4 reasons why you should co-create

We’ve already written an article about ‘the power of co-creation’ today we’ll summarize it in 4 reasons why you should co-create. This article is about co-creation between a company and its stakeholders including the end-user. Next week we’ll discuss another form of co-creation, stay tuned for that. But for now, if you’re still not sure why you should co-create or if you’re trying to convince your manager, please continue reading.

1. Be relevant in order to be successful

All we want for our innovative product is to successfully launch and in order to do that it needs to be relevant for the context of the user. To gain insights in what is and what isn’t relevant you should observe the behavior of your soon to be users and detect needs within the area in which you want to innovate.

Incorporate them in the ideation phase, detect underlying reasons why they do the things they do. Try to figure out why they would want to use a certain product/app/website/service. Gain valuable insights on which you can start building your concept. By doing that you create empathy for your user and you can easily see yourself in his environment.

2. Create a marketing advantage

The value proposition of your product will become clear while co-creating. Instead of guessing how you should communicate about the product and which features you should highlight, you know perfectly well what your user needs and why he would buy your product or use your app/website/service.

You’ll be able to detect via which channels you should communicate. But make sure to test your message in advance, this can be done via AB-testing with your target audience. This will save you from doing a lot of failed marketing actions. Get it right the first time.

But keep in mind that your end-user may not be your end-customer. Make sure you have an overview of the whole customer ecosystem, the decision making unit of your end-user so to speak. We discuss this more in depth in step 3, 4 and 5 of our ’10 steps for a successful market approach’ article.

3. Increase customer loyalty

By involving your users in the whole development process from beginning to end, they’ll feel much more directly part of the creation. Therefore you’ll have a broader support when launching your product.

This sense of belonging will also lead to more customer loyalty. Your user will feel closer to the product because he was part of its creation.

4. Gain valuable time and reduce costs

Co-creation is an intense exercise but you’ll gain so much from it. By doing this with your stakeholders you avoid starting based on wrong assumptions and therefore avoid wasting valuable time, efforts and money. Get those assumptions right straight away and start testing your idea as soon as possible. Developing based on the right assumptions will lead to less failures in the design or in the interface.

By incorporating user testing for your prototypes you’ll be able to detect flaws in the design or interface very early on in the process. This way it will cost less to adapt them and retest them again.

Ready to co-create or would you like more information? Contact us via hello@u-sentric.com or call us on +32 478 40 51 86, we are more than happy to talk to you. Or, should you be in the neighborhood, pop in and visit us at Karel van Lotharingenstraat 4, doorbell 3.2, 3000 Leuven (Belgium). We do pride ourselves on our excellent coffee and tea!

About the author

Katrien Pypen — User experience expert with a huge interest in marketing and customer behavior.

You can contact me via katrien@u-sentric.com or connect with me on LinkedIn. To stay up to date on the latest posts please follow @usentric or @KatrienPypen on Twitter!