Doing Business in an Expanding Reality

In these times of economic uncertainty, disruptive innovation is increasingly essential for creating a competitive edge. At Repères we are convinced that innovation must be conducted in collaboration with the consumers to design in a meaningful and differentiating manner. Our prospective and interactive co-design protocol calls on the imagination of hyper creative consumers (recruited in the virtual world of Second Life) to help brands find new sources of inspiration.

So far we haven’t yet had the opportunity to present actual results from co-design initiatives since these are highly confidential. Today, thanks to CTIFL (Centre Technique Interprofessionnel des Fruits et Légumes – Inter-professional Technical Centre for Fruit and Vegetables) and UNFD (Union nationale des syndicats de détaillants en fruits, légumes et primeurs – National Union of Fruit and Vegetable Retailers) we have a unique opportunity to present the details of the process and its results.

I will let Emilie Labidoire, the head of the Repères Communities Department continue:

Our last project conducted for CTIFL and UNFD made it possible for us to work on the design and the offering at the same time, with a 3D model of 2 proposals from among 10.

Point of departure of the project

To adapt to new modes of consumption UNFD intends to make points of sale of fresh fruit and vegetables denser in areas of intense urban traffic through the creation of mobile outdoor kiosks and/or the setting up of dedicated gondolas with traditional retailers.
This is because, in a climate of a decline in the consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables, UNFD must take up a number of challenges:
- How to promote the purchase of fresh fruit and vegetables?
- How to reduce preparation constraints?
- How to enhance the image of fruit and vegetables (healthy, simple, quick, etc.)?
- How to prevent consumption among the young from declining further?


The Protocol

The strong points

.Greatly increases the potential of “imaginative” communities from the virtual world of Second Life® by injecting prospective visions in partnership with the agency Proâme
. Engages consumers in brainstorming on a collaborative, exploratory blog for two weeks. Presents the benefits of asynchronous communication and of a widened time frame allowing ideas to mature.


The Designs

As a result of the brainstorming session and the joint analyses of Proâme-Repères, 10 detailed proposals for kiosks and innovative fruit and vegetable corners were presented to UNFD and CTIFL, a working tool for a highly fragmented sector (different sizes and means according to geographic situation).

The two proposals selected were then modelled on Second Life® to bring to life these concepts and propose a 3-D illustration. Instead of static boards, the client and vegetable retailer teams are able to discover a space and to fully experience it to test the ergonomics, the positioning and interactions between the retailer and the client.




We presented this work at the Esomar Consumer Insights 2009 conference in Dubai and we are looking forward to seeing the kiosk open, probably in the autumn 2009!

You may also read the interview with Catherine Roty from CTFIL, whom we warmly thank, on the site dedicated to the activity of Second Life.

Beyond implementing the Co-design process, the purpose of Repères in Second Life is of course to explore these new digital words to gain more knowledge of them and to advise our clients in their marketing strategies in these virtual worlds.

We also want to play an active role in the Second Life community and to participate in its development, namely by disseminating the results of studies we conduct on our own initiative, or by making research organisations benefit at cost price from field studies conducted by our panel of avatars.

It is within such a framework that we are publishing the results of a qualitative study we conducted last year on the perception by the residents of Second Life of the first launches of brands in SL.

The investigation, under the form of an "in world” focus group (via avatars in SL) and in Real Life, concerned the automobile sector which already presented a certain diversity in marketing terms. The aim of the study is to determine the key factors of success for a successful launch in a virtual world.

You may download all of the findings here, which you may also view in a slide presentation below (given the density of the text, I recommend the option “view on slideshare / Full”)

For further details, please contact Emilie Labidoire, project manager at Repères Communities.

The development of virtual worlds about which we regularly communicate is a part of the more global process of the massive integration of digital technology in our reality.

This new reality we are moving towards, where the border between the virtual and reality will become less and less discernable, is sometimes referred to as the metaverse.

In the spring of 2007, a group of experts, researchers and players in the field of virtual worlds published a remarkable study on this subject : the metaverse roadmap overview. The authors identify four leading trends which, through their convergence, lead us to the metaverse:
. Virtual Worlds
. the mirror worlds, the digital reproduction of reality (Cf. Google Earth)
. enhanced reality : the integration of the digital in the real world, for example via enhanced reality glasses (you walk in an Antique site and thanks to these glasses you have a completed view of the buildings instead of the ruins)
. lifelogging, which consists of recording all the events of one’s life on a digital medium.

You will find here the support materials from a talk I gave on this subject at the summer university of a consulting company. In addition to the 4 trends of the Metaverse Roadmap, you will find some elements concerning another change I believe is fundamental: the notion of the enhanced body (exoskeletons, cyborgs and brain-computer links) where, here again, the visions of science-fiction writers are confirmed.

To finish with this theme of the metaverse and immersion, here is a video in which a system for measuring brain waves makes it possible for a person to move his avatar in Second Life mentally:



There are many surprises in store for us.

Joshua Culdesac and Piper Pitney are the winners of the competition "Call for collective design for the Jardin des Halles" initiated by the association Accomplir, the agency Pourquoitucours and Repères. The jury found the creative approach in the design of the Garden of Islands proposed by Joshua Piper especially appealing.

The garden proposed by Yaox Bruner awarded the “public prize” following the votes of the Repères Second Life panel:


















Lastly we would like acknowledge the quality of the proposals of all the participants, which may be seen during the whole summer on the Repères Second Life Islandor on video youtube.

This competition was principally aimed at accompanying the Accomplir Association in its fight against the project selected by the Paris City Hall. The objective was not to create the future Jardin des Halles but to prove that other designs were possible which associated creativity and compliance with certain spécifications. The final objective of the members – volunteers – of the association Accomplir being to convince the Paris City Hall to abandon the project and to launch an official competition for the garden.

We do not yet know what will be the outcome of this process but it is clear that Accomplir has made a clear statement in favour of its case thanks to Second Life; the association has benefited from wide media coverage enabling it to express its views (articles in Le Parisien, Paris Obs, Matin Plus, Lemonde.fr, lexpress.fr , BBCnews) ...And has effectively countered any criticism as to its alleged support of the status quo or rejection of innovation.

As for Repères, our action as a sponsor of this competition has enabled us to validate once again the relevance of Second Life as a platform for co-design, even for Real Life uses.

Today we are communicating the main research findings of our 1st exploratory study conducted with residents from Second Life and dealing with their perception of this universe. 137 residents from our panel have completed our survey.

These results reinforced our perception of Second Life as a deeply humain universe. According to its residents, Second Life is first at all :

The largest community ever created, offering opportunities for exchanges with other people ranging far beyond that of the simple chat room,

A step forward for humanity with :
. more athenticity and access to the real self,
. the opportunity to develop and even surpass oneself via apprenticeships and the use and unexploited skills,
. an infinite potentiel for discovery and creativity.

I invite you to read the main research findings of the analysis. For more details about this survey, do not hesitate to contact Emilie Labidoire, Reperes Second Life project manager.

Just recently I saw again the superb documentary Jacques Malaterre made under the scientific direction of Yves Coppens, entitled “A Species Odyssey”, which retraces the key stages in the evolution of humanity: learning to walk on our hind legs, the creation of the first tools, controlling fire…

We have just experienced another key step.

Undoubtedly, when in the future scientists look back upon the odyssey of our species, they will note as one of the turning points in our history the day when the first economic transaction concerning a so-called “virtual” object occurred (it was probably a transaction on Ebay of a weapon from the game World of Warcraft, I don’t know the nature or the date of this transaction. Can anyone tell me?)

When the first commercial exchange of a “virtual” object occurred our reality underwent a fundamental change: a new layer was added to and introduced within the reality we had known so far. The virtual dimension took on its full meaning from the moment that it could be the object of a transaction between individuals, thus going beyond the confines of the world of games.

Our universe gained a new dimension tending towards the infinite, a new space for exchange, work, creativity, socialising, and of course new discoveries. It is certain that our society is going to be fundamentally affected by this.

The first transaction concerning a virtual object will certainly affect our history more than man’s first step on the moon: in the end, three people were sent to the moon 37 years ago, and one of them remained in the space craft while the others just walked about on the surface a little, planted a flag and left. Nine others followed between 1969 and 1972, and we haven’t returned since… That space is empty and cold, and robots are more at home there than human beings are. However, the new space born of the interlocking of our former reality with that of the virtual world is profoundly human.

To end this note, I would like to give two concrete examples seen from my angle as an entrepreneur:
. work in a virtual environment is going to develop, for example via meetings in which avatars will meet in more appropriate places (a little sexier than our drab video-conferences), cf the announcement of the arrival of Leo Burnett in Second Life in the SLObserver blog,
. pupils in secondary school interested in architecture today should really ask themselves whether instead of focusing on traditional architecture in which the resistance of materials plays an important role they might not study the architecture of living and working spaces in virtual environments. (The ideal thing would be for architecture courses to very quickly acknowledge an architecture free of the constraints of “First Life” and to include it in the curriculum).

P.S.: Another key date, even if it remains more technical, would be November the 14th 2003, the day when Linden Lab, the creator of the virtual universe of Second Life, decided to assign to players the intellectual property of all the objects they created in this universe. Concerning the sale of virtual objects, see the very complete article by Aurélien Pfeffer on the jeuxonline site.

A new adventure is beginning for my company: Repères has just established itself in Second Life.

Repères Second Life is the 1st market survey company in this world, but not the first company to have started doing business there. Brands such as Nike, Adidas and Toyota, communication agencies such as Leo Burnett, a press agency with a permanent correspondent (Reuters) and design studios are already in Second Life…

Our presence in Second Life is therefore a necessity:

. our signature “passion for research” takes on all of its meaning there: Second Life is a new world where practically everything remains to be discovered and built,

. as its name suggests, Second Life is not just a game but it is also a true extension of reality. The avatars that explore it and live there are not virtual but are the real expressions of a part of our humanity and gaining knowledge of this is an inherent part of our research work.

As an added bonus, by creating Repères Second Life, we take full advantage of the pleasures of Second Life: discovering new things, flying, exchanging and creating new ideas and having the feeling that we are pioneers…

Attached is our press communiqué concerning Repères Second Life (This text was drafted by Marie Juan Lallier, who is my life partner and takes an active part in the development of the methodologies of Repères whilst running her own practise as a psychologist).