Requests from retail partners for certain products are a recurring opportunity for Quirky and the Quirky community. Our retail partners regularly share with us their latest insights into products and categories that are about to trend. Often these insights develop into design briefs to help develop the next big thing. When a key retail partner came to us to develop the next ‘portable charging station’, we made immediate moves towards starting community development on the product.
In this case, we quickly came to the realization after launching the design brief blog post, that what we were asked to create very closely reflects William Fine’s original submission for Trek Support. When comparing the key features in isolation, they are, for all intents and purposes, the same product. The difference is in the superficial ‘soft good’ manifestation (backpack versus something more ‘convenient to transport’). Upon reflection, this small difference did not feel like it warranted a completely new product, and that a great deal of the art required for execution of the portable charging station already existed in the development of Trek Support.
The next step was to decide what was the right move for the product, inventor and community. After reaching out to William and weighing up several options, we are moving ahead with the decision to treat this brief as an opportunity to re-imagine the key features of Trek Support. We will therefore be opening up a new ‘redesign phase’ within the Trek Support project, piggy-backing off the hard work already done by the community and QDS, and honoring the associated influence.
At the launch of this redesign phase, we will confirm how much influence there is up for grabs.
