Shareable is a nonprofit online magazine dedicated to promoting sharing as an empowering lifestyle and effective social change strategy. We engage in research and promotion of innovations that help citizens share as part of our work. With our partner Latitude Research, we recently launched a survey on the new sharing economy.
We hope to discuss the results of the survey at the SXSW Interactive conference next March in a panel entitled, The New Sharing Economy, and identify the obstacles and opportunities to creating a way of life based on sharing supported by innovative businesses.
Acceptance of our panel counts partly on popular support in a voting system managed by SXSW’s PanelPicker system. If you support our cause, please vote for our panel at this link (persevere dear friend, you will have to register to vote!):
And share the below message on your social media of choice (will fit in a Twitter update):
Please vote for Shareable’s SXSW panel on The Sharing Economy: http://bit.ly/bq9rV5 Panel will share info to help sharing startups grow.
I hope you’ll support this important work. We believe that sharing is one of the best ways to enjoy life and overcome the economic and environmental challenges we face.
Here’s the esteemed panelists that will be joining me at SXSW:
Micki Krimmel, founder and CEO of Neighborgoods.net, a service that enables neighbors to share their stuff.
John Zimmer, co-founder and COO of Zimride.com, a leading ridesharing service.
Rachel Botsman, author of “What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption” and a consultant in the sharing industry.
Aaron Freed, founder and CEO of Divvy.com, a service that allows you to create your own sharing service for just about anything including houses, planes, cars, and much more.
Kim Gaskins, Director of Content Development at Latitude Research and producer of the first ever (we think) Sharing Industry Survey.
Header image courtesy of alossix, (cc) some rights reserved.
Download a PDF summary of “The Interactive Future of Food” study findings here.
This week, Latitude and Shareable.net have been exploring topics related to food–community-building around food, local, more sustainable systems for food production and distribution, ways to improve our experiences in food shopping environments, and technology solutions for making desired information more accessible to us at critical decision-making moments (such as while shopping for groceries).
Shareable and Latitude jointly conducted an idea generation study, using the power of collectivity creativity (“the wisdom of many”) to envision solutions for the future of food. Ultimately, each participant told us a story about a time they desired more information while food shopping, and then suggested a technology solution which might have solved this dilemma. Our three installments to date identified the main themes that emerged from the study–but not all responses fit tightly into those themes. In some cases, participants stretched them into new territory, truly thinking outside the box.
Below is a selection of “outliers” straight from participants mouths’ (or keyboards): potential solutions offered to address the various information gaps which people currently experience while making real-time decisions about food in store environments. They are non-representative good ideas that we thought were worth recognizing as ahead-of-the-curve–not to mention, potential food-for-thought for forward-thinking retailers.
Local community
Food co-ops and many farmer’s markets already utilize the internet to give farmers more specific information about customer demand (less waste). The store of the next generation will look like a combination of the local farmer’s market and the food cooperative owned locally by the community. It will not only be a place to buy food, but a place to connect with your local community in real ways. –Male, Age 36, (no city provided)
Physical navigation
A simple map with all the items the store carries–as a touch screen on the carts and baskets and at the entrance would be great, or a PDA wifi in-store map or mobile Web site. And an online service of the same nature for pre-shopping planning. –Male, Age 53, Gloucester, MA
Inventory and lists
Have a digital display with the restock date–then tie it to a discount coupon (either hard copy or via SMS short code). –Female, Age 40, San Francisco, CA
Install RFID/barcode scanners, weight sensors in cupboards and the fridge; wire them all up to a Web server running some sort of inventory software that can serve XML feeds of my current home inventory to my phone. –Male, Age 33, Milford, CT
Comparison and personalized convenience
Give me an augmented reality device which I can hold up in front of an item on a shelf and it will overlay apples-to-apples comparisons of that item against those offered at my default stores as well as any in the area offering same item. And, ideally, it would use natural language. “No, don’t get that here. It’s cheaper at XYZ and you’re going there next anyways to also buy ABC and DEF.” –Male, Age 46, Cleveland, OH
Recommendation services
An ingredient “anagrammer”–an app that would tell me various recipes I could make using the ingredients I currently own (with the addition of a few store purchases). It could dynamically suggest recipes and ingredients I might like based on my current ingredients, past ratings and personal preferences. –Female, Age 25, Cambridge, MA
Latitude is an international research consultancy exploring how Web technologies can enhance human experiences; our people-driven research approach unites generative, media-based methods with robust quantitative analysis to identify future opportunities for Web-based innovation. Latitude 42s are a series of open innovation studies covering diverse topics, unified by a common digital thread, which address everyday problems of great personal and societal relevance. Visit life-connected.com for other 42s, or email Neela Sakaria (nsakaria@latd.com) to learn more about working with Latitude.
Header image courtesy of scobleizer’s flickr, (cc) some rights reserved.
This week, we began publishing results for our open innovation study (in conjunction with Shareable.net), “The Interactive Future of Food.” We’re posting one topic per day, revealing study results, to the homepage of Shareable.net. We encourage you to jump into the discussion there!
You can also download a PDF summary of “The Interactive Future of Food” study findings here.
We want to thank all of our participants who contributed such rich, thoughtful narratives about their own food and food-purchasing experiences. (“The Interactive Future of Food” is a narrative analysis study.) Their participation pushed us over our goal, and we’re happy to say that Latitude recently donated $500 to The Hunger Project (a global non-profit committed to the sustainable end of world hunger), as a result of their time and creativity. Sincere thanks for all the valuable contributions!
Below is an interactive data visualization containing some demographic and basic technology profiling information (general location, age, gender, smartphone usage, tech adoption, and referral source) about our US study participants. (See further down the page for a world map visualization.)
To view the visualization at full size, click here.
To view a world map visualization of all participants across the globe who participated in “The Interactive Future of Food,” click here.
Latitude is an international research consultancy exploring how Web technologies can enhance human experiences; our people-driven research approach unites generative, media-based methods with robust quantitative analysis to identify future opportunities for Web-based innovation. Latitude’s 42s are a series of open innovation studies covering diverse topics, unified by a common digital thread, which address everyday problems of great personal and societal relevance. Explore life-connected.com for other 42s, or email Neela Sakaria (nsakaria@latd.com) to learn more about working with Latitude.
Header image courtesy of vintage85′s flickr, (cc) some rights reserved.
Summary of findings for “The Interactive Future of Food” study available as a PDF download here.
A few weeks ago, Latitude and Shareable co-launched an innovation study around information access and decision-making in context—as related to food and food-purchasing in store environments.
If we could easily get the information we need while wandering the aisles of Stop ‘n Shop or while weaving between produce piles at our local farmer’s market, we might ultimately eat healthier meals, distinguish between brands with a sustainability bent and those without (making quite a difference to the environment, en masse), and have more positive experiences in the retail spaces that are integral to our everyday lives.
The study asked each participant to relay a personal narrative about a specific time they desired more information while food-shopping and to suggest a technology solution which might’ve improved their experience. Latitude then developed a reliable coding scheme to pick out and quantify specific trends (such as information need categories, information-seeking behaviors, and proposed solution attributes) in participants’ free-form, personal narratives.
Recently, Latitude donated $500 to The Hunger Project, a global non-profit committed to the sustainable end of world hunger, on behalf of those who contributed such rich, thoughtful narratives to “The Interactive Future of Food” study. Thanks to all who participated!
To learn more about “The Interactive Future of Food,” please download our 2-page PDF here which summarizes the study findings.
Marina Miloslavsky is a senior analyst at Latitude, and the lead on “The Interactive Future of Food” study. You can email her here and follow her author feed here.
Click here to download a 2-page PDF summary of study findings.
Harnessing the rich detail, creativity, and individual relevance of personal narratives, Shareable and Latitude Research recently co-launched an innovation study to explore food information needs, information accessibility in decision-making contexts (e.g. while food shopping), and technology solutions for the future of food and offline purchasing in general. The study (led by senior analyst Marina Miloslavsky) asked participants to tell a story about a time when they needed more information while food-shopping, and to suggest a technology solution which might have addressed their needs.
Currently, we live in a world where we understand that any bit of information we require most likely already exists somewhere. Today’s information woes relate to access, not the existence of information. More specifically, access to information at particular times and in certain contexts becomes increasingly important because we know it’s already possible through mobile and real-time technologies; it’s just not being applied to some everyday scenarios. However, there are instances when having more information would easily change our decisions and behaviors. If we could use new technologies to access all of the food information we desired while shopping for groceries, we’d likely be healthier, happier in our environments, and more sustainable as a society.
Set the scene. We want to feel like we’re really there with you.
“I’m usually not a thorough person. I’m an impulse buyer at heart. But lately I’ve been approaching my food shopping with the background research and patience of a 50-year old man looking for a car for his youngest daughter.
I pick up each brand and study the packaging. Where the heck is this chicken raised? I search labels, sometimes for 15 seconds until I hit on a locality. One says Pennsylvania. That’s pretty close. But then I read closer and see that the distributor is located in Pennsylvania. Does that mean it’s being distributed from Pennsylvania, or just that their computer systems running the complex process of shipping chicken all over the country are located in Pennsylvania? I take note of each location and then set in on my next information criteria. What are it’s almost-organic or all-organic qualifications? …”
Excerpt from participant submission, “The Interactive Future of Food”
Current Information Demand: Background Facts + Food in Physical Space
In the context of food-shopping, more than half of participants (56%) expressed a primary information need relating to “background” product information (such as health, food origins, organic, farming practices, food safety or ingredients), while 31% required information more “logistical” in nature (location in store, price, or inventory).
With new awareness of sustainability issues at the level of personal decision-making and Web resources to make these processes more transparent to the public, it’s not surprising that food origins emerges as the single most commonly expressed information need. (Check out Sourcemap, a tool for researching and optimizing the supply chains behind everyday products, and LocalHarvest and SharedHarvest to find sustainably grown food in your area).
Participants’ expressed information needs by category. In cases where participants expressed more than one type of information need, a “primary need” was coded to reflect prioritization by the participant. (n=93)
The second most “in-demand” category of information related to navigating one’s immediate physical environment–rooted in the universally relatable (and frustrating) experience of not being able to locate something you need in a store. When we stop to think about it, connected culture dictates that, just as we should be able to wiki clear-cut “cage-free” standards suddenly from our smartphones, shouldn’t we be able to “Google Map” our way around grocery store aisles? Mobile technologies have empowered decision-making processes and blurred the line between physical and virtual information needs–by responding in real-time, anywhere we require answers.
Information Scarcity: Credibility and Context
As it happens, people often aren’t getting the answers they need. Among the participants who didn’t have their information needs resolved at all, a majority (59%) ultimately made purchases regardless–and 1 in 5 people explicitly mentioned that this was a recurring experience. In addition to an accessibility issue (simply getting the information we need where we are, when we need it–we’ll explore the technology solutions that participants generated in tomorrow’s post), one possibility is that people simply don’t know where to locate trustworthy information.
“What is a transfat? Why don’t I want it in my crackers? How do I recognize products that are bad for me? Most people want to eat healthily, they just don’t necessarily know how, and supermarkets don’t actively help.”
Excerpt from participant submission, “The Interactive Future of Food”
For example, only 14% of participants said they would have liked to receive background product information from the product’s supplier; conversely, 51% said they’d like to hear this type of information from stores (response options were not mutually exclusive)–indicating a possible opportunity for stores to alleviate information-frustration by building out user tools and extending this root sense of trust. After all, purchasers are increasingly information-autonomous, and “Web 2.0″ philosophy rewards businesses which facilitate information transparency and accessibility. The integration of social information streams presents another avenue for connecting individuals to trusted information, as today’s benchmark for unbiased information–especially consumer-related information–becomes the consensus of the social aggregate.
Why Isn’t There an App for That?
What’s clear is that no matter what type of information people required in trying to make informed purchases, the solution was often perceived to be a mobile one. In fact, 3 in 10 participants (6 times the number of people who actually used smartphones while shopping!) suggested mobile solutions to their own information dilemmas.
It didn’t matter whether I wanted to know if the store’s tomatoes were locally grown, if I wanted a price comparison with other stores in a 5-mile radius, if I wanted credible standards for “organic,” or if I just needed to track down this store’s tabouli: mobile was just as likely to be perceived as the answer to one information need as another–and by people who aren’t currently smartphone users in this context. Mobile has become an integrated solution for informed, real-time decision-making–an expected offering–rather than simply a platform for accessing superfluous, “nice-to-know” information.
In tomorrow’s post, we’ll take an in-depth look at the common solution attributes that participants generated in solving their varied information challenges.
Latitude recently donated $500 to The Hunger Project, a global non-profit committed to the sustainable end of world hunger, on behalf of the individuals who contributed their time and thoughtful narratives to “The Interactive Future of Food.”
An alternate version of this entry has been cross-posted to Shareable.
Latitude is an international research consultancy exploring how Web technologies can enhance human experiences; our people-driven research approach unites generative, media-based methods with robust quantitative analysis to identify future opportunities for Web-based innovation. Latitude’s 42s are a series of open innovation studies covering diverse topics, unified by a common digital thread, which address everyday problems of great personal and societal relevance. Visit life-connected.com for other 42s, or email Neela Sakaria (nsakaria@latd.com) to learn more about working with Latitude.
Header image courtesy of wolf_359′s flickr, (cc) some rights reserved.
Today’s cartoon is inspired by our Latitude/ReadWriteWeb open innovation study on kids & Web technology. Click here to participate in the study. (You can read more about Latitude’s open innovation privacy policy here.)
Cartoon by Jessica Reinis.
Jessica is an analyst for Latitude Research with proclivities for creative doodling and human-centric technology projections. She is the leading analyst on the current Latitude 42, an innovation study on Web technology featuring children ages 12 and under (read more on this study). Currently, her other focus areas include digital content access and new payment models, as well as next-gen advertising.
The Latitude team is currently on its way to the 2010 International CES in Las Vegas, where we’ll be launching an on-site, team-based idea generation contest to critique a selection of this year’s smartphone offerings.
Our CTO, Dan Hemmerly-Brown (dbrown@latd.com), breaks down the competition and the voting process (from Boston’s Logan Airport, en route to CES), and describes what the winners will get–aside from due credit for brilliant, outside-of-the-box thinking, of course.
Given the steady success of iPhones and the recent Android explosion, how can Nokia and Blackberry plan to stay ahead?
We’re asking teams to collaborate on designated Facebook pages, propose concepts for improving upon the devices they review (with regard to hardware, software/UI, apps integration, or all of the above)–and to get creative in the process.
For more information, check out the full details here.
Current participants and those wishing to join the contest (only a couple spots left!) can email innovation@latd.com or text message Dan, on-site at CES, at 978-810-5034.
Team Pages on Facebook
Beat the Veep: Android
Beat the Veep: BlackBerry
Beat the Veep: Nokia
Header image courtesy of deapeajay’s flickr, (cc) some rights reserved.
A recent article in the WSJ showcased a new variety of children’s construction toys called Überstix. They don’t seem much different than traditional Legos, really. (Goodness, they’re certainly nothing like David Merrill’s Siftables–”toy blocks that think” from MIT’s Media Lab).
Überstix do exhibit the value of systems thinking, which is mirrored in some of the Web’s most successful developments today. (We like Überstix as an example because they’re so very tangible.)
Here’s what they look like:
Überstix can connect with… paper clips, cups, water bottles and popsicle sticks. When they are joined with these items, they can be transformed into boats that actually float, birds with wings that flap, and other play things.
“I wanted to design a system that was more functional, that worked after it was built and that was accessible to children of all backgrounds,” says [Überstix creator] Mr. Scarborough.
Posterous is a blogging platform that allows users to publish via e-mail or Web. It’s made rapid developments this year, updating frequently about a plethora of features, including many ease-of-use integrations with other popular social sites (such as the ability to export data into Posterous for users who want to make a seamless switchover from alternate blogging platforms).
Earlier this year, Posterous co-founder Garry Tan told Latitude:
“There are 2 billion people on the Internet, but only 200 million of them blog–that statistic is incredible. I think it’s largely a failure of the services out there to cater to normal people; they cater to web-savvy, early adopters. We begin to solve this problem by being easier.“
In the way that “Überstix products are engineered to mate with all major build systems, i.e. Lego, KNeX, Erector, Zoobs, Zome, etc… so kids can integrate parts they may already have,” Posterous develops to work with users’ pre-existing service adoption and shared content needs.
This type of fluid integration with complimentary (and competitior) platforms renders services like Posterous insistently relevant and difficult for users not to adopt.
In recent studies on the nature of innovation, Latitude found that, of successful innovations across a variety of industries, more than 75% were not entirely new products or services–rather, these innovations recombined existing offerings in novel ways, or repurposed them creatively to reach new niche communities.
As digital connectivity increases, innovating apart–without “integrating parts [users] already have”–seems to present a much greater challenge to a variety of industries (not just Web technology), and for good reason.
Header image courtesy of kwl’s flickr, (cc) some rights reserved.
Innovation Research via Real-World Problem-Solving
To commemorate the Internet’s 40th anniversary, DARPA, the central research and development organization for the US Department of Defense, organized a network challenge in the spirit of serious games to study understand teams’ innovative use of social networking (and the spread of information within these networks), as well as the team-defined incentivisation schemes (monetary or otherwise) implemented to encourage network participation–in an actual problem-solving scenario.
The DARPA Network Challenge [is] a competition that will explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team-building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems.
The challenge is to be the first to submit the locations of 10 moored, 8-foot, red, weather balloons at 10 fixed locations in the continental United States. The balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roads.
MIT Wins in Record Little Time
The challenge began on Saturday, December 5th, and would end when the first participants correctly submitted the location of all 10 balloons). A team from MIT was proclaimed winner fewer than 9 hours after the start of the competition. (The team members were Professor Sandy Pentland, Manuel Cebrian, Anmol Madan, Galen Pickard, Riley Crane, Wei Pan; the final standings for all teams are available here).
MIT would clearly have a vast network to draw from–and, apparently, had been recruiting spotters for some time. They leveraged Twitter and Facebook for viral reporting of balloon sightings, but the difficulty came in “separating the good reports from bogus ones.” (ref: John Dodge’s coverage).
To this task, MIT obscurely replied (pre-challenge): “We will use sophisticated algorithms from the field of network science and complex systems theories along with machine learning algorithms to identify valid submissions.”
MIT’s Network Incentivisation Scheme
DARPA announced that they would award $40,000 to the winning team.
Using click-through tracking for personalized invite links (ex. http://balloon.media.mit.edu/latituderesearch), MIT devised that they’d give $2000 to each person who found a balloon, $1000 to the person who invited them, $500 to the person who invited that person, and $250 to the person who invited that person. (MIT donated the rest of the prize money–a minimum of $12,500 in this scenario–to charity.)
(Note that the graphic above doesn’t account for balloon findings that took fewer than 3–the maximum–network “iterations.” More importantly, it doesn’t depict the far-reaching effects of each individual who did not receive money in the end (“dead ends”), as a central node in his own network while the search was ongoing–i.e. individuals who received $0, and invited people who received $0, still took part in the balloon search to potential relevance.)
This is a particularly compelling monetary structure because one perceives his chances of receiving some prize money as exponentially increased with relation to the number of people he himself activates–and one’s chances are substantially increased, given how removed the each successful searcher can be from oneself. (i.e. I only need invite “Friend A”–who may then invite her “Friend B” who may then invite his Friend “C” who may find the balloon–to receive an award). Thus, the benefit of engaging more people is, well–that much more beneficial to me.
Motivation is such a fickle (and powerful thing). I’m curious what other schemes–from a psychological or engagement standpoint–might’ve occurred to others for use in this scenario. Any thoughts?
Header image courtesy of hajime7′s flickr, (cc) some rights reserved; image in network graphic courtesy of hector-lazo’s flickr, (cc) some rights reserved.
One Great Limitation, One Great Freedom–and a Wide Web.
“[The founders of the Internet] had one great limitation and one great freedom as they tried to conceive of a global network.
The limitation was that they didn’t have any money.
But they had an amazing freedom, which was they didn’t have to make any money from it. It’s folks getting together to do something for fun, rather than because they were told to, or because they were expecting to make a mint off of it.
That ethos led to a network architecture, a structure that was unlike other digital networks then or since.”
The good-will community “architecture” that the Internet arose from–and which the latter continues to affirm in new ways–mirrors the actual network architecture of the Internet.
“The system [of Internet addressing and routing actually] relies on kindness and trust… how packets move around the Internet, sometimes in as many as 25 or 30 hops, with the intervening entities that are passing the data around having no particular contractual or legal obligation to the original sender, or to the receiver.”
Rachel Botsman discussed the notion of “indirect reciprocity” with respect to how individuals were interacting with the Stranger Exchange–as well as collaborative networks and sharing communities at large.
Interestingly, the early “members” of the Stranger Exchange seem to be participating for similar intrinsic motivations that are fueling the open peer-to-peer movements such as Flickr, Wikipedia, BitTorrent, BePress and so on.
For these systems to keep flourishing, people need to “give before they get,” a dynamic that is built on a new kind of trust, trust in people you don’t know or are not even friends with.
This seems to be the organic social system that grew up from Yochai Benkler’s apt accentuation of the social-psychological and intrinsic motivations of individuals comprising peer-to-peer networks–essentially, a new kind of social contract, ever-so-slightly colored “karma.”
What Will the Next Generation of Shared Service Platforms Look Like?
This psychology of sharing, of internalized accountability, and of “indirect reciprocity” underlies new systems of collaborating, innovating, and funding–as peer-based networks and crowdsourcing’s varied applications.
It encourages–first, it makes possible–home-grown, person-to-person shared service platforms. Netflix and Zipcar are superb, forward-thinking models, advocating sharing and anytime-accessibility over ownership–but one has to wonder if the next iteration of shared service models, enabled by new social-psychological understandings, won’t look something a little more like this:
Craigslist's RideShare: Hitchhiking makes a comeback.
CouchSurfing.org: "Participate in Creating a Better World, One Couch at a Time."
Post inspired by Jonathan Zittrain’s TED Talk, “The Web as Random Acts of Kindness”
Posterous
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