Jim Brown

What I Learned: New Product Development in Second Life
July 28, 2008

What I learned this week ... came from putting a few things together that I have been reading about Second Life www.secondlife.com and related social networking / social media. I am not an expert here, but I have had a number of experiences with virtualizing reality so this caught my eye. What got me thinking came from an article I read that was an article on using second life as an alternative way to conduct meetings and conferences on a newsletter called PresentationXpert. The article described her newbie experience with Second Life, and I started thinking  how will companies leverage virtual communities to build better products? There will be some really interesting value created here at some point. It may not be mainstream tomorrow, but I believe it is coming.

How are Virtual Worlds being Used?
Virtualization and gaming technologies are being used in a lot of ways. The gaming industry has taken things further than others in regards to simulating a life-like experience. In some cases this is to experience a life very different than our own (space games, war games, etc.) and other times it's simulating a life very much like our own (sports games). In business, what seems to catch the eye is simulating the real world. I worked with a company that creates virtual scenarios for sales training, where participants interact with virtual receptionists and sales prospects to learn how to interact effectively. Instead of canned scenarios, the company enabled avatars (more detail on avatars here, but think of a virtual "you" on the screen that you control and with which you interact with others.) This way, the person you were interacting with in training was a real person (in this case a trainer) that could react as a human does, not a machine simulating a human. The key here is to make the scenario as real as possible, in a highly replicable and inexpensive fashion. It's a pretty compelling way to make training more interesting, more affordable - and more realistic.

Second Life is the same in many ways. From the brief experiences I have had and what I have read, people have recreated (or created) virtual scenarios like the above. Some are more like our own world (such as houses, nightclubs, etc.) and some are more like a fantasy game. I think some of the fun in Second Life can be living a fantasy life in a realistic setting, but that is not the direction I am taking this. The article that I read describes a conference center in Second Life called Virtualis, by Corporate Planners Unlimited. According to the article, in this conference center you can have meetings, conferences, parties, etc. in "both traditional and outrageously creative meeting places." She describes a "visit" starting with meeting outside the facility and a tour. It describes watching a PowerPoint presentation while sitting in a virtual conference room. It goes on to talk about the social interaction possible around coffee breaks and dinner, even virtual dancing. At that point, I have to admit, I lose interest from a business perspective. I have had many great coffee conversations, but I went to get coffee because of a physical need (too much PowerPoint, most likely). I can imagine watching a presentation, asking questions, and hearing answers as if at a live conference. I have a hard time envisioning those random encounters and side discussions at a conference that occur because you are in the same place at the same time. But I am over 40, so maybe I just don't get it. But you get the idea.

How is Virtualization being used in Design?
Design collaboration, unlike a virtual coffee break, I get. How many times have you been on the phone with someone and you tried to describe something physical and you want to just reach through the phone and say "it looks like this!" That is where we are going, and it is happening with higher clarity, easier interaction, and more 3D all of the time. For more, this post on Dassault or this one on 3dswym might be useful. So I think most of us get this.

So Who Needs an Avatar to Develop Products?
Developing products is hard, and it is expensive. Here are some of my thoughts on how to "mash up" what we know in new product development (NPD) and what we are learning about virtualization.

• Design is Visual - Whether it is mechanical design, electrical design (represented in schematics or flow diagrams), graphic design, or most other forms I can think of we interact with designs visually. As humans, seeing things is incredibly important. In a virtual world, this visual interaction can be combined with chat (live or text) and manipulation of the object. It is not the same as picking it up and holding it, but maybe some of the inexpensive prototyping equipment will help with that (like 3D printing). And I know there are people working on simulating co-manipulation of an object and touch in the virtual world, but that is a ways off.
• NPD is Social - Developing new products is a social affair, of sorts. PLM and NPD philosophies are expanding the product development and design process to more people (suppliers, customers, Purchasing, Quality, Manufacturing, etc.) earlier in the process. Stage-gate reviews involve more feedback from people impacted "downstream" of design. Decisions need to be made based on group input and consensus is often critical, and social interaction is key to that. But cost concerns  and globalization make it hard to put all of these people in the same room at the same time. Imagine having the people there to interact real-time, with the right data, and the right virtual design in place. Maybe not as good as having everybody together, but as before - it will become more real over time, and it will be easier and less expensive to "get everybody in the same room" to make a decision.

• Customer Interaction is Critical - Beyond internal teams, what about the customers? Wouldn't it be great to run all of your focus groups and test marketing in the virtual world? Capturing the "voice of the customer" (VOC) is well established in NPD, both early and later in the design process. Why not do that in Second Life (or some other virtual environment)? Why not have you customers help design the product or have a contest on the Internet, and let the customers decide what you should build? These are all approaches companies are exploring. I don't believe it replaces the real world, and it's not as easy as asking your customers what they want. You have to learn from customer behavior in addition to opinion. For example, people walking by a virtual fast food restaurant may pass by and choose a virtual salad for lunch. But walking by the smell of french fries cooking is harder to pass up in real life than in Second Life. People don't always do what they say they will do, or what they believe they will do, until it comes time. But the more real the virtual world becomes (who knows, e-scratch-and-sniff for french fry smell over the Internet?) the better this will be. The point isn't how to do it, the point is the importance of doing it and that virtual communities will likely play a large role.

The Net of my Thinking?
OK, enough of my rambling. There is a lot more to be said, but that is enough for now. What I believe, after thinking about this, is that we all have a lot more thinking to do. I need to do some research to educate myself more, and I believe most companies need to do the same. The potential is too huge to miss. On the other hand, this isn't something like "centralize your product data" or "use cross-functional product development teams" that are easy to understand, have proven their worth in NPD, and are (relatively) straight forward to implement. There is a lot of exploration, experimentation, and learning to do here. But it promises to be an interesting journey.

So those are my thoughts, clearly this isn't the last we should talk about this I hope you found it interesting. Let me know what you think, or if  you are doing anything in this area. I will share more from a conversation I had with Accept Software in a coming "One to One" post that furthered some of my thinking in this area.

Posted by Jim Brown on July 28, 2008 | Comments (1)