for exponential growth as the machines create other 3D printers. All the parts can be purchased for around £300. It uses Polylactic Acid, a polymer plastic, which can be synthesized using fermentation of corn starch, potentially meaning the materials for manufacturing could be grown in your back garden, adding an incredibly vibrant green to the manufacturing process of everyday objects. Bowyer finished by asking why if the CD pressing plant, the photographic dark room, and the printing press are sitting in everyone’s living rooms, then why not the factory?
Personal Manufacturing – Adrian Bowyer from NESTA UK on Vimeo.
Hadyn Insley then took his turn in addressing the audience. FabLab is a fully functional fabrication workshop which gives everyone in the local community of Manchester, from children to entrepreneurs and businesses, the capability to experiment with 3D printers and turn their ideas and concepts into real, usable objects. They are focused on making the tools for rapid digital prototyping available to the masses. The 5 steps towards this end are:
1) Equipment – providing 3D printers, they have a few that the local community can use for rapid prototyping.
2) Software – digital fabrication requires 3D design software, which is currently quite expensive.
3) People – providing training in using both the equipment and the software.
4) Facility – providing a physical community network.
5) Accessible – on Fridays and Saturdays, FabLab is open for the public to attend to create their own concepts.
Insley hoped that FabLab of Manchester would make 3D printing more accessible and affordable by creating a UK network of FabLabs.
The final speaker of the morning Alice Taylor , started her company intending to conceptually go from people making online avatars to 3D printing doll type toys, so that children could literally create themselves in toy form. Taylor didn’t stop there asking “rather than printing a dolls house why not print a dolls science lab?” At the moment a prototype that Taylor prints costs about £600 but this will certainly come down in relation to Moore’s law, as 3D printing gets cheaper. The finishes aren’t smooth at the moment, but the benefits include being eco, localism, less in shipping costs and being made by the user. She hopes to increase the green element to a degree where biodegradable objects are made and re-used by 3D printers. When asked “Won’t Mattel and the big toy companies just copy this?” Taylor replied of course they will as the internet has shown, but the point of differentiation is being different, doing it better and at a lower cost.
Personal Manufacturing – Alice Taylor from NESTA UK on Vimeo.
The Q&A began with a question about when HP will create their own home usable 3D printer. The panel answered that probably have already. The news that HP have bought a 3D Printing company called Startasys shows that yet the industry has been scared of open source for years considering it could potentially take away from their own manufacturing of products. It has been guessed that the home use of technology has been already delayed by about 4-5 years already.
Speaking about the distribution of this technology, the floodgates will open in good and bad ways, as an abundance of new objects are created, like the internet’s distribution of music, but the potential to reuse materials will prove useful. This prompted my question about the current materials used. The current high end 3D printers work with cartridge like technology but all the materials are solid and are then layered by the printer. All involved would like more eco-friendly material so that waste can be reused. With home 3D printing, the area of supply materials is still very open to debate.
Finally a point was made about the internet distribution of 3D printing designs could lead to professionally created digital models which could then be personalised at home, via tweaking the design with software. There is most certainly an opportunity here for big brands who specialise in manufacturing to become leaders in the electronic blueprints for 3D printers. All in all it was very interesting seminar, the result of which will certainly have a revolutionary impact on all types of manufacturing and industry. If you’d like to know more about The Emerging Economy of Factory at Home have a read of this fantastic paper.
A recent article in Marketing Week highlighted some of our most pertinent work for Honda. Our Honda Friends panel, which spans across Honda’s business sectors of cars, motorcycles and power equipment, has had 16, 428 surveys completed over the last 11 months. Typically 1, 000 of the 5, 498 Honda Friends respond within a day. We created the panel because Honda needed a way to rapidly test new ideas, creative, propositions, communications and promotions to drive sales. The feedback from the advocates that have joined the panel is at the heart of decision making at Honda, because they are their most devoted customers. This fundamental shift from unidirectional marketing is clearly gaining a greater mainstream pulling power, as the dialogue between customers and brands is becoming ever more open and authentic.
Our growing expertise in co-creation has buy-in at Honda at the highest levels, because our Honda Town Hall workshops treat customers as equals alongside stakeholders. While uptake of hybrid technology has increased over the past 10 years, awareness remains low, with misconceptions relating to the technology’s function and benefits as well as to its environmental association. The co-creation process developed the most relevant and compelling messages at the core of hybrid, that ‘Hybrid is the smart and normal choice, not environmental choice’ because of the direct interaction between customers and senior Honda staff. Honda have stated that they “want hybrid to be normalised.” The recently launched Jazz Hybrid will stake its claim in embodying this message and communications derived from co-creation as well as enter the approaching hybrid versus electric debate (which we will be eulogising about shortly). Honda have asked us to do at least 3 more Town Hall workshops in the coming months.
Involving customers in answering the business questions about how to drive Honda’s car sales has been central one of our biggest research programmes, Customer Clinics. Taking the stance that, ‘good customer service equal good sales,’ we developed an approach that re-invites customer to their dealerships and reviews every single element of the customer journey for sales and servicing, with underperforming D-Band dealerships. Within a year, 40 of the 57 dealerships that entered our Customer Clinic programme, have improved their performance. Honda have asked us to develop the programme a wider part of their UK dealership network. The focus of this new programme will be broadened to cover other areas such as: dealership communications, creative and & offer testing, and knowledge gathering about the brand, models, and competitors. It’s an opportunity to share knowledge between dealerships, as well as speak to more Honda customers up and down the country. Honda is currently ranked 2nd in the JD Power league for customer service.
Customer understanding has also played a key role in answering the business questions of Sony and AXA. Having never conducted any form of campaign evaluation, Sony didn’t know how customers and staff perceived their campaigns. Our evaluations of their recent point of sale campaigns, World Cup Trade-In and Back to School, give a holistic impression by taking in view points of customers, Sony Centre Managers and Sony Partners. We gave Sony the tools to understand what campaign messages, offers and design customers prefer and ability to measure how these campaigns affect staff engagement and any effects on sales and footfall. Sony are able to measure their success through our research. Similarly, our work with AXA has taken on the needs and desire of their customer’s journeys in regard to improving Sun Life Direct’s online services. With our guidance, AXA redesigned their services online. The changes made under the ‘redefining standards’ proposition centred on the viewpoint of the customer – it was redesigned by them.
We have helped Honda, AXA and Sony realise that these answers are only the beginning of the journey, that good research should directly link helping improve their service and products. We think that the future is no longer distant. It’s happening now, and research methodologies should reflect that, in producing actionable answers beyond insight. We’ll be exploring on this blog, in the coming months, how new types of data and disruptive technologies and trends will have significant business implications for manufacturing, household electronics, marketing and research and automotive industries. Keep walkin…
WaMLabs 