Wednesday, June 5, 2013

How can more people contribute to design solutions?

Procumer at Wikipedia:

"Marshall McLuhan and Barrington Nevitt suggested in their 1972 book Take Today, (p. 4) that with electric technology, the consumer would become a producer. In the 1980 book, The Third Wave, futurologist Alvin Toffler coined the term "prosumer" when he predicted that the role of producers and consumers would begin to blur and merge (even though he described it in his book Future Shock from 1970). Toffler envisioned a highly saturated marketplace as mass production of standardized products began to satisfy basic consumer demands. To continue growing profit, businesses would initiate a process of mass customization, that is the mass production of highly customized products.

However, to reach a high degree of customization, consumers would have to take part in the production process especially in specifying design requirements. In a sense, this is merely an extension or broadening of the kind of relationship that many affluent clients have had with professionals like architects for many decades"

Example of procumer projects:

http://www.nesta.org.uk/home1/assets/features/make_things_do_stuff

Related is also:

DIY
"Prosumerise" (i.e. the combined needs of the consumer, prosumer and enterprise)  (from Wikipedia)



1 comment:

cchatzop said...

Dear Sir/Madam,

there is a conference paper by Alexander Tsigkas at the Mass Customization & Personalization in 2009, Helsinki that speaks about procumer economy.

http://www.mckn.eu/wp-content/uploads/group-documents/1/1334927552-Paper1.3.pdf