Alex Settles, lead design engineer at Ace Manufacturing, is by no means a social media guru, but he is no stranger to venues like LinkedIn and Facebook, which he frequents to catch up with friends or expand his network at work.
So when he was approached by Vuuch, a company looking to apply social media conventions to product development, he immediately saw potential in how tools like activity feeds and Facebook-like posts could address some of the communications problems dogging his company's engineering and design processes.
"Our biggest problem is around communication between production, engineering, and sales," Settles told us. "Engineering and production would go back and forth with the design, and in the end, it wouldn't be exactly what they wanted, so they'd have to start from scratch. When they called us about Vuuch, we had just had an issue where parts had been created, but production didn't let us know. It was a hot job, and it caused a lot of aggravation. I thought, 'This is something that could keep that from happening again.'"
Sunglass promises to make 3D file sharing as easy as dragging and dropping a model in any file format on to the Sunglass stage.
Though Settles easily recognizes how social functionality can facilitate a new level of product development collaboration, many engineering groups are still struggling to apply those concepts to a work environment. Rather than considering how social capabilities can advance the utility of traditional design tools and collaboration platforms, users are getting stuck on the idea of doing full-blown development work and CAD file sharing on public sites like Facebook -- a scenario that has little appeal to anyone involved in serious product development.
"There's a lot of confusion," David Blair, vice president of product management for PTC, told us in an interview. "People think anything attached to the word 'social' assumes that everything is happening in a public community site like Facebook or Twitter, which is wide open to the public with no security. That's not what we're doing."
Looking through the engineering lens
PTC is hardly the only one avoiding that approach. Its primary competitors in the CAD and PLM space, as well as startups like Vuuch and Sunglass, are starting to borrow the Web 2.0 capabilities that were popularized in the consumer world and adapting them for capabilities that make sense for product development systems.
Things like activity feeds (akin to a Facebook news feed) can keep people who are connected to a project up to date on status or design changes. Microblogging (along the lines of tweets) can be a short, targeted way to provide status updates or ask for feedback. Traditionally, this type of communication has been done mostly face to face (at small companies) or through email. Both methods can become cumbersome as the design project scales and teams start to encompass partners, suppliers, customers, and outside consultants.
@bobjengr: I appreciate your comments and glad our coverage can help. I hear what you're saying with Facebook--too much information (or TMI, in granddaughter speak). That said, this new breed of social collaboration platform for product development is designed to work within the proven security constructs of the modern-day enterprise. They just incorporate some of the newer conventions for eliciting community and collaboration and for finding people and information more easily.
Beth--Great article. You have once again provided me with information that will benefit my company. We have locations in Chattanooga, Atlanta, Bangor and Hawaii. Communication is a nightmare. Vuuch could just be the answer to one of our biggest problems. Some time ago, I tried Facebook to keep up with my granddaughters in Atlanta. Let's just say there are some things a grandparent does NOT need to know. In my opinion it's a web site totally unsuited for engineers (and adults for that matter.) One big concern for me is the privacy aspects of any type of social media. This is a real concern but Vuuch indicates they have overcome some, if not most, of the issues with privacy. Great work.
Good points, Beth. Even so, I still hear social media get a bad rap among engineers. That may change in time as the simple functionality of social media applications become useful. There also may be a generational component to this. Young engineers will likely not have the same resistance.
There is a ton of silly stuff that transpires on Facebook. Probably more silly than serious, no doubt. But that doesn't mean the paradigm--not the platform--doesn't have merit for advancing communication. Think about your TV--plenty of silly stuff gets transmitted, but that doesn't take away from the medium's ability to beam news and other relevant programming to information consumers. Same for your smart phone. Mine is loaded up with ridiculous apps downloaded by my kids, but that doesn't take away from the phone's utility for texting, email, and phone calls.
Hadn't thought of it that way, Beth, but out comments section really is a form of social networking. I think Facebook gets a bad rap because it is so heavily used by teenagers for activities that engineers may view as frivilous.
It's like the Beatles. When I was young, grownups thought it was silly music. Later on it became widely regarded as the best music of its century.
It's definitely getting people over the mindset that social capabilities equate with Facebook or Twitter. I don't know people, engineers or any other professional, that relies too heavily on Facebook for real work-related tasks other than possible networking or listening into what customers are saying about their products or services. Yet the interaction paradigms Facebook and other social platforms introduce are important. Not too different than what happens on the Design News community with people wading in with comments, pointers to articles that advance the discussion, even tips and best practices gleaned from prior work experiences. That is communication.
Once people get over the word social they get it. So it is not really that they are skeptical but rather the frame of reference is off. This reminds me of the early days of feature based solid modeling. Many customers would say but how do I draw a line? You don't. Huh? But now look where we are, feature based sollid model is almost a commodity.
What is very interesting is if you ask the skeptic what their biggest problems are – you will be told communication. Well if that isn't a social problem then I'll eat my hat.
Product development is a social activity. Product development requires discussion and the primary feature of social is discussion.
This shows a new approach to social media in the design engineering environment. Moves like this may help garner some respect for social media in the design environment. Judging from comments here, many of those in the design engineering profession are skeptical of social media.
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