What I Learned: New Product Development in Second Life

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.