What are friends for?
Insights into Social Networks as a catalyst for new product definition
Media & Consumer Electronics | New Product Development
Situation
With the advent of web-based social networking, we are experiencing substantial changes in how we interact with each other. New patterns of behaviour are emerging and nowhere more dramatically than in the realm of friendship. A global electronics company wanted to investigate the driving forces behind the social networking applications in order to identify research opportunities, look for unmet user needs and, ultimately, define new product offerings.
Approach
ReD Associates conducted ethnographic studies in China and the UK. The studies were carried out together with the client, sharing the first-hand experiences of people curating and cultivating their friendships. We found, and spent time with, Networkers, i.e. heavy users of social networking applications, including Mobloggers, people using their high-end mobile phones to create and upload content. We also sought out Artists/Creators, people whose involvement in social networking applications evolves around content creation. To complete our research material we talked to people showing the same group affiliation and sharing experiences without the technology. We looked for changes in the structure of Friends of Benevolence vs. Friends of Utility, using classical models of friendship as inspiration.
Outcome
We identified remarkable changes, enabling us to broaden the operational definition of friendship as a consequence of social networking applications. This led to the identification of a vast number of unmet needs, which were distilled and presented as frameworks for further research and, eventually, product development.
With the advent of web-based social networking, we are experiencing substantial changes in how we interact with each other. New patterns of behaviour are emerging and nowhere more dramatically than in the realm of friendship. A global electronics company wanted to investigate the driving forces behind the social networking applications in order to identify research opportunities, look for unmet user needs and, ultimately, define new product offerings.
Approach
ReD Associates conducted ethnographic studies in China and the UK. The studies were carried out together with the client, sharing the first-hand experiences of people curating and cultivating their friendships. We found, and spent time with, Networkers, i.e. heavy users of social networking applications, including Mobloggers, people using their high-end mobile phones to create and upload content. We also sought out Artists/Creators, people whose involvement in social networking applications evolves around content creation. To complete our research material we talked to people showing the same group affiliation and sharing experiences without the technology. We looked for changes in the structure of Friends of Benevolence vs. Friends of Utility, using classical models of friendship as inspiration.
Outcome
We identified remarkable changes, enabling us to broaden the operational definition of friendship as a consequence of social networking applications. This led to the identification of a vast number of unmet needs, which were distilled and presented as frameworks for further research and, eventually, product development.
