Why can a high-performance lens "Moment" attached to a smartphone gather support and investment by many people?

High-performance lens "Moment" project to be attached to smartphones to the cloud funding siteKickstarterThe Moment team that made it a huge success with the smartphone case to which the Moment lens can be attached "Moment Case"We have successfully procured the target amount without waiting for the project's deadline. Core 77 covers the Moment team about how Moment team's products are endorsed by so many people, and it draws popular secrets from the "product development process".

Core 77 / Designing The Moment Case: The Good, the Bad, and the Work Most People Do not Show
http://www.core77.com/posts/29749/Designing-The-Moment-CasennbspThe-Good-the-Bad-and-the-Work-Most-People-Dont-Show

The high-performance lens "Moment" project attached to iPhone succeeded in collecting a lot of money of 450,000 dollars (about 53 million yen), nine times the target investment amount at Kickstarter.

I tried using the interchangeable lens "Moment" for high-performance smartphones adopting film camera lens technology - GIGAZINE


The Moment team developed a case "Moment Case" in which a new Moment lens can be attached, launched the Kickstarter project, and already gathered 530,000 dollars (about 63 million yen) of investment, which greatly exceeded the target investment amount I am successful.

Moment Case - World's Best iPhone Case for Mobile Photography by Moment - Kickstarter
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/584288471/moment-case-worlds-best-iphone-case-for-mobile-pho


When Core 77 visited the Moment team, Eric, a designer who greeted me, said, "Our product" breakthrough "is not born in the office time at 9:05 am He said that. The important thing in product development of the Moment team seems to be in the outside experience than in the office, both the previous Moment lens and the new Moment Case are "the place to take the best pictures" at the starting point of development Erik said that there is.


In short, Moment's development team is a passionate photographer who wishes "I want to take a wonderful photo", the things embodied to realize that wish are Moment lenses and Moment Case, developers constantly develop It is said that taking out the inside of the product takes pictures. Because the development team shares the belief that "the most important thing to truly understand the core part of the product to create better things is to share daily life with that product" Rather than twisting his head at the office, he said that he cherishes the experience of actually shooting outside the office, such as mountain climbing.


In addition, Moment seems to be doing work to bring all the members out of office, to force all the members to list the problems, and to identify problems to be solved from the list.


It seems that development members who have only eight people could find out what they really wanted, that is, "what to make next to the Moment lens" by jumping out of the office. That means that the most important thing for many people to take good pictures is "speed". It seems that the speed of how quickly you can take pictures has been noticed that everyone regards it as an important factor regardless of the skill of photography. And I discovered that the operation to take out the smartphone by sneaking pockets was too troublesome and that taking a newly visible experience produced a good photograph.

Three key concepts really important are revealed in this way. In other words, what matters is "being able to take pictures as quickly as possible", "getting ready at any time", "doing it at any time", and it was Moment Case that made it concrete.


The concrete key concept that is clarified concretely is a product that can take pictures quickly anytime, but many of contemporary people are shooting pictures with smartphones instead of cameras, so a lot of pictures are taken with smartphones unimaginable We have arrived at a type of case / lens product that always attaches to smartphones. However, the Moment team paid homage to the quality of the vintage camera and the novelty of traditional cameras, so he decided to make "Moment Case" as a product that turns smartphones into cameras.


Product development of the Moment team is "sketch" → "prototype" → "field test" repeated. Since it is often that a new idea is born in the process of actually trying out a prototype reproducing the sketch idea, it seems to repeat the cycle of "sketch" → "trial production" → "field test". It is ideal to make this cycle as fast as possible in order to identify what is going wrong and what should be sticking to.


However, it is natural that a big problem arises, and in the case of Moment Case, it is necessary to try several different sensors for the lens detection function, and it seems that there was a hot topic such as opinion split among development members. However, Eric says, "Even when things are not going as planned, it is necessary for you to trust the members of all and go ahead to make good things," Eric said.


And, as there are few development members, sometimes the decision to "throw out" is also important. In Moment Case, the color decided to abandon the desire to get as many people want as possible, to decide to narrow down to two colors, white and black.


This is why Moment Case was born over 6 months.


You can see what kind of product Moment Case is in the following movie.

Moment Case World's Best iPhone Case for Mobile Photography by Moment - YouTube


Moment Case is difficult with smartphone camera, it also supports focus locking function. It is also possible to change the exposure setting by touching the touch panel while fixing the focus by pressing halfway.


In addition, it also corresponds to the burst mode which performs continuous shooting by long pressing. By transforming smartphones at hand into high-performance cameras, we have achieved the concept of "to be able to take pictures as quickly as possible", "to reach at any time" and "to function at any time".


Despite common products as the idea of ​​transforming lenses and smartphones attached to smartphones into cameras, despite common products, the reason why Moment collected support from many people, unlike other similar products, is truly important from real experience It seems that it is in a development style that it is easy to say, but it is difficult to carry out, to judge something and reflect it seriously on the product.