Product usage
(produsage) is a term used to describe emerging technologies that are
distinguished by their user led frameworks (Stewart 2005).
In these products both producers and
consumers are active participants – the producers as the creators of the
framework, and the consumers who create, use and shape the content. Good examples of produsage are products such
as Instagram, flickr or Wikipedia, products that in order to function need
consumers and their creativity. Users
make an an active contribution; it is not passive one-way communication that
have characterised many media platforms over the past 50 years (think radio,
TV, newspapers).
I am a large user
of Instagram, but before I came across it, I never even used to take photos!
But after spending hours on Instagram, being swept away by the creativity of so
many talented users, and by seeing what the possibilities were, I was I was
inspired to get involved. It was as if I
had a part of my brain opened that I didn’t even know existed. Being able to share great ideas, and build on
others ideas’ to create your own, is something that could not have occurred
(very easily anyway) 10 years ago.
Axel
Bruns (2007) describes the “produsage economy” where both creation and
consumption are combined together, where the user leads the creation
environment. This new way of
participating in society and contributing to an emerging culture is unique and
exciting, and has been described as a “participatory culture” (Jenkins
2009). This term describes the way in
which users, because of low barriers to engagement with the product and strong creative
support amongst the community, are able to pass along knowledge to one another
and share ideas to collaborate and create at rapid speeds and with high
creativity.
Produsage in the future will continue to
grow. This next generation will expect nothing less and in fact one of
the top trends for 2014 as listed by Inside Retail is
Product Individualisation. Shoppers want to feel special and in this
price competitive environment they ail play a premium for
the ability to customise or buy something slightly more unique. (Firth,
2014)
Bruns, A. 2007.
Produsage. Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCHI conference on Creativity
\& cognition. Washington, DC, USA: ACM.
Firth, P, 2014 Top five trends for 2014, Inside Retail, (Viewed online February 7th 2014.)
Jenkins, H 2009, ‘Confronting the challenges of
participatory culture’, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, viewed 19 January
2014 http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/free_download/9780262513623_Confronting_the_Challenges.pdf
Stewart,
B. 2005. Snurblog.
http://theory.cribchronicles.com/2012/07/03/what-produsage-is-and-why-it-matters/
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