Crowdsourcing

How to collect the power of the crowd with a quartet of tools.

Niels Lehouck
HOWEST Kortrijk Kortrijk, Belgium Niels.lehouck@howest.be
Abstract The digital era reached nearly into every household which means that almost everybody can access the internet. The industry is reacting on that behavior. Crowdsourcing might be the next gap in the market at least if its done in the right way. What exactly is crowdsourcing and why is it a very hot topic for the moment? This paper surveys the endless possibilities of crowdsourcing on the net, implementing them in the four pillars of Innowiz [1] design method. By analyzing state of the art applications like Redesignme and 99Designs in combination with many recent articles, the focus is creating a model to locate crowdsourcing in a design process.

enemy attacks. It had the power to gain a fast consensus because other experts could anonymously give feedback. This method allowed them to be gradually be swayed by the majority without getting under social pressure. The participants were able to see what others told and they could add comment. It resulted in high efficient collaboration because every other expert could join anonymous and give his opinion [5]. The evolution towards crowdsourcing as known today hasnt changed that much. The major difference now is public reward. The inventor, creator or designer wants to be known for the public to whom he is showing his work. Fig 1 shows a series of projects divided over the timeline. One of the most popular projects with the rising of the internet is Wikipedia. Another great example is IStockPhoto were the crowd can upload their work of art and sell it. What once used to be the job of a professional that asked a lot of money for it is now accessible due the rise of digital cameras and photo editing software. The new buzzword crowdsourcing as known today is becoming very popular from this point on and is on its way to expand exponentially.

Keywords-component; Crowdsourcing, Innowiz, designtools, industrial design

I.

INTRODUCTION

Crowdsourcing might be a hot topic, it isn't invented in the last decade, even when Jef Howe in 2006 mentioned it for the first time in his article on wired magazine [2]. It's already since human kind on the planet, but why is it now becoming an interesting case? Is it the money, the power, the high speed development of our society? The fact is that our highly industrialized civilizations can access the internet. Already many know the possibilities of crowdsourcing. The problem is that they arent always aware of the drawbacks to source a crowd. How can somebody start a crowdsourcing project and what should he be aware of? The topics in this paper will sort out the drawbacks to complete a vision of crowdsourcing in a design process. II. WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

Figure 1. Genesis of Crowdsourcing, timeline [3]

References go back until 1714 when the British government had to find a solution for The Longitude problem [3]. They gave out a price to whoever came up with a solution to navigate by longitude over sea. It was almost unsolvable in that time but one man had found a solution; John Harrison. He invented the marine chronometer. In other words; an accurate, vacuum sealed pocket watch. This might have been the first crowdsourcing project ever where innovation and creativity can come from anywhere. Eric Raymond told us different What sociologists once called the Delphi effect and what we now call the Wisdom of the Crowds [4]. The Delphi method was created back in 1944. Experts could give their give their opinion of possible

III.

THE MEANING OF CROWDSOURCING

Designing a product starts with creating ideas and a way to communicate these with each other and to the costumer. Either this can be done by sorting out the best solution with the team or by consulting the consumers to whom to product will be sold to. This last one might be a better solution. Question remains; How to get the attention of the many and get their focus on it in an efficient way? Setting up a poll isnt always the good way to do it. Although there will always be need of a filter to separate the good ideas from the bad. Searching for the right specific answers as a designer is the point where crowdsourcing comes in as a very good tool.

Crowdsourcing is a new buzzword and it started with Web 2.0 that got worldwide attention as a new business paradigm. The purpose of sourcing the crowd has been embraced by collective invention, free software and open innovation. The term open Innovation is already know a long time and was first mentioned by the book Open Innovation by Henry Chesbrough in 2003 [6]. He describes the term in a business perspective. But it lacks the specific role of the crowd. The baseline for open innovation is that the most relevant ideas and technologies are created outside the company. External sources of knowledge are thus the main factor. Crowdsourcing takes place with the conscious intention of the expertise and skills of the crowd to mobilize for a particular purpose. This is a big difference with open innovation. A good definition of crowdsourcing can be described as: The outsourcing of a digital function or task to a wide audience through an open call. [7]. It describes the challenge given to the crowd, the creation of a community and a way of using tools for the crowd. a) Challenge; The task that must be forfilled from the crowd. These tasks can be divided into four steps. Problem definition, idea generation, idea selection and idea of communication. These will be dicussed later on. b) The crowd; These are the people that want to cooperate and participate the project. Its imporant to determine how to motivate the crowd, how to estimate the amount of participants and control the need of knowdlegde to participate. c) The application; This is the establishment of the crowdsouring project. Its the part where the tools come in. IV. THINK BEFORE YOU ACT

good motivational mix, known as the four Fs Fame, Fortune, Fun and Fulfillment can help sort things out quickly here. [9] [10] a) Fun; Engaging the crowd for the project is crucial. Nobody wil participate in a boring project. Creating a funfactor wil bring more succes. b) Fulfillment; The project needs to be useful and make sense. If the participant does not have the feeling that, what he is do, is useful he will not participate. c) Fame; Being recognized is a great motivation to participate. The recognition must come from the brand and the customers to forfill this motivation. d) Fortune; Most of the time participating in a big project will not lead to fortune. Never the less offering a financial reward to the participant can change the point of view and it wil be a good motivation as well. This can be done in different ways; early bird prizes, specific prizes, general prizes, [10] V. MAKING YOUR OWN CROWD SOURCE APPLICATION

Many companies or individuals want to start sourcing to crowd for their project and make money with it. The classic way of working is using statistics to learn about the group to whom the designer wants to make a product for. With crowdsourcing coming up things are about to change. As many have already heard of it and searched out the internet to find out how to do it, crowdsourcing might become very successful sooner than could be imagined. First things first, having a plan is a start, getting a crowd could be a mission. So how to find that crowd? Keeping in mind that not everyone that applies for the project will deliver good work at the end. There will always be people who will deliver more work than the others. For some projects it might be easier to have a crowd with basic knowledge of the subject. Sometimes it might help to have some people with skills on other territories to bring different visions in the project or a new way of thinking. Theres a rule out on the field that says 90:9:1 and this tells us something about the participation level. Only up to 1% of the community will contribute very active and will Unlock new opportunities while 9% of the community may have interest to vote, rate or leave a comment on certain posts. Those 9% will also be enthusiastic to refine the concepts. The major 90% of all will just sit back and consume the content that they can get and validate the concepts [9] [11]. So translating this to crowdsourcing would mean that picking the right mix of people can make the project stand or fall. At least if the intension is not to do it all alone.

Thinking about making a crowd sourced project is only a start. Things still can go wrong sooner than anyone can think. There are some drawbacks or boundaries to think of first. Do not misunderstand crowdsourcing for open innovation by only gathering outside the company and expecting that all the good ideas and decisions will come from others. Often companies will use some kind of crowd sourcing technique for this but they arent fully aware of that. Crowdsourcing is describable as tapping the minds of many [8]. Its a technique to widen the range of thoughts, with full control of it. One drawback here is, as told previous, there needs to a clear task for the crowd. As enthusiastic as they might be, to focus needs to be correct to maximize the success. Never the less, being flexible is a required compensation to start with. Sturgeons law says: 90% of all is mostly useless. To sort this out there needs to be a system where the crowd or the company can decide whats good enough. When starting up the project, finding out a way to attract people to participate is one point but another one is the barrier for those who want to participate. Keeping this as low as possible will lead to bigger success. Although making it to low might lead to useless groups in the crowd. Thinking about a

Figure 2. Not all consumers are created equal. [11]

Now that theres a crowd its time to get a focus on the right questions. Make the expectations clear and find a way to build up the enthusiasm for the project. The Behavior Model [12] of BJ Fogg shows the pitfall of making a wrong discussion when it comes to motivating the crowd, knowing the abilities and finding a way to trigger those correct. Its easy to motivate somebody for an easy task but it will become very hard when its the other way around. Next is setting up a plan of communication. At this stage there are two directions to take: The virtual crowd or the physical crowd. The first one will require a platform on the internet where all the people can communicate with each other. For the last one there needs to be a location where everybody can meet and work together as a crowd instead of doing this online. Research showed out that funding the crowd will encourage them to deliver better work [13]. A competition against each other is a good way of putting this in reality. Several projects are already using this method. For example: 99 designs. [14] Next is making the rules clear, protecting the work from all the people who participate and make the actual product. Rules can prevent abuse and guard the outcome of the project at the end. All these elements cant fit together if theres no leader to feed, control and set up deadlines for the crowd. Without organization its almost impossible to become success, especially when working together with a huge amount of unknown individuals. The model Fig.3 represents the influences that affect the success of the project indirectly and the motivation of the crowd directly. This could be a summary of all above mentioned subjects. Notice that the relationship between motive alignment and crowdsourcing is bidirectional. The reason behind this is easy, nobody becomes success without effort. If there is no crowd, there will be no success. But without success the crowd doesnt want to continue participating because there isnt fulfillment.

Figure 3. Crowdsourcing Critical Success Factor Model [15]

VI.

SOURCING ON THE RIGHT MOMENT

Its important as a designer to find the good angle and moment to source for ideas or answers from the consumers. Doing research and gathering benchmarks will give the designer a certain interpretation, which must be as wide as possible to design a product for as many people as possible. Sourcing the crowd directly and letting them give the answers saves the designer time and prevents him from creating a wrong vision concluded by his own. When a designer is looking for answers its necessary to bear in mind what stage of the progress hes in. Therefore it might be useful to categorize these. The model below describes the connection and possibilities between crowdsourcing and the four pillars of the INNOWIZ model. INNOWIZ is founded in Kortrijk at the Howest University College and collects dozens of tools for industrial designers. These tools help designers through their creative process to find new ideas and solutions. Innowiz consists of four pillars that together make up one iteration of a creative process. A. Problem definition In this stadium sourcing to the consumers isnt an easy job to do. The temptation in this stage is very big to set up a poll. As an example, when designing a kitchen product, it will be very easy to ask; Whats the most annoying when you use a mixer? Rather than collect a mixer, get a team of enthusiasts and test some mixers out to find out the problems. Oversee the problem and communicate on different ways to get the good answers.

Let the crowd solve the problem When dealing with a problem things might lead the designer to a competition to solve things out with the crowd. First of all he needs to define the problem exactly to prevent himself of misinterpretation from the crowd. Bearing in mind that he needs to be flexible if he wants to succeed and fulfill the right expectation. After that making things public is the next step, build up a community and make a plan for a good reward. For example publicity or money. B. Idea generation This stage is probably the easiest stage to fit in crowdsourcing techniques. Through a big variety of possible media people can communicate and help each other out by searching ideas. Though getting the right ideas is a not a matter of shouting out the problem. Sourcing on different platforms from different angles will result in dozens ideas. Setting up a contest could work out here too. Making the boundaries clear and set up a good theme. Another way to get new creative ideas is by setting up a game. A game that inspires the crowd to supply new ideas from different viewpoints. Be aware that the crowd should be very motivated to participate this game. If they dont have fun with it, they wont come. C. Idea selection As a third there must be a way to separate the good ideas from the less fitting ones. Getting information from the consumers in this stage becomes very interesting. Use an efficient way with a low barrier, like a rating system. Dont set up a poll with endless possibilities or numbers. Use clear and significant options to guide the designer, if the concept is not ready for the market and needs a deeper work out. On the other hand options must be open to select if the concept is ready to be sold to the customer. With this way of handlings the crowd will give each other feedback and bring the concepts to a higher level. D. Communicate the idea In every stage of the project and especially near the end the idea must be communicated, this is the last stage. This is the stage to decide if it will be a go or no go. And who better than the crowd can decide about it? Doing this by requirements and wishes listed up in an excel sheet is a possibility, still this will be subjective because the designer will decide to look at the concept in the way he feels good about it. This can lead to a very different product that might not be so successful for the wide public. Another added value by communicating the idea is status and rewards for the individuals among the crowd. By communicating the others will notice good work from certain individuals what will result in fulfillment and fame. Invite the crowd to test the product. Come up with some working prototypes and invite friends and family to test the product. Or organize an event where dozens of people will

show up. Clue here is to attract the audience. See what happens and use the feedback of each individual. Dont forget that communication is all about feedback. This could be feedback by low sellings or ratings which indirectly require a better workout form the product. When the product has many buyers the people will notice the good work and they will give indirect feedback to that participant for being a good designer. All of the four above levels can be fitted into each pillar separately. For example, if the designer has a problem to define, he will ask the crowd for their problems with the product. Which will be their ideas generated. To specify the problem there will be a selection of those ideas and all of this will not happen without communication. This is why each individual pillar will have many cycles consisting of all four pillars. A wide range of state of the art crowdsourcing projects are listed up below Table.1. Not only pure product design projects are listed up. Because they all represent the essence of above described knowledge in their specific task.
TABLE I.
Tool

CROWDSOURCING TOOLS
Description

Give a Minute

Spread ideas to the crowd on a online wall. The big wall and different flashy colors creates a good fun factor and motivation to look for all the ideas. Link: http://giveaminute.info/ Post an idea and let it be created or designed by somebody else. Or be the designer to connect in the network and choose between various jobs. Link: http://connect.redesignme.com/ Design and/or buy designed T-shirt. Participate in different levels of the process and join the community. Link: http://www.threadless.com/ Challenges placed by companies can be for filled with solutions by students. Link: http://www.brainrack.com A hierarchic system with users, contributors and members that form all together the big crowd to work together on projects. There could be a barrier because there is nothing more to see than a video without signing up. Link: http://bettermeans.com/ Make a design brief, give or take feedback and pick a winning design. Link: http://99designs.com Bring out ideas and let them be voted by others to get feedback and to choose the best result that bubbles up. Link: http://ideascale.com/ When a designer has created a product but he cant find the fundings for it Sponsume could be the solution. Link: http://www.sponsume.com/

Redesignme | connect

Threadless

Brainrack

Bettermeans

99 designs

IdeaScale

Sponsume

Tool

Description

[7]

Instructables

Create tools or product by using the guidelines and experience from other members who have posted their ideas online. Link: http://www.instructables.com/
a. Wide range of tools founded on the internet.

[8]

[9] [10]

As seen in the table above, most of the crowdsourcing tools cant be categorized in only one pillar of Innowiz. The fact is that there is always communication within the community and most of the time the crowd can select and decide for the best concept. This last one is very important to separate the good concepts from the bad. VII. THE KEY TO SUCCES This design strategy doesnt come without pitfalls as mentioned before. The most dangerous one is getting the right crowd. Triggering the right people for the right job is the clue. Sometimes it will be easier to have a crowd with a certain level of knowledge about the problem to maximize the impact of the small percentage of idea generators within the crowd [16]. Another problem is bounty. Rewarding the crowd leads to positive results. This reward isnt always money. Recognition is often a much better choice. The last two important drawbacks are speed and capacity. In this digital era these will deal with social networking and servers. Once a project has started and people are getting interested things will go very fast online, certainly if they can win prices or publicity.

[11] [12] [13]

[14] [15] [16]

[17] [18] [19]

[20]

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[3]

[23]

[24]

[4]

[25]

[5] [6]

[26]

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