User Participation Means User Loyalty

This is called a Tune'N Radio, designed by a Dutch firm called wouter Geense Design Studio. I came across this product from a design magazine called "Design 360°" (July 2006). This is an AM/FM radio that invites user participation. Namely, you need to find a suitable object around your house to be used as an antenna. You need to open up holes on the side as the speaker grill. You need to fix some small items into the knobs so that you can turn them properly. So some user might use a bent wire hanger as the antenna, proceed to punch a 'smiley face' set of holes for the speaker grill and wedge in small bits of playing cards, coins or small keys to use as knobs. Different users will have different designs. Some radio might end up being pretty, others might end up being less so. Yet the most important thing is: it's going to be the user's own personal design. They own it. It's an expression of who they are. It becomes less a "Tune'N Radio" but more of their very own creation. THEIRS. UNIQUELY THEIRS.

So here's a worthwhile goal for all product designers: how do you solicit user loyalty by inviting user participation? How do you trigger users' emotional involvement? How do you make it so that your users take your products, get involved in their "production" (by sticking in their personal objects in Tune'N Radio's case) and call them their own? How do you allow your products, be they merchandise or services, to be an extension of who your customers are?

We have certainly came a long way from Mr. Ford's "in any color, as long as it’s black", it's now "any way, as long as they consider it their own". At least I know this much: if this is ten years ago, not a lot of people will ever consider buying a radio with no antenna, no grill and no knobs!