Crowdsourced Product Design

Do we all remember when Ami Colé broke the rules of traditional product launch strategy last year and just ran their version of March Madness, the "Ami Colé Cup," letting their community vote on their favorite Lip Treatment Oil shades? Not only did they reach more than 700 daily votes, 20K+ site views, and, most importantly, insights that completely challenged their internal team's predictions (their team was betting on the Eggplant shade as the winner, while their community coined Brick Red the winner), but they also turned what is sometimes buried away as customer feedback for post-launch data analysis into product launch gold: guaranteed product-market fit before a single formula is mixed. Now, we talk endlessly about community and the value of it, but how many brands truly let their community drive product decisions? Ami Colé has been doing this since Diarrha Ndiaye was developing products in her Brooklyn apartment, and now they're a Sephora success story. So, I can't help but wonder: Why aren't more beauty brands embracing true crowdsourcing? Is the fear of losing creative control holding them back? Or do concerns about operational complexity loom too large? Or are they collectively stuck in traditional product development cycles? The data here is so clear: let your community lead, and they will show up. _ #beautyindustry #strategy #growth #disruption #beautybusiness

AI is making research more creative, collaborative—and honestly, just more fun. I learned so much from Joris van Gool and Peter Li on using AI-enhanced respondent feedback to generate new product designs. The folks SKIM aren’t just posturing 🦚they’re strides ahead in applying generative AI in market research. What did they do? 👥 Captured respondent input to shape image generation in real-time 🎨 Generated imagery on the fly based on those prompts 💻 Put those images generated into a MaxDiff to evaluate consumer-created designs (alongside imagery generated by other individuals and tested hundreds of alternatives) All without the cost, timelines, or constraints of a traditional creative process 🤯 The team leaned into the idea of crowd sourcing instead of just leaving a designer to choose the best illustration. And just like with our Apple Music Album example—where the expert picks didn’t align with what listeners actually loved—sometimes the real magic comes from the many, not the few. 🤓I also learned about ControlNets, fine-tuning, and how fast this space is evolving—when this paper was written, Recraft v3 was the best image generation model. Now, just a few months later, it’s GPT-4o. This isn’t just fun tech. It’s a better way to reduce creative bottlenecks and scale design innovation affordably. If you’re still waiting weeks for creative or relying on a narrow set of designer-curated concepts… you should reach out to these guys! Congrats on a stellar paper! 👏🏼 #mrx Sawtooth #sawtoothconf

Why Kickstarter? (Post 1 of 4 this week on Kickstarter) There are a number of reasons to use Kickstarter outside of the original crowdfunding aim. Here’s why, even after 9 years and 10 Kickstarters, we continue to do it: A) Test new ideas before making a big bet This is the biggest lever to de-risk a groundbreaking idea and our latest Kickstarter is a great example. We created a knife storage solution that’s truly innovative:   1 - Individually modular, allowing you to add storage for 1 knife at a time 2 - Held together with magnets like Magna-Tiles (our kids inspire us!) 3 - Enables the knives to float, also using magnets 4 - Washable, cut resistant, and antibacterial, unlike knife blocks, wooden trays, or anything on the market. But will people get it? We reached with phrases like “Airpod case for your knives” or the “Lego of knife storage” but now we KNOW that people get it and are on track for a December delivery with confidence. Don’t guess; get some data and de-risk. B) Get product feedback - and act on it We launched our last Kickstarter with design and engineering prototypes thoroughly tested but still a few open product questions. This allowed us to act on customer feedback during the campaign and the product going into production now is better for it. Don’t launch too far into production that you can’t take action on feedback! C) Get marketing / merchandising feedback There are so many questions that need answers before starting a marketing campaign on a  new product. What do we call the thing? How do we merchandise it? How many colors do we offer? How much of each should we make? Without the real-time feedback from Kickstarter backers - the rewards they backed, the add ons they chose, the questions they asked - we would be guessing. Now we know what customers directionally want, and how to explain it. We even added new sets mid-campaign based on feedback! D) Quickly build a vocal audience We want to hear from vocal customers, both happy and upset, as those strong feelings should drive our product development. The Kickstarter backer is an amazingly vocal customer, sharing projects and their opinion without incentive. This is precisely the audience you should target for any product and with the Kickstarter platform, it costs you $0 upfront. I don’t know of a cheaper, more effective way to reach this type of audience. Having said all that, you should not use kickstarter as a main revenue driver. Between the discounts and the fees (more on that later this week) your other sales channels are more profitable. That guy telling you how you’ll kill it on Kickstarter if you just buy his $99 course? Not going to happen. More posts coming this week: 8/4 - What we did right 8/5 - What we did wrong 8/6 - Advice to Creators - anyone invested in a company launching or even considering a Kickstarter campaign.