BIONICLEsector01:Interview with Ideas

LEGO Fan Media Days:
Interview with LEGO Ideas

Hi all, and welcome to the second installment of BS01’s LEGO Fan Media Days Interviews! To recap, BS01 General Manager and LEGO Ambassador Dorek visited Billund at the beginning of June 2016 to tour the LEGO factory and to interview people from several franchises. Our second interview was with Hasan Jensen, from LEGO’s Ideas platform! To learn more about Rebrick, visit their site.

Sitting in with us was also Black Six, of BZPower!

Interview

Dorek, BIONICLEsector01: Black Six, if you ever have any pressing questions, feel free to jump in.

Dorek: So Hasan, we were talking about how did you get into Ideas, how did you become a part of the team?

Hasan Jensen, LEGO Ideas: Ooh, it kind of started some years ago. I went from playing with LEGO as a kid to not playing with LEGO until 5 years ago or so. My brother happens to work at LEGO as well. And I happened to get a LEGO set for Christmas every year after. So, you know, slowly I started building a little bit again and kind of realizing that LEGO was a full product and cool company with great values I could kind of relate to in addition to an international environment.

I'm part Danish, part Malaysian, grew up around the place. I started applying for jobs in various different departments of LEGO until finally landing LEGO Ideas. I had studied together with Mette [Hansen, of LEGO Rebrick] and we were at the same interview for her current position. And so a few months later I started working with Ideas, and now we sit next to each other! So overall, it took me some years before I finally managed to get a job at LEGO.

Dorek: So what is your specific role in Ideas?

HJ: So I'm the online community specialist, the Tim [Courtney, LEGO Ideas Experience Manager] 2.0. [laughs] So I sit with moderation and communication on the platform so all projects that are submitted go through me.

Dorek: From the very beginning and until when they get ten thousand votes.

HJ: Yeah, or whenever like specifically, you know, when you submit to LEGO Ideas, we first review it to make sure it meets the standards of the program and we give rolling feedback. We obviously want everyone to be able to have their ideas on the site, if they uphold the guidelines.

Dorek: So based on past experience with licensed stuff...

HJ: I mean, we have plenty of IP-based submissions to the site and we're very ...

Dorek: Ghostbusters, for example.

HJ: Right, and Doctor Who.

Dorek: Some of these are companies that have a pre-existing relationship, right? So does that affect the way that you go through dialogue? Did you talk to Disney to get approval for WALL-E?

HJ: The process for that is still the same, that we have to get approval, but it's somewhat of an easier dialogue since there is already an existing relationship. Not to say that, you know, obviously with Doctor Who there was also some history there, with LEGO Dimensions.

Dorek: Do you have a favorite out of the ones over the past so far?

HJ: My favorite? WALL-E.

Dorek: WALL-E?

HJ: Hands down.

Black Six, BZPower: It's an amazing set.

Dorek: Yeah. The design is quite amazing.

Black Six: A footnote ancedote: that was an especially easy one to approve because the person responsible for approving it was the guy who ended up designing the model.

HJ: Yeah.

Dorek: Really?

HJ: And actually with Doctor Who, we got some celebrity to back the idea.

Black Six: Oh, that's right.

HJ: Yeah, Sam Johnson [who just joined us] designed the Doctor Who.

Dorek: Oh yeah?

HJ: Yes yes, actually and your uncle was the ... what? Fourth? Eighth Doctor Who?

Sam Johnson, LEGO: Eighth Doctor.

Dorek: Now I remember hearing this story somewhere that he's your uncle, that's amazing.

HJ: So there are many designers who kind of pitch in and get the opportunity to design the different sets.

Dorek: So when an idea gets past ten thousand and it's approved and everything, it goes through a redesign to make it, you know, more compatible with what LEGO does sometimes.

HJ: I mean to some degree I guess it does. I mean Sam might a little more about the design process itself.

Dorek: I keep thinking back to the Doctor Who, I know I saw like the original and then you guys did a breakdown of the various elements that were changed for the final production model.

SJ: That was done by, Andy the guy that did the original.

Dorek: Oh, so he did it himself.

SJ: And when it gets chosen, it's my job was to take the model and see if it would be feasible as a set. So I contacted him saying "can you send me your design or can you point me in the right direction" and basically I was designing a model on that one image that was on LEGO Ideas into what looks like what he done, and to see if I can make it feasible for production and play.

So it is done in direct collaboration with the people who submit it. Sometimes it's a minefield in of itself, because hey have preferences and I have preferences, so it's like "your Daleks go like this, but my Daleks go like that, can we make a compromise and make it my Dalek?" [laughs]

Dorek: Compromise, right? So has there been an idea that you've had to reject for whatever reason but really wished you didn't?

HJ: Some maybe that we can't talk about...

SJ: I know one. [laughs]

Dorek: Personally, right?

HJ: Yeah, personally. Obviously there are some TV shows that LEGO as a company won't produce any sets on.

Dorek: No Game of Thrones?

HJ: Yeah, I mean that could be an interesting one. I think the fantasy realm of Game of Thrones would personally be quite fun. But you know, Lord of the Rings and such. Same thing, but different.

Dorek: So do designers ever submit their own ideas to the platform?

HJ: No.

Dorek: You're not allowed to?

HJ: It's a conflict of interest, yeah.

SJ: We used to be able to.

Dorek: In the beginning, when you guys were CUUSO, right?

HJ: Right.

Dorek: I'm not even sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly! How has the change to LEGO Ideas been? Has that confused people at all?

HJ: Considering that I only started 5 months ago, I have the perspective of a user, I could say, because I became a member in 2011, shortly before it changed onto LEGO Ideas.

Dorek: Right.

HJ: So personally I don't recall it as a drastic change; the principle of the site remained the same,the only thing that was really changing was kind of the design.

Black Six: I think there were some changes with some of the guidelines when that happened, like the expiration of projects.

HJ: You know, guidelines changes are kind of things that are rolling, that keep changing; the more things we learn about LEGO Ideas, the more we learn about projects and submissions and the feedback that we get back from our members... the more we can improve the site. That comes hand-in-hand and that's why it's not supposed to be the static side that's never going to change. We have to apply the knowledge that we find to making it an even better experience, because that's the only way to have a win-win situation for us and for the community members.

Dorek: Do you every accept in-house themes? If somebody submitted a Ninjago idea, say for to ideas, and that reached ten thousand votes for whatever reason, is that allowed to be approved? Is that acceptable?

HJ: If it reaches ten thousand support and we do take it into review stage and, of course. The downside of it being a licensed or theme that we already have in our portfolio is that we already have plans for a lot of things several years in advance. So the possibility of some conflict in the pipeline occurring is higher.

So we do allow them theoretically, and if something is so great, like some fan-designed set so great then there is an opportunity.

Dorek: I just keep thinking you like get a lot of redesigns of things already in the Star Wars line, so another redesign of that might not be as egregious a conflict.

HJ: We try to communicate that through both our guidelines where we explicitly state that projects based on something we're already doing have a decreased chance, but we do welcome them.

Dorek: What are your tips for creating a successful entry? What are the commonalities of successful entries you see?

HJ: There's definitely no magic formula, but it's a combination of a few things. Obviously you have to create a great model, that's the very basics of it. With or without that, I don't think anyone would want to either support it or buy it. Your're supporting it because you eventually want to buy it.

But at the same time, some people who create great models don't reach ten thousand, because there's that extra push to market and sell their products. If you're going to a store and there's a salesperson and they're telling you with the intent of selling to you. So one thing is not just to promote it necessarily through LEGO forums but to do so by related blogs, forums sites. For instance the Caterham Car; Carl, who created it, reached out to a lot of car-specific communities, the Caterham community, and pulled from that network to sell his idea.

Because they are people who are collectors as well, and if you had the car, maybe it would be pretty awesome to have your car as a miniscale, LEGO model as well.

At the end of the day sometimes some people just get a bit lucky I guess and Minecraft.

Black Six: Mojang, picked that up and promoted that, I believe.

HJ: In, I believe, forty-eight or fifty-two hours it hit 10000 votes, which it's kind of mind-blowing.

And there, the designer obviously created an interesting set based on something that had already had a big following and he didn't even have to to promote it personally.

Dorek: So in that case, it was super successful and was followed with more Minecraft things. But I remember there was a college mascot, Bucky the Beaver I think, and then it got the ten thousand votes necessary but then they didn't end up following through with it. I think this was before it became Ideas, but it was because they thought that people wouldn't buy it, they were just voting for it because it promoted on the college website for instance, so it was kind of like a double-edged sword, right?

HJ: Once all these projects they reach ten thousand supporters... we have these three rounds every year where we kind of lock down and "ok, these nine projects are what we're going to look at now and consider for the next progress" and in that review process we do get in touch with the different markets and see what kind of demand for certain sets. So in that sense something like that I imagine, you know, part of the reason was probably that was very localized to that college, so it didn't make sense from a business perspective to go ahead with that.

But the review process includes a variety of different things so that's just one element and obviously as Sam just talked about, there's that design perspective of what's feasible, you know. Is the model too fragile to perhaps become a LEGO set?

Black Six: Too large maybe, I'm sure that plays into that.

HJ: We don't necessarily have a restriction on like a size limit and such, but...

Black Six: Even if it's a huge model and it could be made into a set, would people buy it at the price point that would be required.

HJ: Exactly, and we don't have a limit to the piece count, but we have communicated that it should be able to fit in a box, so how big the box has been the Taj Mahal with close to six thousand pieces, approximately, so within that realm is what we would generally consider acceptable, but we have no official piece count, and that's why we're a little more open.

Black Six: So maybe a big Star Wars model is going to sell but if it was a big college mascot that took five thousand pieces, that is not feasible.

HJ: But then Star Wars, as we've said, maybe we're doing something internally already. A bigger set is going to harder to sell, so there are many considerations that have to be taken into account. Part of my job is maintaining kind of a database of what we find acceptable as an IP and at the end of the day, some IPs they are more borderline and some might reach ten thousand, and then after that we really go into depth with that project. We might find that it might not be suitable as we thought it would be.

We do our best to filter out as much as possible because we want to give as little rejections as possible, because that's never fun. I don't think anyone really likes to get a rejection, so that part of the experience to give people a positive experience of LEGO Ideas and of LEGO.

Black Six: How have you been scaling, because it seems like more and more projects keep hitting that ten thousand, so how has that been for you guys internally to scale to review them all.

HJ: We have to create some internal processes that promote efficient project management so that we are ensuring that we are making decisions on a timely basis, and it helps that we're expanding the team in terms of numbers.

Dorek: How many people do they have in your team now?

HJ: The number of people involved in actually creating a finished product runs up in the twenty-five to thirty people, including designers like Sam, people in branding and out in the markets and so on.

Dorek: When an idea has reach ten thousand and you guys approve it and everything, you're going to go for it, do designers then get to choose what they want to work on something or is it a more collaborative process?

HJ: It's a collaborative process; the ideas are presented to the design board and within that the designers will be able to voice their interest in a specific line, like Sam did for Doctor Who. And on top of that, there are some designers who specialize in building certain types of models, so in terms of their abilities, it can be what fits good in that sense.

Dorek: Are you thinking about changing the frequency of that review period at all, as you get more and more kind of entries?

HJ: It's fixed. But as you said, we're looking to tighten up on our processes so we can be better at meeting our deadlines, and because I know that's what we hear from the community; sometimes we don't hit our deadline and we're only announcing results late, which is obviously unfortunate and we really do strive to hit those deadlines but sometimes there are external factors that unfortunately lengthen that process.

Black Six: Especially dealing with like external IPs and stuff.

2: Yeah, definitely. That's just how that aspect is sometimes, but we're looking at how we can kickstart some processes early on so that we don't have to disappoint our community later on. We just shot our last results review video last week for the upcoming nine projects that are in the room. So we hope that if everything goes well, then we can announce next week or so.

Black Six: It's always interesting because obviously there's a long process and there's like by the time you release the results for one phase, another phase has ended.

HJ: Right, there's this overlap.

Black Six: It's always hard to keep in mind, keep track of what is where in the process.

HJ: When I started LEGO in the first few months, I was always asking "wait, hold on, where are we?" But then you have some of the community members who are really, really engaged and they know exactly what's going on and they know when exactly the next deadline and that's why they have expectations of us, which they should, and that only encourages us to do better.

Dorek: So how has that been, particularly with social media, becuase this is obviously you know people-driven platform, so it requires engagement with the community, but in terms of social media how have you guys been interacting and how have you been driving people to this site without necessarily showing favoritism?

HJ: We do something called staff pick everyday. It's like an editorial pick of the day, and that we typically want to highlight the small project that has some potential, that has done something good out of both creating a model but also presenting it nicely, and that gives us reach that goes beyond just the LEGO Ideas community in the sense that people who might not be aware of LEGO Ideas - or even LEGO to that degree - will see their friend's creations.

And it's giving an extra little source of inspiration; letting people know "oh yeah, this is actually also out there". Then we also use social channels to communicate about new sets, new reviews out there, but we're also looking towards how we can improve the experience we have with all our fan designers who reached ten thousand supporters; how can we highlight them, pay tribute to them, because they've done an awesome job. Getting to ten thousand is no easy thing, unless you've designed Minecraft.

Doing something to give back to these people, these fan designers who have done an awesome job... because a big part of being in a community is also recognition. That's what people also enjoy, to be noticed for creating something awesome; they're very proud of their models, otherwise they wouldn't even be interested in putting it up on LEGO Ideas.

Dorek: Is there anything part of Ideas that are particularly challenging to produce during the review stage? Like Doctor Who involves kind of specialized minifigures, so did that like get slightly more difficult?

HJ: I don't think that the minifigures as such are as challenging as such. I mean probably to get the right details and so on. I'm not a graphic designer, so I can't say how difficult the process actually is.

Dorek: Completely off topic, but I do love the [21305] Maze though.

HJ: Did you have it growing up?

Dorek: I did, yeah. Those old wood ones.

HJ: I think I could complete like half of it when I was a kid!

But I definitely think the Maze set is kind of the epitome of, and really defines LEGO in the sense that it's that creativity that you can remake your board and create these mazes, use your own existing minifigs to build in any way you want. It's what I love about Ideas.

Dorek: I think that's it from me, thank you for your time Hasan.

HJ: My pleasure, have fun in the rest of the day.

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And that's a wrap on our second interview! Enormous thanks to LEGO for setting them up, Hasan and Sam for their time, and Black Six for helping buoy the interview with some good questions.

-Dorek