Why co-creation is best done offline and how to do it right

Working co-creatively with consumers in a face-to-face environment also makes things happen faster. Solutions are sought and found quickly, without the long delays of waiting for online responses. Consumers learn faster too, so that the solutions that end up being built are actually very doable and practical.

As Robert Kennedy once said, “25% of people are against everything, all the time.” And it’s no different when working with consumers on potential market leading innovations. People don’t like change and often find it difficult to see the future benefits of a product idea. Working offline enables lots of gamification, visualisation of ideas and phototyping to create scenarios for a number of possible futures. This opens up consumers’ minds to what could be and it enables them to more easily envision a different kind of future.

Co-creation is often crowbarred into focus groups, with attendees asked to do exercises like draw their dream hotel room. Trying to do proper co-creation in such large groups though is like banging your head against a brick wall.

Any facilitator can tell you about umpteen focus groups they’ve been in where the atmosphere quickly descends into that of the political debate down the pub. Typically the one or two who shout loudest influence everyone’s opinion and most people feel too self-conscious to ideate, brainstorm, or even discuss an issue honestly. It’s also common for groups to veer off on some random tangent while the facilitator tries desperately to get them back on track.

Instead of this all-in wrestling match, offline co-creation sessions should take people one or two at a time, pairing them with a facilitator for up to three hours. There are several advantages to this face-to-face, one-to-one approach that allow people to work together towards a clear solution.

• People can’t hide like some do in focus groups, where it’s easy to become a passenger.
• The facilitator has the time and space to pick up on the tiny, physical signals of emotion and dig deep into a person’s thoughts and feelings to reach the truth.
• People feel like they’re being properly listened to and taken seriously as equal partners in the innovation process.
• This sense of equality gives them the confidence to come out of their shells and put in the hard graft necessary to successfully problem solve.

Whether it’s mood boards or written brand and product propositions, companies can sometimes focus on putting forward a solution that’s complete and nicely packaged up. Clients often spend hours on a single word or days refining a concept. This is not what will get people’s creative juices flowing. Consumers find paragraphs of description with a visual of the product idea way too dull and rigid to be inspiring.  It also does not give them permission to criticise, propose alternative solutions or to encourage them to think deeply about the matter at hand.

It’s best to keep the stimulus in a co-creation session basic, simple and easy to understand. By breaking down questions into smaller queries and ensuring that each visual only investigates one variable rather than an entire concept, consumers can process a vast amount of information. This may mean that you have quite a lot of stimulus – as much as 40 to 80 pieces. However, none of it needs to be fancy and slick. In fact, quite basic stimulus gives consumers permission to improve upon ideas and make them better. This would be very difficult, if not impossible, to manage online.

Consumers and facilitators have be free to play around with ideas, able to tear them down and put them back together like a set of children’s building blocks, or throw an idea away completely. It’s this kind of flexibility that’ll allows the co-creation process to really work and produce plenty of original, quality ideas.

Offline co-creation allows you this flexibility. For instance, with online co-creation it might take a while for it to become clear that you’re asking the wrong questions, or at least not asking them in the right way. Being in the same room as someone though, it’s quickly as plain as the nose on your face when the questions you’ve walked in with just aren’t getting to the heart of the matter, or are clearly just irrelevant.

Face-to-face co-creation avoids consumers’ genuine responses getting lost in the distance created by the Internet, or in the sea of opinion bandied around in a focus group. It provides a flexibility that means you can rework questions on the spot to address any surprising triggers shown by someone’s body language, tone of voice or attitude.

This room to manoeuvre means the facilitator and consumer can let the discussion off the leash, allowing it to go wherever it needs to and letting the consumer change their mind as they learn and process information. If your aim is to create innovative solutions that were previously unthought of then this loose leash is vital.