BBMG
New York based Brand Innovation Company BBMG recently launched an online community. BBMG in its own words: “We help organizations embrace innovation, forge new markets, discover new products and services, create new experiences and drive real culture change.”

Converstations
To be able to achieve this they regularly talk to the customers of their clients. The recent addition of a private community platform heavily intensifies this process and opens up a whole new world of possibilities in search of insights.

The Collective
The Collective is a platform that (eventually) will host a couple of thousand “lead users” that share their ideas with BBMG and influence the inception process of new products and services. “Whether you’re a concerned citizen, an entrepreneur or someone who believes in the power of social media to do good, The Collective offers a convenient way to help create the change you want to see in the world. ” the tagline says.

Ideations
From a technical side of view, the platform runs on Ideations1, our modular community tool. The platform hosts a Challenge module, a forum, an online journal and a weblog. The design was created by the internal BBMG design team. The Redesignme team then draped this design over the Ideations1 backbone. The results are astonishing.

Way to go
The Collective by BBMG is another great example of a company doing things right by conducting the “expertise” of end-users in a co-creation effort. We are proud that we can be part of this process.

About Ideations v1
Ideations is being used by our clients as their primary market research tool, crowdsourcing platform or online suggestion box for employees. With Ideations, our clients are able to build their own online community. They can choose between a range of modules like a journal, forum,  creative challenges, weblog, newsletter system and many more. The platform is almost completely self serviceable. Besides all functionality, our design team is able to completely restyle the platform to meet our client’s corporate identity. One of the many successful cases that ran on Ideations 1, is the ANWB case, which can be downloaded here.

The next level
Although Ideations has served us and our clients well, we decided it was time for an upgrade. Our goal is to always give our clients the best possible way of connecting with customers and giving their customers the best possible user-experience. With the experience we gained through the years and with the feedback from our clients, we now take the platform to the next level.

What stays, what goes and what will be new
So what can you expect from Ideations2, compared to Ideations 1? First, we keep what’s good, so all current modules will reappear in Ideations2. But some of them, like the Challenges module, will get a total overhaul. The default design of the platform is completely redone and this enables even better customization to our client’s needs.
Community managers will be happy to hear that the admin panel has been rebuild from scratch, giving you total control and overview of user groups, newsletters and community performance.

Usablity = key
We are also improving the usability of the platform. With clear and easy to understand document pages and forms, we try to create a more user friendly environment. To enrich the usability even more, we use new web techniques whenever we think they can improve the platform.

MIE 2012
We are really excited about this product which is planned for release next spring. We will be previewing Ideations2 at the MIE (Marketing Information Event) in The Hague, Netherlands on 1 & 2 februari 2012.

Next we will unleash some more details about Ideations2. So check back soon!

About Connect
For starters, Redesignme Connect is our creative community, where over 9000 people from all parts of the world solve Challenges that companies upload. Challenges range from food companies that need ideas for new packaging to companies that are in search of a name for their new service or business.

Collaboration & Profile
Redesignme Connect is all about collaboration, creativity, be seen and most important: connecting with others. That’s why we’ve redesigned the profile pages entirely. We now introduce a personal wall (obviously inspired by Facebook) where people can tell what they are working on and they can send eachother personal messages. People can follow other people who’s work they like, and get an overview of all their work with the click of a button. Also the portfolio section has been extended, enabling people to show other work they did, which is not related to Challenges.

Company pages
If you run your own company, or work for one, you can now have a dedicated company page where you can show & tell about your company. The page also shows all Challenges that you ran or have been running. Use it to advertise your business, or attract more people to your Challenges.

Simplified ordering process
We also simplified to ordering process for companies that wish to upload a Challenge. We now introduce 3 simple packages (A, B and C) for a fixed price of € 499, €999 and € 1.499 depending on the total amount of rewards you’d want to set and guidance you’d like from our community manager Eveline.

Site speed improvement & several small changes
Most of the content is now loaded with AJAX which massively speeds up loading times. The header section of the site is now cleaner, introducing a slick drop-down panel for the login, registration and profile settings controls. Your activity can be automatically posted to your Twitter or Facebook wall, and you can control what gets posted and what not.

Mobile version (in the making)
And last but not least, we introduced a (basic) mobile version of the site. If you now surf to the site using your iPhone or Android phone, you’ll see a clear overview of all latest site activity. The mobile version is build on jQuery Mobile. Functionality is still very basic, but this is something we will be working on in the next months.

So that’s a lot, and we will continue to work on our most loved community. Have a lot of fun with the new features and let us now what you think. Happy Redesigning!

Maxim Schram

CEO, Redesignme.

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