frogMob is a website and mobile app that taps into an active global network of designers, students, and enthusiasts who capture stories, images, and insights from around the world. It provides designers unique material early in the design process, in an innovative, rapid and cost-effective manner. Over the last 18 months the frogMob community has captured local stories from 400 locations with over 3,200 images for 19 clients across a broad range of topics. It is a unique mechanism for bringing local knowledge to global companies while challenging stereotypes in the early stage of problem definition.

Clients understand that designing for global markets requires deep cultural insights, because without these insights, they run the risk of designing products and services that overlap on similar features and generic forms, as we see today in many product categories, from cell phones to credit cards. The problem is that many clients don’t have the time or budget for extensive field research. We needed a lightweight, open platform that allows designers to effectively and rapidly gather insights from around the world to obtain a valuable range of input that would otherwise be difficult and costly to achieve.

frogMob emerged as an efficient and engaging way to fill a fundamental gap in the traditional research process. We have used this method in traditional client engagements, business development processes, and strategic initiatives with organizations like the World Economic Forum. We’ve even used frogMob internally as a way to increase cross-cultural awareness between different frog studios.

frogMob began as an internal project to see if we could take advantage of the global reach of frog’s studios to conduct rapid street ethnography. Our project teams are always faced with short timelines to design research, and we hoped to leverage our collective intelligence to get a broader view of outlying trends from much further afield. The overall goal was to inspire our design teams with interesting discoveries from everyday life around the world. After the first frogMob, some colleagues suggested opening up the frogMob for everyone to participate. There was some concern about making client research public, but our clients are happy to have a low-cost and rapid survey of global trends, even if it means that the raw data was out in the open. Plus, it is fascinating to watch the serendipitous stream of photos and stories rolling in.

The innovative aspects of frogMob include:

• Leveraging internal and external networks to rapidly engage a geographically dispersed audience and generate meaningful insights that could be fed into the ideation process.

• Effectively raising awareness inside the design firm and the client and serving as a touchpoint within those organizations.

• The format and carefully structured, open-ended questions allow participants to engage at a depth that they are comfortable with.

• Synthesis occurs in real-time as participants tag their own images and provide their own insights.

• Overcomes many of the challenges associated with crowdsourcing insights such as: initiating engagement; maintaining momentum; focus; spam; reward; quality and ownership.

frogMobs are supported by a website and mobile app, which was built by a collaborative team of designers, technologists, and researchers. Features on the mobile platform allow for tagging, commenting, and exporting, and it serves as the central interactive tool for each project. Clients typically track submissions on a daily basis to see the new materials that have come in. This becomes a unique way to engage them directly in the personal and cultural dimensions of a product, and get them outside their own stereotypes and pre-conceptions. It is a great way to build a sense of empathy and discovery into the early stages of a project.

frogMob entries are easily exportable and searchable so they become flexible content for use throughout a program. Submissions are reviewed and clustered into categories which together collectively represent the primary human experience principles that should be considered for the product or service. Each frogMob culminates in a synthesis session with the client to look for patterns and identify opportunities that can serve as the jumping off point for new areas of inquiry.

A frogMob is best activated in the early phases of a project to scan the cultural landscape and inspire new thinking. We work closely with clients and other partners to select relevant topics that lend themselves easily to visual storytelling. The organizing structure of each frogMob is as follows.

• Rapid: held over two weeks or less, from call for research to synthesis

• Visual: focuses on visual storytelling

• Lightweight: does not permit audio or video recordings

• Open: allows anyone to submit

• Distributed: seeks participation from around the globe

In order to contribute to a frogMob, participants are asked to:

• Keep it visual: a primary goal is to get as many photos as possible.

• Be original: all photos must be original submissions; no stock photography or published database images.

• Make it conversational: whenever possible, talk to people; save notes and quotes that accompany pictures.

• Keep it simple: no reams of notes or recordings are allowed; this helps streamline analysis and synthesis.

• Make it quick: all photos and insights are due back within 1-2 weeks.

• Share findings: upload and tag photos to the active frogMob website.

frogMob leads are recruited from each studio and region to engage our teams, as well as friends and family. In addition, a request for submissions is broadcast on Twitter to our 350,000 followers

frogMob has been used for clients that range from Fortune 50 firms to international nonprofits with varying degrees of impact, significance, and benefits.

During an engagement for a whitegoods manufacturer who wanted to develop a 5-year vision for their refrigerator line, a frogMob resulted in hundreds of images from eight countries, giving the team a rich picture how fridges are stocked globally, and providing a rare opportunity to take a peek into daily eating habits. Some of the key insights included heterogeneous containers related to specific culinary cultures, and the need for ease of access without compromising energy efficiency. This insight has directly shaped a modular design for the drawers and other storage components that can be customized by the end user.

The Personal Data frogMob we did for the World Economic Forum allowed us to collect insights very quickly from around the world. This research helped to inform and shape the WEF’s point of view regarding personal data and the individual. The research brought to light in a highly visual and impactful way the immediate concerns of users from around the globe. The research continues to be used to inform the World Economic Forum’s ongoing “Rethinking Personal Data” multiyear, multi-stakeholder initiative. It rounds out the perspectives on governments and corporations by offering an end-user perspective along with tangible scenarios and use cases included in the report presented at Davos.

frogMob began as an internal project to see if we could take advantage of the global reach of frog’s studios to conduct rapid street ethnography. Our project teams are always faced with short timelines to design research, and we hoped to leverage our collective intelligence to get a broader view of outlying trends from much further afield. The overall goal was to inspire our design teams with interesting discoveries from everyday life around the world. After the first frogMob, some colleagues suggested opening up the frogMob for everyone to participate. There was some concern about making client research public, but our clients are happy to have a low-cost and rapid survey of global trends, even if it means that the raw data was out in the open. Plus, it is fascinating to watch the serendipitous stream of photos and stories rolling in.