Why Amazon Is Turning to Crowdsourcing to Decide Which Smart Gadgets to Produce

Amazon is turning to the wisdom of crowds to determine which voice-enabled smart devices are worth producing. The ecommerce giant recently rolled out a Kickstarter-like program through which customers can submit preorders for any of a handful of gadget prototypes, with the expectation that Amazon will only make the device if it hits a certain sales quota. The inaugural product lineup for Build It includes an $80 smart cuckoo clock, a $35 nutrition scale and a $90 sticky note printer, the last of which met its goal within a couple days of the launch. The new program comes as Amazon has flooded the market with voice-enabled devices over the past couple years in a bid to spread its digital assistant Alexa as widely as possible. But investors have questioned the ultimate goal of this strategy as voice commerce usage has remained low and consumers seem more interested in a few core use cases, like streaming music or checking the weather. Amazon's new Build It initiative is a way for the company to expand its universe of smart home devices while better accounting for the kinds of applications that consumers are actually likely to use, according to Gartner retail analyst Robert Hetu. "A lot of times we assume customers want something that maybe doesn't make their life better, or that they won't really appreciate," Hetu said. "If you can do a better job of assessing true demand from consumers before something is developed, and also include their insights into what potential applications and processes would be affected, that would be really useful." Amazon's smart sticky note printer was the first to reach its goal. Assessing demand with less initial investment Amazon said the Build It concept was inspired by the success of its recent smart glasses product, Echo Frames, prescription-ready eyewear with a microphone that allows users to take calls, listen to music or control a smart home. That product was developed through a program called Day 1 Editions, an initiative that allows users to test and give feedback on devices before they launch on an invite-only basis. The Build It project also falls under the umbrella of Day 1 Editions. "We recently launched Echo Frames through the Day 1 Editions program, and your feedback was so valuable that we had to ask ourselves: How can we involve customers even earlier in the process?" Amazon product management principal Simon Joinson wrote in the announcement. Echo Frames have a microphone that lets users take calls, listen to music or control a smart home. Meanwhile, another product from the same Day 1 Editions pipeline, the Echo Loop smart finger ring, was nixed based on feedback from the program, saving Amazon the resources it would have expended on launching the product on a mass scale. Build It will allow for the same consumer feedback with even less initial investment on Amazon's part. "We learned a lot about how customers want to use Alexa for short, snackable content throughout the day, and we will take that with us as we continue to invent new customer experiences," Joinson wrote. New entry points into the voice ecosystem Investors and analysts believe that Amazon's goals with its voice gadgets have more to do with creating an app store-like ecosystem and driving ecommerce than device sales alone. To that end, Amazon has launched certain products in the past with the goal of nudging consumer behavior in a certain way. While some consider the company's auto-ordering Dash buttons a failure, for instance, Hetu said they helped accustom Amazon customers to the idea of reflex replenishment buying, a practice that then lived on in voice functions after Dash buttons were ultimately shelved. "I think that was a strategic initiative to drive different behavior in consumers that had a limited lifespan," he said. But even products meant to shape how consumers think about voice need some grounding in a sense of convenience for the user. Amazon's Build It program could meet customers halfway by seeing what types of use cases people are actually interested in and then building new voice functionality around those particular devices. "It really revolves around what I call the 'What's in it for me?' from a consumer perspective. And so, the truth is that with a voice-enabled device—like maybe a microwave or something like that—the application or the benefit to the consumer is really quite limited," Hetu said. "Like being able to stand at the sink and order some music to play is something that feels positive to you. But there are other cases where I think companies are trying to deploy technology, but the use case itself doesn't meet a sufficient level of benefit that accrues to the consumer. And so their adoption is low, or even none." Want to Make Video Ads, but Don’t Have Video? Amazon Has a Tool for That