Toward integrating social networking service and Japanese manga in strategic consumer generated design

The growth of Social Networking Service (SNS) has created a new potential in marketing. At present, a new tendency to post latest messages, information, or simply emotional expression to SNS is increasing. SNS is known for its effectiveness in delivering these kinds of data. In the perspective of product/service development, these data are known as casual data and can be managed with a method called abductive thinking. Although some online services that attempt to apply abductive thinking have been proposed in the past, their purposes and effectiveness are still questionable. In those services, users were only asked to give their opinion or participate in the system without receiving sufficient feedbacks. Another important consideration in designing consumer generated design services is to understand consumer aspiration and wishes. In recent Japanese culture, SNS is gaining popularity with Japanese internet users. Furthermore, Japanese internet users has been accustomed with a large variety of online contents. As a result, we designed an online service that integrates SNS as the medium and propose a unique communication method, i.e. Japanese manga. In our proposed online service, users can directly contribute to the product/service development process in an interesting and enjoyable way. We designed a system that allows users to posts manga to describe their original idea. While contributing to the product/service development, they can also benefit from expressing their interests and receiving feedbacks from other users that can be used to improve their capability.