There are a number of different kinds of customer co-design tools that you may find of value in working with lead users (advanced users who aren’t yet customers) and lead customers. The purpose of offering co-design tools is to make it easy for customers to design their own ideal solutions, leveraging your domain knowledge, learning what ’s possible as they do so.

By giving customers design tools, you shortcut the laborious and time-consuming hand-offs between the customer and the producer. You know the usual drill: Customers try to convey their requirements. You propose a solution based on your understanding of their requirements. They discover more about what is possible and about what they want and need in the process. You go back and forth until you both run out of time and resources and settle for the best that can be done under the circumstances. Maybe they didn’t really know what they wanted, after all. It’s hard to envision a solution that doesn’t yet exist.

CO-DESIGN TOOLS CORRECTLY SEPARATE THE CUSTOMER’S DOMAIN KNOWLEDGE FROM THE SUPPLIER’S DOMAIN KNOWLEDGE

By empowering your customers to create their own solutions, through the use of co-design tools, you transfer to your customers the hard part of the problem--specifying exactly what it is that they want and need. Design tools allow customers to iterate many times before they hand their design to you to produce for them (often with the click of a button). In the case of an electronic or digital solution, the final assembly and delivery may be virtually instantaneous. If the product is a physical one, the lag time from design to production typically varies from hours to days or weeks.

The co-design tools you offer your customers provide a mechanism to “open up” your proprietary expertise without exposing your intellectual property or compromising the deep domain knowledge on which your business is based. The way I picture it is this: it’s as if you’ve opened up your business and given your customers a way to roll up their sleeves, stick their hands into your domain expertise, and roll their own highly customized solution.

Yet, because you provide the tools--essentially the interface--to leverage your company’s proprietary know-how, you’re offering customers the ability to create a complete tailored solution--which is something that many of today’s self-service customers have come to expect and appreciate. Of course, your own employees can also use these same tools to help customers design customized solutions, or to design solutions for them.

There’s a wide range of end-user toolkits--software tools, manual tools, and tools for the mind--and they all have one purpose: to empower the end user or customer to envision and create their own ideal solution. Some of these tools are fairly constrained. They empower the customer to customize or configure a solution to meet their needs. Others are more open-ended--they provide a springboard for true creativity and innovation.

A CONTINUUM OF CUSTOMER CO-DESIGN TOOLS

Customization, Configuration, and Build-to-Order Tools

There’s a set of tools that enable customers to configure or customize their own solutions. They include:

* Configurators. Configurators are usually interactive software programs that enable the user to custom design a solution that can be built to order or executed. The customization options are based on a set of constraints or rules. Configurators are used to customize software, travel itineraries, print runs, computer systems, shoes, backpacks, clothing, cars, etc. The number of options you have to choose from at any step in the customization process is limited. Each set of choices narrows the options available for the next set of customization choices. The customer can try out different combinations and permutations until they find the optimal solution based on the constraints.

* DIY Construction Kits. You can provide customers with a set of parts and steps they can use for do-it-yourself projects in order to design their own customized solutions. One type of do-it-yourself toolkit is a kit of physical parts that you send to customers, consisting of components that let them build their own solution.

For example, Elite Vintners lets you ...