COBEE -‐ A CROWDSOURCING

PLATFORM FOR INTERACTION DESIGN

OF SOCIAL WEB APPLICATIONS

Master Thesis in Product Service System DesignStudent: Ana Rink; Tutor: Cabirio CautelaCo-tutor: Massimo MenichinelliPolitecnico di Milano

Politecnico di Milano

Faculty of Design

Product Service System Design

Master Program (PSSD) AA 2009-‐2010

COBEE -‐ A CROWDSOURCING PLATFORM FOR INTERACTION DESIGN OF SOCIAL WEB APPLICATIONSMaster Thesis in Product Service System DesignStudent: Ana Rink; Tutor: Cabirio CautelaCo-tutor: Massimo MenichinelliPolitecnico di Milano

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To my family, friends and everyone who sup-‐ported me during the writing of this thesis

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ABSTRACT (ENGLISH) 7

ABSTRACT (ITALIANO) 9

INTRODUCTION 11

CHAPTER 1: OPEN INNOVATION AND CROWDSOURCING 19

1.1. FROM “NOT INVENTED HERE” TO “PROUDLY FOUND ELSEWHERE” 20

1.2. CROWDSOURCING -‐ OUTSOURCING TO THE CROWDS 29

1.3. THE CONDITIONS FOR BUILDING OPEN INNOVATION COMMUNITIES 37

1.4. GUIDELINES FOR A CROWDSOURCING PROJECT 49

CHAPTER 2: CROWDSOURCING APPLIED TO DESIGN PROCESS 51

2.1. DESIGN AS A KNOWLEDGE GENERATION AND COMBINATION PROCESS 52

2.2. DEBATE ABOUT DESIGN CROWDSOURCING AND THE SPEC-‐WORK 57

2.3. PARTICIPATION AND DESIGN: FROM CUSTOMIZATION TO DESIGN CONTESTS 60

2.4. INTERACTION DESIGN AND CROWDSOURCING 80

2.5. A SURVEY ABOUT CROWDSOURCING 86

2.6. CONCLUSIONS 88

Introduction

5CHAPTER 3: ANALYSIS OF THE CROWDSOURCING PLATFORMS 91

3.1. CASE STUDIES: INTRODUCTION 92

3.2. CAMBRIAN HOUSE 94

3.3. CROWDSPRING 100

3.4. REDESIGNME 108

3.5. CONCLUSIONS OF CASE STUDY RESEARCH 114

CHAPTER 4: PLATFORM FOR CROWDSOURCING INTERACTION DESIGN IN SOCIAL WEB APPLICATIONS 123

4.1. INTERACTION DESIGN OF SOCIAL WEB APPLICATIONS 124

4.2. DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM AND THE STRATEGIC QUESTIONS 138

4.3. THE BUSINESS MODEL AND THE STRATEGY OF THE PLATFORM 140

4.4. SERVICE/SOLUTION (HOW) 145

4.5. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PLATFORM 179

4.6. THE PLAN FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENT 188

4.7. CONCLUSIONS 192

BIBLIOGRAPHY 194

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been shown that the tacit knowledge exchange, in-‐

dispensable for innovation process, is very effective

in these communities.

This led to the phenomenon of Enterprise 2.0 that

emerged when numerous companies recognized the

need for integrating social aspects in their project

management and communication with the consum-‐

ers. Many studies showed the advantages of social

web applications for B2C (Business-‐to-‐Consumer)

communication, especially for marketing purposes

and for engaging the customer in a conversation.

The proliferation of social media platforms, branded

applications and widgets shows this trend, as well

as the predictions that the investment in social me-‐

dia will increase in the future.

Social web application design is an emerging field,

that could benefit from crowdsourcing by gather-‐

ing insights about communities and harnessing in-‐

novative ideas. Some crowdsourcing services for

web design already exist, however they usually

only focalize on the visual aspects of a web page

and adopt in most cases the form of a contest. The

brokering/intermediation services and the contest

model of participation that those platforms adopt are

not enough for a successful collaboration in design

projects. We believe that interaction design projects

can benefit significantly when the advisor approach

is adopted, where the platform provides an additional

value to the community of innovators and the com-‐

panies. In addition to that, the platform works as a

selection mechanism for collaboration opportunities.

It adopts therefore a mixed open innovation model

by combining crowdsourcing and traditional de-‐

sign collaboration forms. We believe that this model

can foster the forming of a consolidated and loyal

community of professionals, a rarity in nowaday’s

crowdsourcing landscape.

Cobee is a multi-‐sided crowdsourcing platform for

interaction design of social web applications, provid-‐

ing an online collaboration space and tools for inter-‐

action designers, programmers and companies.

The recent research in innovation and knowledge

management show, that opening organizations

boundaries and adopting the mindset „Proudly

Found Elsewhere“ is indispensable for achieving

competitiveness and for fostering innovation. One

of the open innovation approaches – crowdsourcing,

or outsourcing to the crowd – has been applied by

many organizations and became an issue for numer-‐

ous discussions. Sustainers of crowdsourcing argue

that it will become one of the main future organiza-‐

tional forms, while the contrarians criticize its tem-‐

porariness and un-‐sustainability.

Lead user innovation studies by Eric von Hippel dem-‐

onstrate the benefits of harnessing knowledge from

the users on the leading edge of the market. Multi-‐

ple design crowdsourcing cases show the benefits

that both companies and participants receive from

the process. One of the reasons why this new pro-‐

duction model can often compete with the traditional

models, is the power that lays in the networked com-‐

munities of practice, bound by the common interests

and supported by the network technologies. It has

Cobee is a multi-‐sided crowdsourcing platform for interaction design of social web applica-‐tions, providing an online collaboration space and tools for interaction designers, program-‐mers and companies.

ABSTRACT (ENGLISH)

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Per queste e altre ragioni, il fenomeno di Enter-‐

prise 2.0 (impresa 2.0) è emerso quando numerose

aziende riconobbero la necessità di integrare gli as-‐

petti sociali nella comunicazione extra-‐aziendale, per

sostenere le communities of practice e lo scambio

della conoscenza tacita all’esterno dall’azienda e per

promuovere la propria immagine. Molti studi hanno

dimostrato i vantaggi dell’approccio di integrazione

di social media applications nella comunicazione

B-‐2-‐C (Business-‐to-‐Consumer), sopratutto per le

finalità di marketing e di comunicazione con i consu-‐

matori. La proliferazione delle piattaforme di Social

Media, branded applications e widget dimostrano

questo trend, che crescerà nel futuro secondo molte

previsioni.

Social web application design, nell’area più grande

di interaction design, è un settore emergente, che

potrebbe beneficiare dal processo di crowdsourc-‐

ing raccogliendo delle idee innovative e accedendo a

una grande comunità di specialisti. Alcuni servizi di

crowdsourcing per il web design esistono già. Tut-‐

tavia i loro servizi si limitano al design degli aspetti

visuali del sito web e adottano spesso il modello di

design contest. Tuttavia il servizio di intermediario/

broker e il modello di contest non sono più suffici-‐

enti oggigiorno per una collaborazione di successo.

Serve un modello che prevede un valore aggiunto sia

per la comunità degli innovatori, sia per le aziende.

Questo è possibile adottando un modello interme-‐

dio tra le nuove forme di collaborazione e quelle più

tradizionali: dove la piattaforma funziona come un

meccanismo di selezione per la collaborazione con

le aziende. Oltre questo la piattaforma deve fornire

uno spazio e gli strumenti necessari per la collabo-‐

razione tra i membri della comunità. Noi crediamo,

che questo tipo di piattaforma può aiutare a costru-‐

ire una comunità consolidata e fedele di innovatori,

una rarità nelle piattaforme di crowdsourcing di oggi.

Cobee è una piattaforma di crowdsourcing per

l’interaction design delle applicazioni web sociali,

che propone uno spazio online di collaborazione e

gli strumenti per gli interaction designer, gli svilup-‐

patori e le aziende.

La recente ricerca sull’innovazione e sulla gestione

della conoscenza dimostra, che l’apertura delle con-‐

fini delle organizzazioni e l’adozione del concetto

“Proudly Found Elsewhere” (orgogliosamente trova-‐

to altrove) è importante per favorire la competitività

e l’innovazione. Uno degli approcci di Open Innova-‐

tion – crowdsourcing – è stato adottato da molte or-‐

ganizzazioni e divenne la questione delle numerose

discussioni. I sostenitori del crowdsourcing sosten-‐

gono che esso diventerà una delle principali forme

organizzative del futuro, mentre i scettici criticano

la sua temporaneità e l’insostenibilità.

Gli studi di Eric von Hippel sul lead-‐user (utente in-‐

novatore) hanno mostrato i vantaggi che un’azienda

può ricevere dalle innovazioni sviluppate dagli utenti

esperti, che si trovano al di là del mercato degli uti-‐

lizzatori medi. I casi di crowdsourcing applicato al

design dimostrano i benefici che il processo porta

ai partecipanti e alle aziende. Una delle ragioni che

spiega, perché questo nuovo modello di innovazione

spesso compete o sorpassa i modelli di produzione

tradizionali, è il potere che risiede nelle comunità

di pratica (communities of practice). I partecipanti

delle comunità di pratica sono legati dagli interessi

comuni e la loro attività è sopportata dalle tecnologie

di rete. Lo scambio di conoscenza tacita, indispen-‐

sabile per il processo di innovazione, viene trasferita

in un modo molto efficace nelle comunità suddette.

Cobee è una piattaforma di crowdsourcing per l’interaction design delle applicazioni web sociali, che propone uno spazio online di collaborazione e gli strumenti per gli interaction designer, gli sviluppatori e le aziende.

ABSTRACT (ITALIANO)

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ABOUT THIS PAPER

2. Crowdsourcing approach in design: this part

provides an overview about uses of crowd-‐

sourcing in design process, what kind of crowd

participation levels are there and how compa-‐

nies can benefit from this participation. In this

part we also analyze interaction design process

and how it can benefit from crowdsourcing.

3. Analysis of crowdsourcing platforms: this part

contains few study cases of crowdsourcing in

interaction design, analyzed from the point of

view of their business model, system, design

process and the platform characteristics. The

study cases are analyzed and crowdsourcing

guidelines are synthesized to provide a basis

for the project part.

4. The project part describes the problem individ-‐

uated in the previous chapters and presents a

strategy and a service of a crowdsourcing plat-‐

form for interaction design of social web appli-‐

cations. It contains the implementation part of

the project as well.

METHODOLOGY

On order to reach the objectives posed by this the-‐

sis, the following methodology was chosen: a desk

research and revision of existing literature about

open innovation and especially crowdsourcing was

conducted. Successively the applications of crowd-‐

sourcing approach in design were examined for in-‐

dividuating how crowdsourcing approach can bring

benefits to design process. They were examinated

through their websites, as well as a literature review.

Further on, different cases of existing crowdsourc-‐

ing platforms where interaction design projects took

place, were examined. They were put into matrixes

and mapped for individuating the relation between

OBJECTIVES

The objective of this thesis is to delineate crowd-‐

sourcing as one of open innovation approaches, and

to analyze how it can be applied to design process.

This paper consist out of four parts:

1. Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing chapter:

describes the reasons that led to the adoption

of open innovation approach in industries, what

are its characteristics and advantages for com-‐

panies, especially in the case of crowdsourcing

approach. It also outlines the issues of Open In-‐

novation communities: conditions for creation

of open innovation communities, motivations to

participate, roles that participants achieve.

How can crowdsourcing be applied to interaction design process and how to build a crowd-‐sourcing platform for design of social web applications?

INTRODUCTION

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project type, design process and crowdsourcing ap-‐

proach. Every case was studied from the literature,

by examining the platform itself or by e-‐mail conver-‐

sation with the administration team. This was use-‐

ful for defining the guidelines for the creation of a

design crowdsourcing platform.

Additionally to the desk research, a survey about

crowdsourcing application in interaction design was

conducted with interaction designers from some

companies around europe. This was useful to under-‐

stand if the platform would have potential custom-‐

ers, how interaction designers conduct a research

and which interaction design phases could benefit

best from crowdsourcing.

INTRODUCTION

We are living in the Epoque of a new revolution, com-‐

parable in its dimension and importance to the indus-‐

trial revolution (Tapscott&Williams, 2006). Like any

revolution it’s time of big economic, political, socio-‐

cultural and technological changes. These changes

especially affect the structures of our societies and

the ways of producing and working, it alters the tra-‐

ditional way to see production and consumption.

Inevitably these important changes influence the

post-‐industrial production processes, it reposi-‐

tions continuously the role of the producer, the user

and the consumer in the matrixes of production of

Open innovation and crowd-‐sourcing

Crowdsourcing in design projects

goods or services (Branzi, 2010). It is transforming

the process of production, where the old industrial

standards are substituted by a continuously chang-‐

ing landscape of new industrial processes. It is

transforming consumption, where it’s less and less

obvious who is consuming and who is producing,

where the level of subjectivity is increasing day by

day. It is influencing the repositioning and re-‐creat-‐

ing of old taxonomies and terminologies, by trigger-‐

ing apparition of new terms, for instance prosumer,

creasumer, co-‐designer, crowdsourcer, collaborati-‐

tion etc.

If the fundamentals of the economic, political, socio-‐

cultural and technological aspects of our societies

are getting more and more vulnerable, fluid, transi-‐

tional, it is even more complicated to define and de-‐

lineate such terms like innovation and design, which

are intrinsically complex and interstices of different

NOTES

[1] A.Branzi, Conferenza “Il design nell’epoca della

globalizzazione” http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=s85DhGPh00Q&playnext_from=TL&vide os=UmPvF3Dx4UI

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Analysis of the crowdsourcing platforms

Project part

disciplines. In the moment a term is defined and a

phenomenon is described, it is already old.

it is here, that the complexity of the dense and fluctu-‐

ating structures of people connected into networks,

intervenes. The apparent chaotic and disordered

natural movements of the molecular level of our

societies is co-‐evoluting with the evolution of our

economic, socio-‐cultural and technological systems

and supporting these changes. The understanding

of the concepts behind the intrinsic complexity of

these molecular networks is crucial for developing

systems of products and services and for finding in-‐

novative solutions.

The wisdom of crowds and their ability to act has

unveiled its surprising possibilities with rise of net-‐

working technologies. One of the most emblematic

examples of this crowd intelligence is Wikipedia -‐ the

world’s first encyclopedia compiled by the crowds.

This example shows how crowdsourcing can be

used to create collaboratively collective goods.

Crowdsourcing and its multiple applications became

the center of debate in our society, especially when

it comes to the topic of work abuse and disservice.

As the basic crowdsourcing model continues to mi-‐

grate from one area to another, there is a growing

tension between consolidated groups of profession-‐

als and the amateurs or “barbarians at their gates”

(Howe, 2008, p. 21). Some centuries ago this ten-‐

sion affected the world of scribes (with the invention

of Gutenberg‘s printing technology and democrati-‐

zation of print). Nowadays it altered the stock pho-‐

tography businesses, and a similar debate is taking

place in the world of design. The only possibility to

Design is considered a discipline, that has a strong

connection to knowledge management (Valsecchi,

2009) and it is a knowledge intensive collabora-‐

tive activity, requiring large amount of heuristic

knowledge. (Shakeri, 1998) The experiences, the

knowledge and the production of collaborative con-‐

tents are determinant for innovating (Valsecchi,

2008). However, this innovation doesn’t need to be

achieved only by relying on internal research: “You

need not invent the most new knowledge or the best

new knowledge to win. Instead, you win by making

the best use of internal and external knowledge in

a timely way, creatively combining that knowledge

in a new and different ways to create new products

or services“ (Chesborough, 2003, p. 52). Another

important aspect in design is its multidisciplinarity

and therefore necessity to confront with opinions of

people from different domains: “People who share

knowledge with individuals from different domains

are more creative” (Coenen, 2006).

Therefore we decided to make as determinant path

of this thesis the application of open innovation, in

particular crowdsourcing model, to interaction de-‐

act against time is to accept the new business mod-‐

els and to take advantage of them. Design agencies

and firms that are fighting tough against crowd-‐

sourcing platforms, will have to accept the possible

benefits of this business model (Howe, 2008).

Design is considered a discipline, that has a strong connection to knowledge management and it is a knowledge in-‐

tensive collaborative activity, requiring large amount of heuristic knowledge.

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sign process. The question is, how can interaction

design benefit best from crowdsourcing?

Recently design is transformed from only designing

esthetic and functional qualities of products, to stra-‐

tegic initiatives of innovation (Gafforio & Pellizzari,

2002). The number of “Design-‐oriented” compa-‐

nies is growing, and accordingly to that design plays

a more important role in the success of a firm. In

consequence, designers get confronted with new

product and service sectors and work in areas of

intersection of different sectors. “For that reason,

there is a consideration in the design community,

that designing today means first of all managing

information, and being informed of recent events

in research, by using more and more sophisticated

research and project tools.” (Gafforio & Pellizzari,

2002).

Social web application design is one of such new

sectors, on the interstice between different disci-‐

plines. It is an emerging sector, driven by the need

of numerous companies to implement a social web

application (also called enterprise social software

or Enterprise 2.0) for communication with the em-‐

ployees (B2E), with the business partners (B2B) and

with the customers (B2C). Numerous leading com-‐

panies already implemented social networking and

collaboration tools for the external communication

and other companies are following them. Social web

application design is therefore a growing sector.

In this thesis we are going to explore how crowd-‐

sourcing model can be applied to the design process

of social web applications. It is a complex process

requiring a lot of multidisciplinary knowledge, and

crowdsourcing can provide this multidisciplinarity

and different view angles, which are important for

achieving innovation according to Nonaka (2000).

Another advantage is the ability of networked com-‐

munities to solve complex problems through their

intrinsic complexity (Menichinelli, 2006).

The question that we ask in this thesis: what kind

of crowdsourcing model can be suited best for so-‐

cial web application design, how to provide an added

value to the community of innovators, what phases

of the design process should be crowdsourced and

what tools have to be designed for supporting the

process.

For answering this question we conducted a re-‐

search about crowdsourcing, analyzed the mecha-‐

nisms behind it and the possibility to apply crowd

participation to different design phases. We exam-‐

ined several study cases of crowdsourcing platforms

for outlining guidelines for the project phase. In the

Project Part we are going to describe the platform

for crowdsourcing of social web applications and the

tools for supporting the design process.

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A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY

Before starting this writing we would like to define a

few terms that we are going to use in course of this

thesis. There is recently a big confusion of terms

regarding all the online collaborative activities and

phenomenons in the press and online media, there-‐

fore we need to clarify those terms first.

The term “open” as the opposite of “closed” is de-‐

fined by the Oxford dictionary as something “allow-‐

ing people or things to go through”. It can also mean

not fastened, not enclosed, not surrounded by any-‐

thing, not confined. It also means that it is available

or ready to use, not hidden, known to everyone, not

yet finally decided or settled. Open can be also in-‐

tended as accessible2.

Another term used often here is open innovation.

Open innovation is an approach to business that

uses the inflows and outflows of knowledge in the

firm for accelerating innovation processes, that con-‐

trary to closed innovation, are happening also out-‐

side the firm.

Open Source is another important term and liter-‐

ally means “opening” the source-‐code of a product,

where the source-‐code doesn’t necessarily refers

to the software products, the source code can be a

set of instructions necessary to produce an artifact.

However the term got coined initially in the field of

software development business.

with the idea of giving a freedom in using a soft-‐

ware product, where “free” is intended as in “free

speech” not as in “free beer”. The main difference

between open source and free software is that in

free software not only the source code is open, the

user of free software can use it for any scope, study

it, modify it and distribute it freely.

The development processes, community dynamics,

structure and rules behind free software and open

source are very similar and therefore many scholars

use the term FLOSS (Free libre open source soft-‐

ware) when describing processes taking place in

both development models.

Open design3 is a term that was inspired by free and

open source software. Open design is the develop-‐

ment of products or, machines and systems through

NOTES

[2] Menichinelli, 2006, p.19

[3] http://www.adciv.org/Open_collaborative_design

Before Open Source however, there was another

movement, the “predecessor” of open source, that

is called “free software”. Free software is not only

an approach to software development, it is an en-‐

tire philosophical, social and ethical movement initi-‐

ated by Richard Stallman back in the 80ies. it begins

The development processes, com-‐munity dynamics, structure and

rules behind free software and open source are very similar and therefore

many scholars use the term FLOSS

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use of publicly shared design information. The phi-‐

losophy of open design is similar to the one of free

software, because everything created through the

process of open design follows the principle of “cop-‐

yleft” which is a copyright applied to creative work

and ensuring that anyone can freely use it or build

upon it, while the derivative works inherit the same

terms.

Peer-‐to-‐Peer usually abbreviated as P2P is any dis-‐

tributed network architecture composed of partici-‐

pants that make portions of their resources available

to other participants, without the need for central co-‐

ordination. However peer-‐to-‐peer is often reduced to

this exchange activity and the philosophy at the basis

of this term is not considered. Peer-‐to-‐peer means

from equal to equal, where all the participants have

the same roles and positions in the network, where

the relational dynamics are based on this equality.

Peer production is the content that peers (partici-‐

pants that have equal roles and rights) produce. Peer

production relies on self-‐organizing communities

that work to produce a shared outcome. A process

similar to peer production is mass collaboration, as a

form of collective action where individuals are work-‐

ing on parts of the collective project, which is usu-‐

ally divided in modules. The regulation of mass col-‐

laboration usually appears through the artifact of the

collaboration itself and not direct social interaction.

The mass collaboration process occurs in collabora-‐

tive networks.

Collaborative networks can be seen as a connection

system that allows different people to connect and

to organize themselves for obtaining a result4. The

collaborative networks are based on decentralized

and flexible structures which allow the participants

to learn and evolve over time.

Crowdsourcing is a term that got coined by the jour-‐

nalist of Wired and writer Jeff Howe in 2006. The

term is a portmanteau of two words: crowd (any

group of people, corporation, researchers or unde-‐

fined general public) and outsourcing (delegating

activities to an entity outside the company). Crowd-‐

sourcing is a similar business model to outsourcing,

with the difference, that instead of relying on paid

professionals, the business is using unpaid or low-‐

paid amateurs, who use their spare time to create

content, solve problems or participate in corporate

R&D5. The main difference between crowdsourcing

and open source is that in crowdsourcing a company

is profiting from the results of crowd production,

while the crowd is often retributed with different

kinds of rewards, which vary from psychological to

economic rewards.

Wikinomics is a term coined by Don Tapscott in his

book “Wikinomics: how mass collaboration changes

everything”, released first in 2006. Tapscott defines

“wikinomics” as a new way for the leaders to com-‐

pete and be profitable by embracing “a new art and

science of collaboration we call wikinomics”6. This

is a new way to operate of corporations and econo-‐

mies, “based on new competitive principles such as

openness, peering, sharing, and acting globally.”7

NOTES

[4] Menichinelli, 2006

[5] Viitamaeki, 2008, p.20

[6] Tapscott, 2006, p.3

[7] Tapscott, 2006, p.3

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Wisdom of the crowds is a term used extensively

by James Surowiesky in his book “The Wisdom of

Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few

and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Econ-‐

omies, Societies and Nations”. The term means, ac-‐

cording to the author, an aggregation of informations

in groups, that as he argues can often be better than

information produced by any single member of the

group.

Wisdom of crowds concept is close to collective

intelligence concept, that was described by many

authors, but is mainly known because of the book

“L’intelligence collective. Pour une anthropologie du

cyberspace” by Pierre Lévy. According to the author,

collective intelligence is a group intelligence, which

allows individuals to build a sort of a living encyclo-‐

pedia, to invent something that is beyond the writing

and language, where the informations are distrib-‐

uted everywhere and coordinated everywhere not by

separated social organs, but as a totality of human

activity, that can be used by everybody (Levy, 1994,

p.20).

Web 2.0 is a term that became a buzzword recently.

It is a quite superficial term, dividing the history of

the web technologies and web dynamics into web

before web 2.0, where the web pages were mainly

static and the interaction was limited to navigating,

reading, searching and e-‐mailing. Web 2.0 differs

from Web 2.0 through interactive information shar-‐

ing, collaboration, interoperability and user-‐cen-‐

tered design and user-‐generated-‐content. For some

scholars UGC and crowdsourcing are two faces of

the same medal, where in the first case the sharing

of content and the platform constitute the motiva-‐

tion for users activities, while in the second case the

third aspect is added: an enterprise that has a role

of editor and facilitator, that adds structural and or-‐

ganizational aspects to the whole process.8

However recently, to the over-‐used term “web 2.0”

the new term “web 3.0” is added, which adds a fur-‐

ther aspect to the previously mentioned characteris-‐

tics of web 2.0 -‐ “the semantic web” (methods and

technologies that allow computers to understand

the meaning or “semantics” of the web content)

and “personalization”. Conrad Wolfram, the inventor

NOTES

[8] Ciuccarelli (2008), p.120

[9] www.wolframalpha.com

[10] http://www.itpro.co.uk/621535/q-‐a-‐conrad-‐wolfram-‐

on-‐communicating-‐with-‐apps-‐in-‐web-‐3-‐0

According to Lévy, collective intelligence is a group intelligence, which allows individuals to build a sort of a living en-‐cyclopedia, to invent something that is beyond the writing and language...

of Wolfram Alpha search engine9, argues that web

3.0 is where is where “the computer is generating

new information”, rather than humans.10 Web 3.0, ac-‐

cording to different scholars, will add to web 2.0 the

aspects of augmented reality, pervasive broadband,

wireless, sensors, geo-‐location services, portability

of personal web, consolidation of dynamic content,

advertainment, user engagement, mashups, focus on

the individuals rather than on content etc.

User is another term that is going to be used in this

thesis, even if it is quite outdated in the contest of

current web dynamics, for indicating the humans

that use the services or products. We will leave this

term in the contest of interaction design and service

design for the purpose of being understood, while

we will introduce the more adequate term partici-‐

pant in the context of collaboration and participation

dynamics.

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Introduction

19

CHAPTER 1:

OPEN INNOVATION AND CROWDSOURCING

“For having success nowadays enterprises have to open their borders and com-‐pete outside their walls for profiting from exterior resources and competences. [...] They make it possible, that their internal staff is taking care of value inte-‐gration and orchestration and consider the whole world as their Research and Development office” Tapscott, 2006

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THE REASONS OF CHANGE

“Most of the intelligent people nowadays are dis-‐

persed in different teams in multiple institutions.

One of the reasons why we need to find a way to

connect those people -‐ is because for creating new

innovation models we need to connect knowledge

from different areas, for example in such interstices

between different disciplines like bio-‐ and nanote-‐

chnologies.”12

Thirdly, globalization of markets was affecting the

modern economy by leading to a tough international

competition, the opening of international markets, a

higher speed of economic exchanges and mobility of

skilled people.

The mobility of skilled workers is the fourth circum-‐

stance that led to the change of enterprises busi-‐

ness models. The skilled knowledge workers of our

times have a tendency to move from one work place

to another, searching for better wages and bet-‐

ter self-‐realization opportunities. By hiring profes-‐

sionals the companies acquired skilled workers and

profited from their knowledge gained in the previous

work-‐place, without the need to invest in their train-‐

ing. Meanwhile the previous employers had to count

with negative effects of this “brain drain” from their

R&D departments.

Fifthly, globalization also led to speeding up of mar-‐

keting products and services, which again led to

higher competition and required faster change in

technology.

There are several factors, that influence the need to

change the way the enterprises run their businesses

nowadays. These factors trigger a transition, that

started in the mid Nineties and is still continuing.

First of all, knowledge became one of the main re-‐

sources of our times, and the right use of knowledge

insures competitive advantage to firms (Ciuccarel-‐

li, 2008). Our economy is a knowledge economy11,

where the intellectual production processes consti-‐

tute the core of economic activities. Knowledge is

an asset, that is not measurable, nor storable, nor

exclusive (more people can use it at a time), it per-‐

mits a mass access and therefore supports mass

collaborative activities.

Secondly, there is a growing amount of disciplines,

that are on the interstice between different fields.

“Most of the intelligent people nowadays are dispersed in different teams in multiple insti-‐tutions.” (Henry Chesbrough)

NOTES

[11] Enzo Rullani, Economia della Conoscenza

[12] Chesbrough, Henry (2003) Open Innovation:

The new imperative for creating and profiting from

technology. Boston: Harvard Business School Press

1.1. FROM “NOT INVENTED HERE” TO “PROUDLY FOUND ELSEWHERE”

Open innovation and crow

dsourcing

21

OPEN INNOVATION PARADIGM

tunity to get an immediate response from the users

and it allows to bring them into the “labs” by one

click of the mouse.

The social, economical and technological changes

listed above affected the way CEOs and managers

saw the production process. They had to reorgan-‐

ize their enterprises for introducing external knowl-‐

edge and exporting internal knowledge products.

Some of them slowly, others radically shifted from

“not invented here” biases to “proudly found else-‐

where” approach. This business model, that sup-‐

ports “Proudly Found Elsewhere” approach, is called

Open Innovation paradigm.

The sixth reason is the shift from analog to dig-‐

ital technologies and the increasing of networked

communications (Ciuccarelli, 2008), that enabled

even a more dynamic knowledge and information

“drain”. This is also connected to the increasing of

networked productive activities (Ciuccarelli, 2008),

which affect the way we work, exchange knowledge

and collaborate. It gives to the companies an oppor-‐

The term innovation has the origin in the latin verb “novus”, a verb that can mean different things depending on the object in question: a renewal, a change, or it can also mean revolutionize the object in question or invent something new.

Before starting to talk about innovation, let‘s clarify

the etymologic meaning of “innovation”. The term in-‐

novation has the origin in the latin verb “novus”, a

verb that can mean different things depending on the

object in question: a renewal, a change, or it can also

mean revolutionize the object in question or invent

something new. The oxford dictionary proposes two

meanings of the word “innovation”, depending on it’s

countability: “the introduction of new things, ideas

or ways of doing something”, or “a new idea, way of

doing something, etc., that has been introduced or

discovered”. This meaning is very close to invention,

however innovation doesn’t mean only invention.

Innovation means bringing invention to the market

(Chesbrough, 2003).

There are different strategies of innovating. Some

companies are basing their innovation processes on

extensive market research and analysis, guided by

marketing specialists. In this case the individuation

of market needs is affecting directly the process of

innovation. This innovation strategy is called market

pull approach.

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22 CLOSED INNOVATION PARADIGMRESEARCH DEVELOPMENT

CURRENT MARKET

RESEARCHPROJECTS

BOUNDARY OF THE FIRM

Other companies rely strongly on their

Research&Development departments and support

the inventions of new technologic discoveries born

there, which are successively translated into new

products and services. This approach is technol-‐

ogy driven and therefore called technology push ap-‐

proach.

Further on, there is a third kind of companies, which

perceive the value of their production in design of

the products. They introduce and support design de-‐

partment, which becomes the incubator of innova-‐

tion. The innovation happens there, when research

of new product languages and therefore the seman-‐

tic dimension of products are considered before the

market and technology dimensions. The companies,

that follow this approach are for instance the suc-‐

cessful northern italian companies like Alessi, Ar-‐

temide, B&B Italia, Cappellini, Cassina, Flos, Cartell

(Verganti, 2006). The CEO’s of these companies

perceive the importance of socio-‐cultural dimension

in the innovation process. Usually the process in-‐

cludes a tacit or explicit part of socio-‐cultural trend

research and consists in absorbing from a network

of distributed actors the tacit knowledge about

trends and presentiments of socio-‐cultural changes

(Verganti, 2006).

However, this kind of classification does not always

correspond to the reality, where innovation process

is very complex and polymorphic. Market, technol-‐

ogy and design constitute indispensable components

for innovation process (Cautela, 2007, p.24).

Among the listed innovation strategies, there is an-‐

other kind of innovation, an “innovation of innova-‐

tion” or a meta-‐innovation. It’s Open Innovation,

which means introducing a new business model for

realizing a successful product innovation and bring-‐

ing it to market. The idea about open innovation

leads back to the 60s, along with the first practices,

that adopted the open innovation approach. Howev-‐

er, the term “Open Innovation” got promoted for the

first time by William Chesbrough, professor and ex-‐

ecutive director of Center for Open Innovation at UC

Berkeley. Open innovation is defined by Chesbrough

as a use of inflows and outflows of knowledge in

the firm to accelerate the internal innovation and to

expand the markets of external use of knowledge13.

It is opposed to the Closed Innovation model, that

FIG. 1: Closed Innovation funnel, from: Chesbrough, Henry (2003)

Open Innovation: The new imperative for creating and profiting

from technology. Boston: Harvard Business School Press

Open innovation and crow

dsourcing

23

promotes the “doing it all by themselves”14 approach.

In his book Open Innovation, Chesbrough describes

the change that many firms have successfully un-‐

dergone, for changing from “Not Invented Here”15

mindset to “Proudly Found Elsewhere”.

Open innovation is a new paradigm, which assumes

that firms should use external flows of knowledge

and market out the internal knowledge through ex-‐

ternal channels. The business model uses inter-‐

nal and external ideas to create value. The internal

knowledge can be exported through start-‐ups spon-‐

sored by the same company or external licensing.

The knowledge outside the firm can be imported

more freely and used for development of new prod-‐

ucts and services.

Why should companies open their doors to external

knowledge and what advantages does it bring? First

of all, it conserves false negatives, for instance ideas

that seem to be worthless, but later on unleash their

value. They turn out to be valuable in a new market

or combined with other products. For instance many

innovations of Xerox PARC16 became very success-‐

ful outside the company’s boundaries and turned out

into profitable products and services.

Secondly, Open Innovation approach speeds up the

work of R&D department by taking the innovations

off the shelf, by stimulating to produce more ideas

and by creating a healthy competition for outcomes

from research department inside the company. This

way the so-‐called metabolism of knowledge is in-‐

creasing. This affects positively the atmosphere in

FIG. 2: Open Innovation funnel, from: Chesbrough, Henry (2003)

Open Innovation: The new imperative for creating and profiting

from technology. Boston: Harvard Business School Press

NOTES

[13] Chesbrough Henry, Wim Vanharverbeke

(2008). Open Innovation: Researching a New

Paradigm, Oxford University Press, USA

[14] Idem

[15] the term “Not Invented Here” describes a social or

corporate culture of rejecting products or knowledge,

that is coming from an external source

[16] Xerox Parc research and co-‐development center funded in

1970 by Xerox was an Inkubator of many innovations related to

computer science. Unfortunately, because of closed innovation

approach and limited vision, the funder of Xerox PARC – Xerox -‐

didn’t manage to profit from most of the inventions made there.

OPEN INNOVATION PARADIGMRESEARCH DEVELOPMENT

CURRENT MARKET

RESEARCHPROJECTS

BOUNDARY OF THE FIRM

NEW MARKET

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R&D department, because the scientists see, that

their innovations are used (Chesbrough, 2003).

Thirdly, the Open Innovation model brings revenues

to the companies by exporting their IP to external

businesses, by licensing out the ideas or by funding

start ups through company’s venture capital depart-‐

probably influenced the actions of the first” (Ches-‐

brough, 2003).

Fourthly, it stimulates knowledge exchange in com-‐

pany’s environment and gives an opportunity to learn

from developments of out-‐licensed projects and start

ups, which discoveries can be useful for company’s

internal R&D. For instance IBM is one of the first

companies that started to sell it’s technology to ex-‐

ternal companies, crafting relations with customers

and learning from them (“First of a Kind” Program

was a contract between IBM and a leading customer

to solve commercially important problems).

Fifthly, it makes company advance by harnessing

knowledge from it’s surrounding. One of the ways

to harness the knowledge is the university-‐industry

collaboration. For instance Intel supports the fund-‐

ing of small research facilities – Lablets – located

near universities, for collaborating directly with pro-‐

fessors and students. The famous north italian de-‐

sign company Alessi harnesses the knowledge from

professionals of different expertise fields for work-‐

ing on their designs: “Nearly 30 years ago, Alessi

begins shifting away from in-‐house design and be-‐

comes one of the pioneers of open innovation. Today

the firm has relationships with some 200 external

designers, many of whom are much better known

for expertise in fields such as architecture than in

houseware design. A tea kettle by Frank Gehry and

a vase by Zaha Hadid are just two products of those

relationships.” 17

Sixth advantage is the reduction of the interdepend-‐

encies and complexity by introducing a more modu-‐

lar R&D architecture approach.

The advantages listed above don’t present all pos-‐

sible ways to profit from Open Innovation business

approach. New approaches, and new advantages are

explored in this field every day.

NOTES

[17] http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Strategy/

Innovation/Cultivating_innovation_an_interview_with_

the_CEO_of_a_leading_Italian_design_firm_2299

Open Innovation model brings revenues to the companies by exporting their IP

to external businesses and by harness-‐ing knowledge from their surrounding

ment. One of the examples of such Open Innovation

approach is Lucent’s New Venture Group (NVG). NVG

used to make an invention exit not only by funding a

start-‐up, but by analyzing it and making a business

model for it. If the new venture would develop into

something interesting for Lucent, it would reacquire

this venture from NVG. This was providing a growth

opportunity to many ideas exiting the Bell’s lab and

bringing value to Lucent itself. “Lucent’s NVG pro-‐

vided a second path to market, and this second path

Open innovation and crow

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25

CLOSED INNOVATION

Most of the smart people in our field work for us

Not all of the smart people work for us, so we must

find and tap into the knowledge and expertise of

bright individuals outside our company

To profit from R&D, we must discover, develop

and ship ourselevs

External R&D can create significant value; internal R&D

is needed to claim some portion of that value

If we discover it, we will get it to market first We don’t have to originate the research in order to profit

from it

If we are the first to commercialize we will winn Building a better business model is better than getting

to market first

If we create the most and the best ideas in the industry,

we will win

If we make the best use of internal and external ideas

we will win

We should control our intellectual property (IP) so that

our competitors don’t profit from our ideas

We should profit from others’ use of our IP, and we

should buy others’ IP whenever it advances our own

business model

OPEN INNOVATION

FIG. 3: Closed Innovation vs Open Innovation, from: Chesbrough, Henry (2003) Open Innovation: The new imperative for creating and profiting from technology. Boston: Harvard Business School Press

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LEAD USER INNOVATION

FIG. 4: Windsurfing (Image courtesy snapchris.com)

Opening the doors of the enterprises doesn’t mean

only letting inflows of knowledge from other firms

but also from the community of users, or “lead us-‐

ers”. “Lead user innovation” term got coined by Eric

Von Hippel in his book “Democratizing innovation”.

According to von Hippel the innovating user cannot

be the average user from marketing campaigns and

user-‐researches, because the technological state of

things is changing too fast and the average user has

an exposure to technologies that are rarely most ad-‐

vanced. Therefore the users that interest von Hippel

are the “lead users” that have two characteristics: 1)

they would benefit much from the innovative prod-‐

uct 2) they are informed better about tendencies and

technological state in his field of interest and there-‐

fore are able to predict the needs much better than

the average user. According to von Hippel, lead us-‐

ers “can develop exactly what they want, rather than

relying on manufacturers to act as their (often very

imperfect) agents” (von Hippel, 2005, p.1).

It has been shown by researchers that product de-‐

velopment and modification is a common behavior in

many fields. From 10% till nearly 40% of users report

having modified a product for in-‐house use or for

personal use (Franke and Hippel, 2003). Many of the

major innovations in numerous fields have been first

prototyped by users (Franke and von Hippel, 2003).

This question has been explored in oil processing,

computer innovations, machine tool innovations, sci-‐

entific instrument innovations, semiconductor and

electronic processing equipment, and sports equip-‐

ment innovations (Franke and von Hippel, 2003).

One of the areas of lead-‐user innovation can be

found in subculture activities, for instance windsurf-‐

ing. A high-‐performance equipment of windsurf-‐

ing technology was developed by an informal user

group in Hawaii. The high performance windsurfing

involves techniques that are known very well only by

the people performing them. Sonali Shah, a wind-‐

surfing enthusiast noticed the problem that many

windsurfers faced by jumping: there was no way to

keep the board with you. Sonali had a brilliant idea

of using footstraps for achieving a controlled flight.

This idea turned out to change the performance of

windsurfing and a snowball effect that multiplied the

number of people practicing the sport.

Another example of a subculture is the bicycling:

where the users develop very often the most out-‐

standing innovations. The enthusiasts of biking are

Open innovation and crow

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27

learning from their own experience for creating new

products (Ciuccarelli, 2008). Earlier bikers could

choose between fast bike with thin wheels-‐tires or

a more robust alternative build after the example

of Holland-‐Bike. Some passionate bikers in Cali-‐

fornia were not happy with their bikes and started

to modify them: they put larger tires, more robust

brakes -‐ these were the first prototypes of today’s

mountain-‐bike. Bicycle industry ignored this user-‐

led-‐innovation initially and started their production

only years later. Now 65% of all in bikes sold in the

USA are mountain-‐bikes (Guth, 2010, p.71).

According to von Hippel, lead-‐users produce innova-‐

tions that have a higher appeal in the marketplace,

which means a higher commercial attractiveness of

the products. The graphic above shows the results

of the survey that Franke and von Hippel (2003) con-‐

ducted with webmasters that used Apache server

software19 and eventually modified it by adding se-‐

curity modules. The sample of the respondents was

132 people. The researchers focused on relatively

technically interested and skilled users to ensure an

adequate representation of users that had modified

Apache security software (Franke and von Hippel,

2003). The “Lead-‐user-‐ness” of the webmasters is

calculated as the sum of two independent variables.

The first variable is the benefit that the user expects

from the developed product, which is determined

by the answers of the participants of the survey

expressed in the questionnaire as “Our organiza-‐

tion has a high need for server security” (7-‐point

Introduction and Overview 5

Why Many Users Want Custom Products (Chapter 3)

Why do so many users develop or modify products for their own use? Usersmay innovate if and as they want something that is not available on themarket and are able and willing to pay for its development. It is likely thatmany users do not find what they want on the market. Meta-analysis ofmarket-segmentation studies suggests that users’ needs for products arehighly heterogeneous in many fields (Franke and Reisinger 2003).

Mass manufacturers tend to follow a strategy of developing products thatare designed to meet the needs of a large market segment well enough toinduce purchase from and capture significant profits from a large numberof customers. When users’ needs are heterogeneous, this strategy of “a fewsizes fit all” will leave many users somewhat dissatisfied with the commer-cial products on offer and probably will leave some users seriously dissatis-fied. In a study of a sample of users of the security features of Apache webserver software, Franke and von Hippel (2003b) found that users had a veryhigh heterogeneity of need, and that many had a high willingness to pay to

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

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Estimated OLS curve

“Lead-user-ness” of users

Figure 1.1 User-innovators with stronger “lead user” characteristics develop innovations havinghigher appeal in the general marketplace. Estimated OLS function: Y = 2.06 + 0.57x,where Y represents attractiveness of innovation and x represents lead-user-ness ofrespondent. Adjusted R2 = 0.281; p = 0.002; n = 30. Source of data: Franke and vonHippel 2003.

FIG. 5: User-‐innovators with stronger “lead user” characteristics

develop innovations having higher appeal in the general

marketplace. Estimated OLS18 function: Y = 2.06 + 0.57x, where

Y represents attractiveness of innovation and x represents

lead-‐user-‐ness of respondent. (source: von Hippel, 2005)

NOTES

[18] OLS means ordinary least squares, which is a method

for estimating the unknown parameters in a linear regression

model (approach to modeling the relationship between a

scalar variable y and one or more variables denoted X) in

statistics. The method minimizes the sum of squared distances

between the observed responses in the dataset, and the

responses predicted by the linear approximation. The resulting

estimator can be expressed by a simple formula. Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_regression_model

[19] Apache web server software that is used on computer

servers connected to internet is an open source software

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rating scale). The second variable is the position of

the lead-‐user “ahead on an important marketplace-‐

trend”, expressed in the questionnaire as “We expe-‐

rience new server security needs earlier than most

other organizations” (7-‐point rating scale). The at-‐

tractiveness of innovation variable is defined as the

sum of two components. The first component is the

novelty of the innovation (self-‐assessed in the scale

between 1 and 7, where 1 = small improvement to an

existing product and 7 = completely new product).

The second component is the expected future gener-‐

ality of market demand (self-‐assessed, which scales

from 1 to 7, where 1 = very small market potential and

7 = very big market potential). These components

were determined on the basis of the answers of the

webmasters as well as estimation made by external

Apache experts. (von Hippel, 2006, p. 4)

The dependent variable “Innovative activities” was

determined by the answer of webmasters about the

the way they used Apache software: by doing some

modifications on it or not. From the sample of 132

webmasters 30 were doing modifications and there-‐

fore were included in the graphic above. As we see

According to von Hippel, lead-‐users produce innovations which have a higher appeal in the marketplace, which means a higher commercial attractiveness of the products.

from the graphic, the higher the “lead-‐user-‐ness” of

the users is, the higher the amount of products that

have the “attractiveness of innovation” characteris-‐

tics. This shows that users with lead-‐user charac-‐

teristics have the potential to produce more innova-‐

tive products that can have a higher market appeal.

Von Hippel argues, that as the lead-‐users are on the

leading side of the market respect the market trends,

the innovations they will bring to market will appeal

to other users too, therefore this would provide the

basis for the products that manufacturers would

wish to commercialize (von Hippel, 2005).

One of the reasons why there is a need for users

to participate in the development of the products,

is that many users don’t find what they want on the

market. Therefore there is always a gap between the

needs perceived by users and the features that the

products provide. That’s why the strategy adopted by

many companies “a few sizes fit all” will leave many

users somewhat dissatisfied with the commercial

products and probably will leave many users very

seriously dissatisfied (von Hippel, 2010, p.5).

This gap can be reduced by providing users with

tools and techniques for participation in the develop-‐

ment process.

Open innovation and crow

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29

WHAT IS CROWDSOURCING?

Rise of Crowdsourcing” in the Wired Magazine20.

However the concept dates back to the 18th cen-‐

tury when the early editions of The Oxford English

Dictionary were crowdsourced by volunteer con-‐

tributors sending in definitions on paper slips. In

1715, the British government ran an open contest to

source a decent maritime navigation solution, won

by a clockmaker called John Harrison. More recent-‐

ly, governments and industry alike have embraced

crowdsourcing through open prize contests such as

the X-‐Prize (backed by BT) – designed to stimulate

innovation, particularly in the fields of environment,

science and technology.21 In the industrial produc-‐

tion sector, P&G experimented and applied crowd-‐

sourcing business model in the end of nineties (Vi-‐

itimaki, 2008).

Another emblematic case around the same time is

the example of Goldcorp -‐ the canadian gold-‐mining

company. The business of Goldcorp was on a brink

of folding, in the time when CEO Rob McEvan decid-‐

ed to do something very unexpected and original. He

published company’s geological data on internet and

initiated a contest open to everybody, for finding gold

on the property. Seventy-‐seven submissions came

from around the world -‐ from geologist and other

professionals or amateurs, therefore using some

techniques unheard to Goldcorp. The company found

over $3 billion of gold and its market value rose ex-‐

ponentially (Libert&Spector, 2007).

We chose to examine the crowdsourcing phenom-‐

enon inside the bigger Open Innovation approach,

because of several reasons. First of all, crowdsourc-‐

ing is in the center of multiple debates nowadays,

because of the controversies of this approach and

because of the variety of uses it found. Second,

crowdsourcing is a phenomenon that is growing

very fast and new applications of this approach are

created every day. The third reason is my belief, that

this model of collaboration relates to the intrinsic

structures of our societies and the way we relate

and communicate (will be explained further). And

last but not least, I believe that this collaboration

model has still many undiscovered opportunities for

the future.

The term crowdsourcing got coined by journalist and

writer Jeff Howe in June 2006 in his article “The

Crowdsourcing is a portmanteau of two words: crowd (any group of people, corporation, re-‐searchers or undefined general public) and outsourcing

NOTES

[20] http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html

[21] Article “Crowdsourcing: Your recession -‐ Proof Marketing

Strategy” by Paul Marsden in Contageous Magazine, http://

www.viralculture.com/downloads/crowdsourcing.pdf

1.2. CROWDSOURCING -‐ OUTSOURCING TO THE CROWDS

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Crowdsourcing is a portmanteau of two words:

crowd (any group of people, corporation, research-‐

ers or undefined general public) and outsourcing

(delegating activities to an entity outside the com-‐

pany). Crowdsourcing is a similar business model

to outsourcing, with the difference, that instead of

relying on paid professionals inside a firm, it relies

on a multitude of people on the internet, that can be

paid or un-‐paid for their contribution. Another dif-‐

ference between outsourcing and crowdsourcing is

that, in the latter one the tasks are delegated from

the company to an undefined crowd of people, a

process where a very high amount of unpredictabil-‐

ity is present.

The process of crowdsourcing is not only quite un-‐

predictable, it is also apparently chaotic and incon-‐

trollable. It depends very much on crowd initiative,

the same way like in web 2.0 tools. In fact, for Ciuc-‐

carelli, crowdsourcing and User Generated Content

in web 2.0 are different sides of the same medal:

the first describes the abilities of users to gener-‐

ate content with a value recognized by communities,

while the second describes the point of view of the

enterprise to enter the external context, to external-‐

ize its activities by addressing the collective creative

power. The first is a bottom-‐up model where the us-‐

ers are incentivated through sharing and the plat-‐

form itself, while the second adds the editorial role

of the enterprise, that defines organizational bound-‐

aries and communicates precise and structured ob-‐

jectives (Ciuccarelli, 2008). The two phenomenons

-‐ web 2.0 and crowdsourcing arose with the advent

of internet technologies and both are nourished and

supported by these technologies.

Despite of the apparent chaos and uncontrollability

of these processes, there have been many success

FIG. 6: Crowdsourced sheep drawings from “The Sheep

Market” crowdsourcing project by Aaron Koblin, where

10.000 online workers were drawing a sheep for $0.02

each. Image source: Wired article “Crowdsourcing o

cottimismo intellettuale?”, http://www.wired.it/news/

archivio/2009-‐04/29/cottimismo-‐intellettuale.aspx

Open innovation and crow

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31

stories of mass collaboration. One of the emblematic

examples of this process is wikipedia -‐ a collective

encyclopedia of a comparable quality to professional

editions. Its apparent lack of organization, vulner-‐

ability and instability were confuted by its surpris-‐

ingly positive results. Another example, from a very

different field, but similar in many aspects is the

Linux22 operating system -‐ an example of crowd col-‐

laboration in software production, a very successful

project as well. Both of these projects are actually

much older, than the time when crowdsourcing term

got coined.

However, recently the crowdsourcing approach got

widely accepted and spread especially because

technological and economic advances showed that

also non-‐technical people could participate (Viiti-‐

maki, 2008).

The success of Wikipedia and other crowd-‐wisdom23

projects attracted attention of enterprises, that

found out the hidden wisdom of crowds, the knowl-‐

edge resources that are dispersed all over the world

and can be tapped and harnessed by companies. In

fact, Libert and Spector see crowdsourcing as a tool

that can be used by enterprise: “Crowdsourcing is

a business model that turns over tasks traditionally

performed by employees to the Internet multitude”

(Libert & Spector, 2007). There can be found mainly

three ways of profiting through crowdsourcing:

Delegating tasks to the crowd -‐ therefore involv-‐

ing the participants into production processes.

In this case some tasks in the production process

are chosen and outsourced to the crowds, mainly

through mediator-‐platforms and usually in a form of

a contest. The enterprise is profiting from the re-‐

sult, while the winning contributors get material or

psychological (or both) rewards. Very often there are

no explicit rewards, the motivations to contribute is

reputation or kudos.

Getting feedback about existing products (through

rating, voting or discussions). This process has its

origin in user research activities. The process helps

the enterprise to understand user needs and to indi-‐

viduate insights for developing future products.

Using crowdsourcing for viral marketing purposes.

This is one of the main purposes for big enterprises:

for achieving customer brand awareness and fideli-‐

zation through these processes. They are often not

interested in the actual results of the user activity,

but in the viral effects of it. Many design crowd-‐

sourcing platforms operate this way (Ciuccarelli,

2008), (Howe, 2008).

In addition to the described ways of using the

crowdsourcing model, there are also different types

of crowd participation in crowdsourcing. We are go-‐

ing to explore next what are these types.

NOTES

[22] Open source software movement can be defined a

crowdsourcing example in terms of collective collaboration,

However it difers from crowdsourcing by many aspects, especially

by the philosophical point of view and the business model it

uses. Open Source software appeared already in the nineties,

long time ago before coining of the term crowdsourcing

[23] The term crowd wisdom got coined by James

Surowiecky, the author of the book The Wisdom of Crowds

“Crowdsourcing is a business model that turns over tasks traditionally performed by employees to the Internet multitude” (Lib-‐ert & Spector, 2007, p. 3)

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Going towards the open innovation business mod-‐

el is a continuous experimenting for enterprises.

Searching for different ways for profiting from ex-‐

port of internal assets and importing external ones

creates a variety of solutions and business models.

According to Chesbrough (2006), for characterizing

the business model of a project in the open innova-‐

tion perspective, two dimensions have to be taken

into account: the creation of value and the capture

of value (Chanal, 2008, p.18). In the closed innova-‐

tion paradigm the firm creates the innovation and

captures value from innovation inside its Business

Model. In the open innovation paradigm Business

Model acts a filter for the company to decide which

innovations will be carried out inside or outside the

existing Business Model for capturing the value in-‐

side or outside it. In the case of open source soft-‐

ware development, the software is created without

any firm owning the technology, no firm can patent

the outcomes of the creation or exclude anyone from

accessing the code. Enhancements to the code are

available to anyone (Chesbrough, 2006, p.16). Open

Source case can be somehow placed in the Open

Innovation paradigm, however with a main important

difference: while open innovation paradigm explicitly

incorporates the Business Model of a firm for the

creation of the value and its capture, in Open Source

development the value is created by the community

of programmers, while the value capture is carried

out by the established software companies (Chanal,

2008, p. 18).

There are also different ways of incorporating open

source production into existing businesses, for in-‐

stance many companies opted for different kind

of emerging “open source business models”. This

happens when firms make products that use other,

non-‐open source technologies as well: they incor-‐

porate open source technologies into their innova-‐

tion efforts by combining open source and propri-‐

etary knowledge products (Chesbrough, 2008, p.23).

Other firms sponsor open source software develop-‐

ment crucial for their business. For instance HP, Sun

and IBM needed Mozilla as a browser, which could

CROWDSOURCING MODEL IN THE FRAMEWORK OF OPEN INNOVATION

run on their Unix operating systems, and therefore

supported Mozilla’s development. Another kind of

firms make spin-‐outs from inside the organization

to an external body, as another way of harnessing

open source. For instance IBM placed Eclipse tech-‐

nologies in open source domain for accelerating the

adoption of the tools for its WebSphere architecture.

IBM choose to donate recently around 500 patents

from its software into open source domain for creat-‐

ing more activity in this area. In this case the com-‐

panies are ready to give away their IP for the sake of

the benefits it can bring to their own business model

(Chesbrough, 2006, p.24).

Crowdsourcing can be seen as a similar business

model to this kind of mixed-‐models mentioned be-‐

fore. Crowdsourcing can be placed between open

innovation and open source models, because in

crowdsourcing the value can be created outside

the company (it can be outsourced to the commu-‐

nity), while the value is captured inside or outside

the company. Usually, for sustaining crowdsourcing

Open innovation and crow

dsourcing

33

CLOSED INNOVATION

OPENINNOVATION

CROWD-‐SOURCING

OPENSOURCE

VALUECREATIONMODEL

INSIDE THE COMPANY INSIDE THE COMPANY

INSIDE OR OUTSIDE THE COMPANY

OUTSIDE THE COM-‐PANY (COMMUNITY)

OUTSIDE THE COM-‐PANY (COMMUNITY)

VALUE CAPTURED BY DIFFERENT SOFT-‐WARE COMPANIES

INSIDE OR OUTSIDE THE COMPANY

INSIDE OR OUTSIDE THE COMPANY

VALUECAPTURE

platform’s activity some value capture should occur

inside the platform with the open innovation mod-‐

els. (Chanal, 2008, p.19). To illustrate this we provide

the example of CrowdSpirit, a french crowdsourcing

platform for electronic devices, funded by David Li-‐

onel. CrowdSpirit adopted initially a business model,

which was very similar to open source: the commu-‐

nity of innovators would invent new electronic de-‐

vices, and CrowdSpirit would help to develop them,

manufacture them through a network of manufac-‐

turers and sell them. However this business model

didn’t work and CrowdSpirit changed to the business

model which combined the qualities of both open in-‐

novation and open source business models: the val-‐

ue was created by the community like in open source

software development, and it was captured by the

companies interested to develop crowd’s concepts

further and integrate the inventions into their busi-‐

ness model. In this way the crowd and the platform

receives a percentage from the value captured from

the developed products.

In this case a crowdsourcing platform can choose

between the two alternatives: the first alternative is

to act as abroker or a market place that brings par-‐

ties together for achieving a transaction; the second

alternative is to act as an agent, which represents

one side of a transaction (for instance by helping the

firm to invent new concepts, test them or identify

FIG. 7: Open Innovation framework and crowdsourcing

model position inside it, source: Chanal (2008, p.18)

possible applications of the technology); (Chanal,

2008, p.21). Crowdsourcing companies like In-‐

nocentive or NineSigma used to act as brokers or

market places for scientific R&D , till they noticed

that the technology identification and transfer is not

managed easily (it’s difficult to identify immediately

if the technology developed by the problem-‐solvers

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FOUR TYPES OF CROWD PARTICIPATION

As mentioned before, there is an uncountable vari-‐

ety of examples of crowdsourcing and there are new

appearing every day. The examples can be divided

in following categories, defined by Jeff Howe: crow-‐

dwisdom, crowdvoting, crowdfunding and crowd-‐

creation.

Crowdwisdom -‐ what the crowd knows is the aggre-‐

gation of individuals in groups for taking decisions. It

is based on the idea of collective intelligence or the

wisdom of the crowd, which central principle is that

the groups contain more knowledge than individuals.

James Surowiecki described this phenomenon in

his book The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are

Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom

Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations,

2004. Accordingly to Surowiecki, “Large groups of

people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how

brilliant – better at solving problems, fostering in-‐

novation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting

the future” (Surowiecki, 2005, p.1). Companies like

Procter&Gamble with their program “Create and In-‐

novate” was one of the first companies, that invited

the crowds to participate in the solution of complex

problems. Examples of platforms for crowd wisdom

are Yahoo Answers, Prediction market platforms

and “idea jams” platforms like Dell IdeaStorm24.

Platforms like Innocentive mediate in helping clients

solve scientific problems through contribution of

anonymous scientists or hobbyists. Companies like

IEM (Iowa Electronic Markets) help to predict the fu-‐

ture events -‐ from political elections to stock market.

Crowdwisdom platforms bring to the companies the

advantage of having a fast feedback and diffusion of

informations.

Crowdcreation -‐ what the crowd creates -‐ is the trig-‐

gering of crowds creative potential. One of the main

reasons of crowdcreation are the broken down cost

barriers for hardware and software tools, that sepa-‐

rated amateurs from professionals. (Howe, 2008).

Companies successfully use the creativity of the

has a high potential). Therefore just identifying the

problem that needs to be solved and managing both

parties is not enough anymore. The mentioned com-‐

panies started offering additional services that facil-‐

itate the technology exchanges (Chanal, 2008, p. 21).

By doing that the crowdsourcing platforms adopt the

second alternative -‐ they act as an agent that helps

one party of the transaction, for instance the compa-‐

nies like P&G that need to solve scientific problems.

Open innovation and crow

dsourcing

35

crowds whether it’s about translating texts into for-‐

eign languages, filming TV commercials or redesign-‐

ing a calculator. iStockPhoto successfully harnessed

crowd’s creativity in Photography by offering photos

from a large pool of amateurs and professionals at

low prices. CurrentTv democratized the media by let-‐

ting the crowd make news video clips and “we put it

on TV”. There has been a boom of design platforms,

connecting enterprises in need for a logo or an ad-‐

vertisement, with amateurs or professional design-‐

ers, that would do it almost for free. The examples

of such platforms are Zooppa25, ReDesignMe26, and

dozens of other platforms, that we will describe in

the chapter “Design and crowdsourcing”.

Crowdvoting -‐ what the crowd thinks. Crowdvoting

is about the expression of crowd’s opinions mainly

through feedback mechanisms like voting or rating.

These mechanisms are useful for weeding out the

most liked and popular solutions from a steak of pro-‐

posals. Many crowdsourcing systems for creativity

are based on rating and voting, where the winners

of the creative contest depend on the opinion of the

crowd and opinion of the jury. The opinion of the

crowd is used to organize vast quantities of infor-‐

FIG. 8: Four crowdsourcing types according to Jeff Howe (2008)

NOTES

[24] Dell IdeaStorm is a platform for gathering insights from

Dell’s customers, where the participants can suggests features of

Dell’s products they would like to see implemented in the future

[25] www.zooppa.com

[26] ww.redesignme.com

mation, for instance in social bookmarking process,

search result organizing on Google, article sorting

on online publisher websites.

Crowdfunding -‐ what the crowd funds. Crowdfund-‐

ing is about supporting projects through distributed

crowd resources. It usually follows this pattern:

someone in the crowd, an individual or a group, an-‐

nounce the call for support of their project or activi-‐

ty. The other people from the community can support

this activity with contributions, which are usually

“WHAT THE CROWD CREATES...”“WHAT THE CROWD KNOWS...”

“WHAT THE CROWD THINKS...” “WHAT THE CROWD FUNDS...”

CROWD-‐

SOURCING

CROWD-‐

CREATION

CROWD-‐

FUNDING

CROWD-‐

VOTING

CROWD-‐

WISDOM

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quite small. The benefices of the funding usually

promise a pay-‐back or some kind of reward for the

support. One of the recent examples of crowdfund-‐

ing is Kickstarter – a platform for supporting start-‐

ups. Someone who needs a support is opening a

request for a project, defines the required amount

of money and the given time. If the project doesn’t

reach the necessary amount of pledges, the money

is not handed over. In the case it does, the receiver

gets the money and starts rewarding his supporters.

This method is so effective, that many of startups

have been able to receive support and fund a busi-‐

ness from one day to the other.

Another example of crowdfunding in music industry

is SellaBand platform, which helps music bands to

fund their music projects through Fan-‐Funding.

Another version of crowdfunding is an italian crowd-‐

funding platform -‐ Produzioni dal Basso. This plat-‐

form adopted a model, which is a mixture between

support and pre-‐ordering. In fact on this platform

people support mainly artistic projects by their mi-‐

cro-‐pledges, in turn of promise to receive the actual

copy of the product – a movie, a book, or another

kind of piece of art. This is putting consumers on an-‐

other level – their role is much more active and de-‐

terminant in production, than in traditional industrial

processes. Recently some crowdfunding platforms

for philanthropic27 purposes arose. For instance

Kiva, that let’s you loan money to entrepreneurs in

developing countries. Kiva is an impressive example

of what benefits web 2.0 tools can bring.

None of the described approaches is defined rigidly,

there can be variations in every of them. Successful

crowdsourcing projects usually use a combination

of these four approaches, for instance Threadless

(T-‐shirt design crowdsourcing platform) uses them

all (Howe, 2008).

NOTES

[27] It was also called philanthropy 2.0 by Seattle

Times: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/

businesstechnology/2003482739_techphil18.html

Crowdwisdom, crowdcreation, crowdvoting and crowdfunding are four manifestations of crowd participation in crowdsourcing projects according to Jeff Howe.

The advantages of using crowd intelligence are mul-‐

tiple. However in order to understand the mecha-‐

nisms of its functioning we need to dedicate a sec-‐

tion to the study of open innovation communities.

Open innovation and crow

dsourcing

374.9. THE CONDITIONS FOR BUILDING OPEN INNOVATION COMMUNITIES

For evolving collective intelligence of organizations

and groups, there are certain factors that have to

be taken into consideration. Groups need rules to

maintain order and coherence. (Mansour & Mona-‐

vari, 2008). Conditions that are needed for the group

to be wise are: (Surowiecki, 2005) Diversity, Inde-‐

pendence, Decentralization.

Diversity

Cognitive diversity is important for a group to pro-‐

vide innovative solutions. Many authors confirmed

the importance of diversity of group members. Si-‐

moni argues about diversity in knowledge genera-‐

tion phase, important for producing original ideas

(Simoni, 2008). Scozzi et al write about the impor-‐

In the following text we are going to describe the conditions for building an open innovation community and what are the main issues to be taken in consideration. Some of the building blocks or elements of open innovation communities are the conditions for building the crowd intelligence, the motivations, the incentive model and the structure of the community.

THE CONDITIONS FOR BUILDING CROWD INTELLIGENCE

tance of a certain level of difference in mental mod-‐

els in open souce communities (Scozzi et al, 2008).

Shakeri (1998) argues about importance of diversity

in disciplines for design work.

Therefore it’s important to bring people in diversified

groups for having original and diversified results in

group decision process. “Bringing new people to the

group even if they are less experienced can make the

group smarter because what new minds offer is not

exactly the same and redundant as others offer and it

is more likely that a creative or unlikely idea crosses

someone’s mind.”(Mansour & Monavari, 2008).

Choosing experts for work in a company may be not

the best solution. The economist terrance Odean

found that experts like lawyers, engineers, entrepre-‐

neurs and bankers all believe that they know more

than they really do (Mansour & Monavari, 2008).

It doesn’t mean, that we should substitute experts

by amateurs. However, more innovative results are

achieved by combining the knowledge of experts

with the knowledge of someone external to organi-‐

zation (Surowiecky, 2005; Mansour & Monavari,

2008).

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The diversity can however also cause conflicts in

the group (Surowiecky, 2005; Mansour & Monavari,

2008) and is less suited for the phases of knowledge

transferral, integration and application in organiza-‐

tion28. Too big diversity of employees can even act

against productivity (Simoni, 2008).

Independence

Independence of the individual within the group is

another factor for achieving group intelligence.

The social networks of the type “individualistic”,

where individuals don’t have very strong connec-‐

tions to each other, are usually very open to new

connections and therefore they allow linkages be-‐

tween people very different from each other29.

When every actor of the network can take decisions

independently, the group benefits in two ways. First,

the mistakes will not be related to each other and

therefore not affect collective decisions, because

individual errors can be recognized better by oth-‐

ers. Second, there is a higher possibility, that new

information will be added, rather than something that

NOTES:

[28] According to Simoni, knowledge work phases in

organization comprise: generation of new knowledge,

transferral of knowledge, integration of knowledge and

application to economic activities (Simoni, 2008)

[29] Dr Perri, Your friendship networks, in: Helen McCarthy,

Paul Miller, Paul Skidmore. Network logic: who governs

an interconnected world? Demos, London, p. 221

everyone already knows (Surowiecky, 2005; Man-‐

sour & Monavari, 2008).

The lack of independency affects negatively group´s

decisions. Many individuals have the tendency to

copy the decisions of others or be influenced by

other’s opinions. This doesn’t lead to beneficial de-‐

cisions (Surowiecky, 2005; Mansour & Monavari,

2008).

Decentralization

Decentralization is another important factor for

beneficial collective decisions. This means, that the

power of decision is not concentrated in one per-‐

son’s hands, but distributed over the network. We

see a similar situation in social networks, where

people connect and communicate to each other in-‐

dependently (Surowiecky, 2005; Mansour & Mona-‐

vari, 2008).

It was proofed by many researchers of FLOSS

communities (Crowston, 2010), that decentralized

networks lead to a higher stability of the software

project and stimulate input from contributors. The

tacit knowledge is exchanged better in such com-‐

munities and it encourages specialization and in-‐

dependence (Crowston, 2010). Another benefit of

decentralized communities is, that it brings the indi-‐

viduals closer to the issues. The closer the individual

is to the issue, the more probable it is that he is going

to find a good solution (Surowiecky, 2005; Mansour

& Monavari, 2008).

Linux or other open source software projects are

effective examples of benefits of such decentraliza-‐

tion, even if not all open source systems are decen-‐

tralized (Crowston, 2010). It has been shown that

open source software communities tend to develop

decentralized system with time: they start as cen-‐

Open innovation and crow

dsourcing

39

FIG. 9: Layered meritocracy and role

hierarchy (source: Scacchi, 2004)

tralized networks with the main developer in the

middle, and as they grow in size and become older,

they become more modular, decentralized and spe-‐

cialized (Crowston, 2010).

Decentralization doesn’t mean disorganization

(Surowiecky, 2005; Mansour & Monavari, 2008).

Despite apparent chaotic structure of FLOSS (free/

libre open source software) communities, there are

rules and tools that help organize it. The organiza-‐

tional structure of FLOSS is called layered meritoc-‐

racy, illustrated in the Figure 8. It is a hierarchical

organizational form, that centralizes and concen-‐

trates certain kinds of authority, trust and respect

for accomplishment within the team (Scacchi, 2004).

The members of the community can assign the roles

themselves and the roles are never fixed. In this

system every member has the possibility to move

toward the core of the community by improving his

skills and by contributing. (Rullani F., Dragging de-‐

velopers towards the core, 2007). There is usually

a core-‐developers group that contribute most, and

there is a benevolent dictator, that initiates, enables

and facilitates the project (Raymond, 2001). The

community is managed through development proc-‐

ess and is co-‐evolving and self-‐organizing together

with the code (Ye and Kishida, 2003). During this

process the community uses tools for asynchronous

communication, institutional history and file-‐transfer

(Crowston, 2010, Coffin, 2006). These communica-‐

tion systems are persistent, searchable, traceable,

public and globally accessible. It is a socio-‐technical

process of technology transfer (Crowston 2010).

However the decentralization of the communities

has also one drawback: decentralized communities

cannot be as big as centralized audiences accord-‐

ingly to Clay Shirky. This is connected to the kind of

relationship that there is between the sender and the

receiver of the message. In the case of community

the members have to be connected to each other, not

just to one central outlet, there has to be a many-‐to-‐

many interaction. Such interaction pattern can only

be sustainable if the size of the community is rela-‐

tively small. In the case of open source communities

scholars came to a conclusion that the number of 15

core members is enough for a sustainable commu-‐

nity of 300 members, while other members are more

passive (Crowston, 2010)). Accordingly to Shirkey

the maximum size of a community is 5000 mem-‐

bers. When group size grows past any individual’s

ability to maintain connections to all members of a

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group, the density of the network shrinks, and as the

group grows very large (>10,000) the number of ac-‐

tual connections drops to less than 1% of the poten-‐

tial connections, even if each member of the group

knows dozens of other members. Thus growth in

size is enough to alter the fabric of connection that

makes a community work.30 Therefore no matter how

good is the software that manages the community,

it can never support a large and densely intercon-‐

nected community31.

The experience of FLOSS communities helps to de-‐

fine the crowdsourcing communities because there

is a big similarity between the two models (Chanal,

2008, p.25). With crowdsourcing we see new or-‐

ganizational structure emerge, between market and

hierarchy. Pure market coordination would appear

to be unviable because the firm has to be able to

control the innovation activities for its own benefit

(Chanal, 2008, p.25).

INCENTIVES AND MOTIVATIONS IN OPEN INNO-‐VATION COMMUNITIES

In addition to the conditions needed for developing

crowd intelligence, we also need to take in consid-‐

eration the motivations of the crowd to participate.

We are going to examine the motivations and incen-‐

tive models provided by open innovation and FLOSS

communities studies.

Von Hippel (2002) as well as Simoni (2004) argue,

that there are mainly two ways to reward innovation

in industry as well as society in general. The first

model is the “private investment model”, which “as-‐

sumes returns to the innovator results from private

goods and efficient regimes of intellectual property

protection” (von Hippel, 2002). The crowdsourcing

platforms like Innocentive use this model by reward-‐

ing their innovators with financial rewards and pass-‐

ing the intellectual property rights to the enterprises

that requested the innovation. The second, “collec-‐

tive action” model “assumes that under conditions

of market failure, innovators collaborate in order

to produce a public good” (von Hippel, 2002). The

FLOSS development present the characteristics of

both models and therefore is a mixed model (von

Hippel, 2002, Simoni, 2004): on one hand, the par-‐

ticipants of Floss development utilize their private

resources during the process, on the other hand -‐

the result of their production is a collective good, and

the contributors usually renounce to any rights for

the intellectual property of this good (Simoni, 2004).

One of the major challenges of collective action

model is how to reward contributors and avoid free

riding (taking advantage of others production with-‐

out contributing) (von Hippel and von Krogh, 2006,

from: Chanal, 2008, p.12). The literature on collective

action argues that the creation and deployment of

selective incentives is essential for success of such

projects (Chanal, 2008, p.12, Hautz, 2010). Usually

NOTES:

[30] http://shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html

[31] http://shirky.com/writings/community_scale.html

Open innovation and crow

dsourcing

41

it is argued that the collective action model doesn’t

work without incentives, providing a long-‐cooper-‐

ation scenarios and by dense social connections

between recruiters and candidates (Simoni (2005),

p.35). None of these factors is present in Floss com-‐

munities. Despite that, the members of Floss com-‐

munities are rewarded even if not explicitly. There

are automatic incentive mechanisms, for instance

the advantage of diffusion of open source prod-‐

ucts32, the creation of network economies33, learning

benefits and receiving feedback from users (Simoni

(2005), p.35).

Yochai Benkler argues that a combination of eco-‐

nomic and non-‐economic benefits are crucial for

incentivating activities of online communities (Ben-‐

kler, 2002). For being motivated participants need to

expect three kinds of rewards:

1. Monetary rewards (M) (also called extrinsic

economic rewards by other researchers)

2. Intrinsic hedonistic rewards (H), which are con-‐

nected to the satisfaction experienced from tak-‐

ing the actions

3. Social-‐psychologic rewards (SP): cultural

meaning associated with the action, social as-‐

sociations and status perception by others,

satisfaction from ones social relations or the

“culturally determined meaning of ones action”

Managed

INCE

NTIV

ES T

YPOL

OGIE

S

SUBJECT THAT APPROPRIATES THE UTILITY OF PRODUCED KNOWLEDGE

Implicit

Enterprise Collective

COLLECTIVE ACTIONMODEL

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

PRIVATE INVESTMENTMODEL

CollectiveEnterprise

Inividual

COLLECTIVE ACTIONCOLLECTIVE ACTIONCOLLECTIVE ACTIONCOLLECTIVE ACTIONCOLLECTIVE ACTIONCOLLECTIVE ACTIONCOLLECTIVE ACTIONCOLLECTIVE ACTIONCOLLECTIVE ACTIONCOLLECTIVE ACTIONCOLLECTIVE ACTIONCOLLECTIVE ACTIONCOLLECTIVE ACTIONCOLLECTIVE ACTIONCOLLECTIVE ACTIONCOLLECTIVE ACTIONMODEL

COLLECTIVE ACTIONMODEL

COLLECTIVE ACTIONMODEL

COLLECTIVE ACTIONMODEL

COLLECTIVE ACTIONMODEL

COLLECTIVE ACTIONMODEL

COLLECTIVE ACTIONMODEL

COLLECTIVE ACTIONMODEL

COLLECTIVE ACTIONMODEL

COLLECTIVE ACTIONMODEL

COLLECTIVE ACTIONMODEL

COLLECTIVE ACTIONMODEL

COLLECTIVE ACTIONMODEL

COLLECTIVE ACTION

MIXED MODELMIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

MIXED MODEL(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)(OPEN SOURCE LOGIC)

PRIVATE INVESTMENTPRIVATE INVESTMENTPRIVATE INVESTMENTPRIVATE INVESTMENTPRIVATE INVESTMENTPRIVATE INVESTMENTPRIVATE INVESTMENTPRIVATE INVESTMENTPRIVATE INVESTMENTPRIVATE INVESTMENTPRIVATE INVESTMENTPRIVATE INVESTMENTPRIVATE INVESTMENTPRIVATE INVESTMENTPRIVATE INVESTMENTPRIVATE INVESTMENTPRIVATE INVESTMENTMODEL

PRIVATE INVESTMENTMODEL

PRIVATE INVESTMENTMODEL

PRIVATE INVESTMENTMODEL

PRIVATE INVESTMENTMODEL

PRIVATE INVESTMENTMODEL

PRIVATE INVESTMENTMODEL

PRIVATE INVESTMENTMODEL

PRIVATE INVESTMENTMODEL

PRIVATE INVESTMENTMODEL

PRIVATE INVESTMENTMODEL

PRIVATE INVESTMENTMODEL

PRIVATE INVESTMENTPRIVATE INVESTMENT

FIG. 10: Different knowledge-‐driven innovation

models. Source: Simoni (2004), p.36

NOTES

[32] the diffusion of open source software can favor dealing

with complementary products or services, for instance

hardware or maintenance services (Simoni (2004), p. 36)

[33] the creation of the network economies, that favor diffusion

of the software, that becomes a standard and therefore

its value is growing for the users, especially the ones that

contributed to its production (Simoni (2004), p. 36)

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(Benkler, 2002, p.59). These rewards have to

do with reputation in the community as well as

social interactions, indispensable for commu-‐

nity functioning.

The application of different kinds of rewards depends

also on the type of the activity and how this activity

affects the social-‐psychologic status of the partici-‐

pants. For Benkler the H motivation is indipendent

from other two, but M and SP can be positively or

negatively correlated depending on the social effect

of having money associated with the activity. Ben-‐

kler calls this factor p, that can be positive as in the

activity of volunteering for a non-‐profit organization

or negative as an illegal activity. When p is negative,

the increasing monetary rewards (M) can even af-‐

fect negatively the participation, because the social

aspect of the activity is negative. In the other case,

if p is positive, monetary rewards, together with the

social-‐psychologic rewards can increase the par-‐

ticipation. In both cases social-‐psychologic rewards

play a fundamental role.

There is also a way to change “p” from negative to

positive by changing the way it is correlated to the

34.5Participate in a new cooperation form

Learn and develop new abilities

Share knowledge and abilities

Participate in the Open Source movement

Increase job opportunities

Improve the open source projects by other programmers

Build a reputation in the community

Distribute non-‐commercial software

Find help for realization of a software idea

Solve the un-‐solved problems of proprietary software

Limit the power of big software enterprises

Diffuse the idea that software shouldn’t be proprietary

Recieve economic revenues

Doesn’t know

78.9

49.8

30.6

23.9

33.7

9.1

8.9

23.8

29.7

19

30.1

4.4

1.9

FIG. 11: Motivations for participating in an Open Source

Software community (from Menichinelli (2006), Kim), we see

in this graphic that the motivations of the most participants are

socio-‐psychological as well as hedonistic, while motivations

connected to direct monetary rewards don’t appear often

action (Benkler, 2002, p.66). For instance in open

source software communities the participants might

attach a negative value to the contributions of de-‐

velopers that require money for their contributors.

On the other hand they can see positively the con-‐

tributions of developers that contributed for free but

received large contracts from firms later on.

The combination of the three kinds of motivations

leads to forming of different roles and actions in the

community. For instance three kinds of typical open

innovation community participants can be individual-‐

ized accordingly to their motivations:

1. Instances which perceive a small value in mon-‐

etary rewards relatively to the value of hedon-‐

istic and social-‐psychologic rewards, particu-‐

larly because these individuals have negative

perception of money rewards associated with

the activities. Teenagers and young adults are

in these category, because they have long time

horizon for earning and saving and high needs

for social recognition and socializing;

2. Individuals that have high earnings sufficient

for their expectations, but who need additional

hedonic and social-‐psychological benefits that

they cannot receive from extending their re-‐

munerated actions. Academics, professional

school academics and people that prefer to

contribute in open source communities rather

than watching tv or reading a book fall into this

category (Benkler, 2002)

3. The third category is formed by individuals who

have sufficient income currently, but whose

future expected needs require increased mon-‐

etary returns. This means that they value the M

Open innovation and crow

dsourcing

43

factor in the rewards, but only in the case if their

actions don’t affect negatively their SP factor or

for other contributors. This means they would

not risk to support a project that might affect

negatively their reputation.

Additionally to the motivation and reward theory Ben-‐

kler argues, that the motivation issue can be solved

by attracting a sufficient number of participants:

“Given a sufficiently large number of contributions,

direct monetary incentives necessary to bring about

contributions are trivial.” (Benkler, 2002, p.67). If the

sufficient number of participants is reached, every

small contribution can be multiplied by the total

number of participants.

Benkler argues, that three factors that have to be

taken in consideration when building online partici-‐

pation communities is the modularity of the projects,

the granularity and the integration: “Peer produc-‐

tion is limited not by the total cost or complexity of

a project, but by its modularity, granularity, and the

cost of integration.” The modularity is property of a

project to be divided into modules: when the mod-‐

ules are small, the participants can choose when

and how to contribute individually, and the requested

contribution for every participant is small. Granu-‐

larity is the dimension of modules: the number of

participants is inversely proportional to the dimen-‐

sion of the necessary contribution (Benkler, 2002).

If the minimal contribution required for the project

is small, the incentives don’t play an important role

anymore according to Benkler. Another factor is the

heterogeneity of the sizes of the modules, which may

add to its efficiency. Heterogeneity allows contribu-‐

tors with different levels of motivation to collaborate

by contributing modules of different sizes. Therefore

a project that allows the highly motivated users to

carry a heavier part of the project and to the less

motivated contributors -‐ just a small module (for

instance rate or comment), can harness better the

diversely motivated people’s force (Benkler, 2002).

The real challenge is then to control the quality of

contributed modules and to integrate them. (Ben-‐

kler, 2002). Integration includes two components: a

mechanism for providing quality control or integrity

assurance for defending it against contributions of

scarce quality, and a mechanism for combining the

modules into a whole (Benkler, 2002, p. 69). This

integration is solved in four ways:

1. Hierarchically managed review like in the Linux

Kernel or Apache development;

2. Peer review as in the process of moderating

contributions in Slashdot;

48.1Improving personal knowledge

Personal satisfaction for contributing

Other motivations

Improving reputation in professional environment

New job offers

Enhancing the current working conditions

Opportunities to get payed consultancy requests

Sense of belonging to the community

Increasing the reputation in the community

Equity participation

Direct economic revenues

26.3

8

5.8

1.9

1.9

1.9

1.3

0.6

0

0

FIG. 12: Major benefits received from participation in an

Open Source community (from Menichinelli (2006), Kim).

We see in this graphic that the hedonistic and social-‐

psychologic rewards are perceived as most important by

the participants of the open innovation communities

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3. Norms-‐based social organization as in Wikipe-‐

dia

4. Technical solution of aggregation and averaging

of redundant contributions as in the Clickwork-‐

ers project (Benkler, 2002, 74).

Many systems are the combination of the mentioned

solutions.

In the case of crowdsourcing approach, we see char-‐

acteristics of private investment model, because the

product of community participation is going to be-‐

come intellectual property of an enterprise and will

generate revenues for it. Therefore crowdsourcing

platforms usually provide financial rewards to par-‐

ticipants. However, it has been proofed that par-‐

ticipants of crowdsourcing projects may also have

other motivations, for instance participating in a rev-‐

olutionary production model, curiosity, learning ben-‐

efits, gaining reputation etc. (Chanal, 2008). In this

case this model is getting close to collective action

model described by von Hippel. Unfortunately there

is less literature provided on how to recruit and mo-‐

tivate the community in open innovation projects.

CREATORS13%

PUBLISH WEB PAGEPUBLISH OR MAINTAIN A BLOGUPLOAD TO SITES LIKE YOUTUBE

CRITICS19%

COLLECTORS15%

SEGMENTS INCLUDECONSUMERS PARTICIPATING

IN AT LEAST ONE OF THEINDICATED ACTIVITIES

JOINERS19%

SPECTATORS33%

INACTIVES52%

READ BLOGSWATCH PEER-‐GENERATED VIDEOLISTEN TO PODCASTS

COMMENT ON BLOGSPOST RATINGS AND REVIEWS

USE RSSTAG WEB PAGES

USE SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES

NONE OF THESE ACTIVITIES

FIG. 13: Participation ladder by Charlene Li at Forrester (source:

Forrester NACTAS Q4 2006 Devices&Access Online Survey)

Open innovation and crow

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45

ROLES OF PARTICI-‐PANTS IN OPEN INNO-‐VATION COMMUNITIES

The recent studies of online crowdsourcing plat-‐

forms showed the difficulties met by the creators of

these platforms: the majorities of the platforms are

challenged by the lack of interest from the users and

too few interested participants34 (Hautz et al., 2010).

The majority of them failed “in evoked consumer in-‐

terest, number of creative contributions as well as

quality of ideas”(Hautz et al., 2010). Only when users

are qualified and motivated they will be able to con-‐

tribute to innovation, therefore organizations need to

find out which participants or which contributions

are needed for maintaining the innovation project vi-‐

brant (Hautz et al., 2010). All the social groups have

four basic characteristics: the sum of members, the

admission requisites, the roles and the norms (Men-‐

ichinelli, 2006, p.81). For establishing a community

in an online open innovation project, it is important

to consider the roles that different community mem-‐

bers will take, which roles are the “key” roles and

how to support them. For identifying this we made

a review of different studies on the topic. Different

approaches are discussed in literature about how to

establish an online innovation community (Hautz et

al, Fletscher, Crowston, Coffin, Menichinelli). The

most of the studies concentrate on frequency of

participation and the volumes of contributions of

participants (Hautz, 2010).

One of the attempts to classify the online participa-‐

tion in general is the participation ladder developed

for web 2.0 use by Charlene Li at Forrester. The

majority of the users are completely passive in this

INACTIVE PARTICIPANTSPERIPHERAL PARTICIPANTS

ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS

CORE PARTICIPANTS

LEADER

FIG. 14: Structure

of open innovation

communities according

to Menichinelli (2006)

NOTES

[34] this topic is going to be addressed more in depth

in the chapter “Crowdsourcing platforms”

[35] http://www.openp2pdesign.org/2007/open-‐

p2p-‐design/ladders-‐of-‐participation/

[36] Kim, A.J.: ‘Community Building on the

Web’, Peachpit Press, Berkley, 2000.

ladder and only a very small percent of users are

very active.35 Other scholars that studied community

building on the web, individuated the roles of visi-‐

tors, novices, regulars, leaders, and elders (Kim36,

2000, from: Hautz, 2010).

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Another way to classify the users of online com-‐

munities is by their motivations. “According to Shah

(2006), the open source community is made up of

two types of members: the need driven participants

and the “hobbyist” participants. The first ones in-‐

teract with the community in order to satisfy their

needs, whereas the second ones participate to the

community for fun and enjoyment” (Chanal, 2008,

p.22).

Menichinelli provides in his work about collaborative

open peer-‐to-‐peer networks the following roles of

participants of such networks (Menichinelli, 2006,

p.171): 1) inactive participant: benefits from results

obtained by the community without any contribution

and uses the results for informing himself, learning

or just curiosity; 2) Peripheral participant: contrib-‐

utes to the activity of the community occasionally,

for instance by presenting requests about charac-‐

teristics of software; his contributions are irregular

and often represent the initial phase of participation

of newbie in a community; 3) Active participant:

contributes regularly to the activity of the com-‐

munity , he is the typical participant, on which the

community’s activity is based; 4) Central core par-‐

ticipant: he is responsible for the coordination and

the management of community development; this

kind of participants have been active for a very long

time and contributed significantly to the activity; 5)

leader: usually he founded the community or ideated

the project and is responsible for the direction and

vision of the community (Menichinelli, 2006, p.172).

Only few of current studies address the member-‐

to-‐member relations and therefore a social network

analysis (SNA) approach (Hautz, 2010). Hautz et al,

provides a study of users roles in online innovation

communities as a particular kind of network offer-‐

ing interaction possibilities. Hautz et al analyze the

outgoing and incoming connections between mem-‐

bers37, as well as the quantity and the effectiveness

(attractiveness, defined by the level of attention that

design received from the other members -‐ their com-‐

ments) of their contributions in Swarovsky crowd-‐

ROLES COMMUNICATION OUT-DEGREE

IDEA GENERATION DESIGN-COUNT

DESIGN ATTRACTIVENESS

IN-DEGREE

COLOR OF REPRESENTATION IN

THE NETWORK MAP

Motivator, attention-grabbing high low high violett

Motivator high low low blue

Attention attractor low low high green

passive user low low low others (white dots)

Attention attractor, motivating idea generating

high high high orange

Motivator, idea generating high high low black

Attention attractor, idea generating

low high high red

idea generator low high low brown

FIG. 15: Key members of Swarovsky project

community (Hautz et al, 2010)

NOTES

[37] in the case of such temporary actions like crowdsourcing

contests, usually the network connections are not dense,

therefore the authors of the research adopted the weak notion

of social relationship, where a directed tie is established

between two users, if the former user writes a comment to

the latter one. A relationship is established already in case of

one comment, even if no answer occurs (Hautz et al, 2010).

Open innovation and crow

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47

ROLES COMMUNICATION OUT-DEGREE

IDEA GENERATION DESIGN-COUNT

DESIGN ATTRACTIVENESS

IN-DEGREE

COLOR OF REPRESENTATION IN

THE NETWORK MAP

Motivator, attention-grabbing high low high violett

Motivator high low low blue

Attention attractor low low high green

passive user low low low others (white dots)

Attention attractor, motivating idea generating

high high high orange

Motivator, idea generating high high low black

Attention attractor, idea generating

low high high red

idea generator low high low brownFIG. 16: Key members of Swarovsky project community (Hautz et al, 2010)

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sourcing design contest. In relation to the mentioned

factors (relations, quantity and quality of contribu-‐

tions), eight different roles emerge.

These roles can be seen as colored rectangles with

numbers in the map representing the social network

of the Swarovski project community. A user was

considered a key-‐user if he was ranked high on at

least one of the criteria.

We can see in this map, that the most central mem-‐

bers are the “Attention attractors, motivating, idea

generating”. The key participants are in the central

nodes of the network and therefore are crucial for

networks “health”. According to Hautz et al, the

most valuable users are the attention attracting us-‐

ers because they “allow a first verification about

how much attention a new idea will arouse among

potential customers” (Hautz et al, 2010). Through

the high number of ingoing comments the user re-‐

ceives a lot of feedback which helps him to refine

and enhance his idea. Another kind of very valuable

users are the “motivators”. The literature about com-‐

munity of practice points out about the importance

of knowledge sharing and discussing as key prereq-‐

uisites for refining and disseminating ideas (Hautz et

al, 2010). These users with high out-‐degree38 cen-‐

trality provide the opportunity to collaborate in the

creative process and enhance individual ideas. The

study of Hautz et al showed further that the “mo-‐

tivators” activity supports building of denser social

networks, while the networks around “attention at-‐

tractors” presented a low density. The most valuable

user type therefore is the idea generator, motivator

and attention attractor, that should be supported and

incentivated.

Another interesting conclusion of Hautz et al study

is the fact that the high number of submitted designs

does not indicate neither high participation in feed-‐

back giving, nor the high attention received from

other users. Many users in Swarovski case that sub-‐

mitted a very high number of designs didn’t present

neither out-‐degree nor in-‐degree centrality.

NOTES

[38] a high number of outgoing comments

The research of Hautz et al suggests that key-‐users

should be identified, supported and encouraged to

communicate, comment and discuss in the online

innovation communities, because “communication

and interaction between users enable information

and knowledge sharing resulting in collaborative and

more creative innovation.”(Hautz et al, 2010).

Open innovation and crow

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491.4. GUIDELINES FOR A CROWD-‐SOURCING PROJECT

This brief overview about open innovation ap-‐

proach and knowledge networks gives us material

for thought and indicates the guidelines for the next

chapter. The main issues we found out, are:

1) Changing the mindset of organizations from

closed innovation approach to open innovation

approach by adopting crowdsourcing business

model is a solution to keep the pace with eco-‐

nomic, technological and socio-‐cultural changes

and to become more competitive;

2) There is a need for certain rules and parameters,

that should be taken in consideration for build-‐

ing collective intelligence: the diversity and inde-‐

pendence of group members as well as decen-‐

tralization of the groups structure.

3) There is a need to find a good balance of mon-‐

etary, hedonistic and social-‐psychological mo-‐

tivations and incentives for crowdsourcing

community members, because it presents char-‐

acteristics of both “private investment” and “col-‐

lective action” innovation models. Therefore both

economic and psychologic incentives should be

taken in consideration.

4) The key-‐users of online communities should be

identified, incentivated and encouraged to so-‐

cialize because they are the central nodes, insur-‐

ing the health of the online innovation communi-‐

ties. The two factors are especially valuable in

participation of online innovation communities:

the ability to produce effective designs, that at-‐

tract interest of other members, as well as com-‐

municate with other users by giving feedback,

insights, suggestions and critics, for enhancing

the object of innovation, establishing social re-‐

lationships and creating denser and more stable

networks.

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Design and crow

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51

CHAPTER 2

CROWDSOURCING APPLIED TO DESIGN PROCESS

“In the beginning of XXI century design stopped being an elite profession for man-‐aging aesthetic and functional components of industrial products, and assumed the role of strategic presence in the entire globalized economy as a producer of innovation energy, indispensable for the whole production sector that has to confront continually with international competition. Design is a new mass pro-‐fession.” A. Branzi39

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52 2.1. DESIGN AS A KNOWLEDGE GENERA-‐TION AND COMBINATION PROCESS

In this chapter we are going to delineate design discipline as a knowledge generation process of iterative conversion between tacit and ex-‐plicit knowledge and what is the balance of private/collective knowledge in this process. We are also going to analyze design as a multidis-‐ciplinary collaborative process, and how user participation can bring value to it. We will provide several examples of participation in design, in particular crowdsourcing cases, and what benefits it brings to design companies. We are going to discuss what part of design process is best adapted for crowdsourcing approach and why we retain interaction design field suited for this approach to open innovation.

“Design is a process requiring a large amount of heuristic knowledge, quantita-‐tive and qualitative knowledge, design decisions are made in multi-‐stage, iterative and collaborative way, therefore design is a knowledge-‐intense collaborative activ-‐ity.” 40

Knowledge can be seen as one of the most important

assets for achieving innovation. Innovative process

is an activity for generating and applying new forms

of knowledge, that are translated into products and

services. The knowledge handling during innovative

process can happen in different ways: creating new

forms of knowledge, combining in a new way already

existing knowledge (for instance applying an existing

material in a new context of use), combining existing

knowledge with new forms of knowledge (introduc-‐

ing new functionality in an already existing product).

(Cautela, 2007, p.24).

Creating new forms of knowledge is one of the main

aspects of creativity and design, because knowl-‐

edge has a creative role in generating new knowl-‐

edge (Rullani, 2004). Design can be seen also as a

process of combination of tacit knowledge and in-‐

formation with more vertical technical and specific

knowledge (Valsecchi, 2008, p.70). It is a process

of iterative explicitation and implicitation phases of

knowledge, where tacit personal knowledge is com-‐

municated and transformed into explicit and codi-‐

fied knowledge and then implicited and absorbed

again. This knowledge generation process has been

described by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1997) and ap-‐

plied to design process by the german designer Ron

Hofer. Ron Hofer conducted an analysis of the de-‐

sign process provided by different designers and

came to a conclusion, that design consist in mainly

two activities: sharing information&knowledge and

creating information&knowledge and it is possible to

find repeating sequences of these processes in all

design activities.41

NOTES

[39] Andrea Branzi, Conferenza “Il design nell’epoca della

globalizzazione” al Politecnico di Milano, Giugno 2010

[40] Cirrus Shakeri, Discovery of Design Methodologies

for the Integration of Multi-‐disciplinary Design Problems,

Worchester Polytechnic Institute, 1998, p.50

[41] Ron Hofer, The Knowledge Cultivation centre:

a proposal. In: DesignNet, Knowledge e Information

Management per il Design, 2002, p.125

Design and crow

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53

His proposal is further enhanced by CECI circle by

Nonaka, which consist of four phases -‐ socialization,

externalization, combination and internalization.

The dynamics of interaction during the four phases

is connected to the nature of knowledge. The first

phase requires a very close interaction between in-‐

dividuals and a similar knowledge background (for

gaining a high level of knowledge absorption). The

second phase requires articulation of tacit knowl-‐

edge into known symbols and codes. In this phase

the use of linguistic forms like metaphor or analogy

helps to explicit the knowledge in and understand-‐

able way, even if the interlocutor doesn’t have the

same intellectual background. During the third phase

the explicit knowledge elements are systemized and

classified, while the fourth phase provides the inter-‐

nalization of explicit knowledge and its conversion

into tacit knowledge in a form of mental models and

know how. (Simoni, 2005, p.43)

In order to translate it to design process, Hofer pro-‐

vides examples for every step of the process: 1)

meeting with the client, sharing the knowledge, cre-‐

ating an atmosphere for communication (socializa-‐

tion); 2) externalization of knowledge is happening

by sharing data, facts, product requirements etc.;

3) further on, the creation of new Information and

Knowledge takes place; 4) this new Knowledge is

then internalized (Internalization). Proceeding with

these circles the designer is creating a new view

angle according to Nonaka, witch permits to create a

new combination of the content.42

COMBINATION OF

EXPLICIT I&K

SOCIALIZATION

I&K ARE IMPLICIT

INTERNALIZATION

I&K GET IMPLICIT

EXTERNALIZATION

I&K GET EXPLICIT

FIG. 17: Design as knowledge externalization and

internalization process, a model by Nonaka and Tekeushi

re-‐elaborated by Ron Hofer (Source: Hofer, 2002)

NOTES

[42] Nonaka, I., Toyama, R. And Konno, N. (2000). ‘SECI,

Ba and Leadership: a unified model of dynamic knowledge

creation’. Long Range Planning, 33 (1), pp. 5-‐34

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The model proposed by Nonaka and Takeuchi could

be represented by a spiral where every successive

phase is enlarging the path outwards, starting from

individual experience, to the group dimension, to the

organization and finally expanding till the level of in-‐

ter-‐organizational relations. Therefore it includes the

individual and collective dimensions of knowledge.

The creation of the new view angle is supported by

the heterogeneity of participants of the process as

we mentioned in the previous chapter. The spiral of

knowledge generation, that has been discussed pre-‐

viously, can produce new knowledge when the initial

chunks of knowledge are as much heterogeneous

as possible. Nonaka and Takeuchi call this variety of

knowledge requisite variety. This variety has to be

contained on an appropriate level though, because

the moments of knowledge convergency are needed

for meeting a decision and proceeding with work.

Therefore, according to Creative Abrasion model by

Leonard Barton, every phase of knowledge work is

accompanied by alternate moments of knowledge di-‐

vergency and convergency that get more and more

reduced toward the end of knowledge application

process (Simoni, 2005). Therefore, especially in the

beginning of knowledge generation process -‐ in the

research and analysis phase of design -‐ the maxi-‐

mum convergence of knowledge is crucial.

This variety is fundamental in design, because the

horizontal processes of knowledge generation and

sharing are as important in design as vertical spe-‐

cific and technical knowledge. Design is also known

to be an interdisciplinary activity, situated on the

cross-‐road between different disciplines, and there-‐

fore requiring large amounts of heuristic multi-‐

disciplinary knowledge (Shakeri, 1998, p.50). In the

research and concept generation phase, very often,

especially in absence of focalization and a specific

well defined brief, designer is searching for creative

impulses in his environment. In this phase not only

specific and pertinent information is necessary: very

often designer is searching for sense in heteroge-‐

neous sources of information, not necessarily con-‐

nected to his field of study. By searching the crea-‐

tive impulses the designer is exploring the world that

can help him to set or re-‐set the problem rather than

solve it. Therefore he is exploring the world that can

give sense to the problem: designer is in the process

of sense making (Valsecchi, 2009, p.69).

In this process of sense making, the opening of the

process of design for collaborative online activities

can be fundamental. The social interactions enable

the exchange of tacit knowledge as we mentioned

before and therefore create a vital environment for

situated or experiential knowledge characteristic to

the design process (Valsecchi, 2009, p.66). In addi-‐

tion to vertical specific knowledge the participation

of online communities in design process can provide

the horizontal, more general knowledge for combin-‐

ing them and therefore generating new knowledge

(Valsecchi, 2009, p.70). This new knowledge gen-‐

eration can therefore foster innovation.

According to Bill Moggridge, the founder of IDEO, ex-‐

plicit knowledge is comparable to the part of the ice-‐

berg that is above the water, while the tacit knowl-‐

edge is hidden under the water: “If we operate above

the water line, we only have a small volume to use,

but if we allow ourselves to use the whole submerge

mass, we have a lot more to work with (Moggridge,

2007, p.650).

Therefore opening design research process to online

collaboration can provide additional powerful tools

Design and crow

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55

for knowledge combination and generation. One of

these approaches, described in the previous chapter

is crowdsourcing. For enabling crowdsourcing proc-‐

ess, design discipline should be rethought from be-‐

ing an elite activity, to a collective creation process.

DESIGN AS A PROCESS OF COLLABORATION IN A NETWORK

p.70), from the phase of research and analysis, to

communication with customers, first visualizations

and mind maps, concept generation, to the gradual

explicitation of this tacit knowledge into the project

artifacts. This process requires team interaction to

be nurtures continuously. Design is a process re-‐

quiring cooperation, therefore the most of designers

work in teams: “The complexity of design problems

requires communities rather than individuals to ad-‐

dress, frame and solve, them” (Valsecchi, 2009,

Fisher, 2004).

The democratization of tools permits democratiza-‐

tion of creativity. Creativity which is not reserved

only to design domain, but a distributed creativity,

which redefines the profession of design itself (Men-‐

ichinelli, 2006, p.183). Creativity can be intended as

an ability of finding new connections between ideas

and new ways to express them (Menichinelli, 2006,

p.183). Creativity can be also defined as a compo-‐

nent of the human thought, directed to problem solv-‐

ing activities (Menichinelli, 2006, p.183). However,

in design field, problem solving is often flanked by

problem setting and re-‐setting, as mentioned before.

In this process of problem re-‐setting, an environment

rich of heterogeneous information and knowledge

can foster the process of creativity. This process is

therefore nurtured by distributed networked crea-‐

tivity, where different combinations of knowledge

chunks can lead to original and un-‐expected ideas

for re-‐setting problems. Creativity, which is shared,

accessed and distributed in collaborative networks,

which source is the growing need of communities

for self-‐expression.

In this process crowdsourcing approach can act as

support for distributed creativity. Tapping into col-‐

lective intelligence through crowdsourcing, creating

a support network, might be the factor of competi-‐

tive advantage in field of design. “I think what you’ll

see soon is a big agency will build their own crowd-‐

sourcing network,” says John Winsor, the executive

director of strategy and innovation at the Miami-‐

based ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky. “At least

if we [a professional agency like Winsor’s CP+B] do

it we can maintain some level of control over the dis-‐

ruption.” (Howe, 2008 p.XXII). The shift since this

writing by Jeff Howe already happened: design com-‐

panies like Nokia, Muji, Philips, and recently IDEO

launched their crowdsourcing initiatives. An inter-‐

The network society and the new networked col-‐

laborative processes are inevitably affecting design

activities. Instead of being a process of individual

knowledge creation, design became a collabora-‐

tive and collective knowledge generation and shar-‐

ing process. The network dynamics transformed

knowledge production into plural and social proc-‐

esses (Valsecchi, 2009, p.70). In these processes

the codified and tacit knowledge are weaving the

complex pattern of knowledge. Design is known as

a knowledge transferal process (Valsecchi, 2009,

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esting case is Nokia Design by Community platform,

for “capturing the collective thoughts of Conversa-‐

tions readers to define the ultimate concept mobile

device.”43 IDEO launched recently the platform called

Open IDEO for making first step versus open innova-‐

tion and for gathering suggestions of participants on

social innovation topics, for instance “How can we

raise kid’s awareness of the benefits of fresh food

so they can make better choices?”44

For creating crowdsourcing platforms for design

firms, the necessary conditions are already provided:

the abundance of distributed creativity and knowl-‐

edge, the networked scheme of productive activities

(Ciuccarelli, 2008) and the culture of ICT tools and

communication technologies, supporting creativity.

The first factor -‐ the abundance of creativity is go-‐

ing to be nurtured by the need for self-‐expression as

mentioned before and the fact, that knowledge work-‐

ers feel often un-‐realized in their current jobs and

are seeking for freedom of thinking (Goetz, 2003).

The networked scheme of productive activities is

going to distribute more and more in the design field,

especially because it’s supported by more and more

advanced ICT tools. Improvement of communication

technologies and decreasing of costs of information

diffusion are connected to this fact. Von Hippel ar-‐

gues that this is the main reason why information

communities (communities organized around a cer-‐

tain topic) are becoming steadily more pervasive

(Von Hippel, 2005, p.166). New ICT tools got adopted

and transformed the way we work. Social network-‐

ing, blogging, micro-‐blogging and social bookmark-‐

ing tools became part of productive process of many

professionals. Every day there are new distributed

creativity tools appearing on the market, for instance

integration of a visual portfolio into LinkedIn pro-‐

fessional networking site45, or communicating with

your collegues by posting messages contemporarily

to Twitter, Facebook and your blog/blogs. All these

technologies co-‐evolute together with the commu-‐

nity that adopts them, and create a vital environment

for distributed creativity, which can be tapped in by

crowdsourcing platforms.

NOTES

[43] http://conversations.nokia.com/design-‐by-‐community/

[44] http://designthinking.ideo.com/?p=482&utm_

source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=

Feed%3A+DesignThinking+%28Design+Thinking%29

[45] Behance network provides the service of integrating

a portfolio showcase directly into LinkedIn profile page

Design and crow

dsourcing

572.2. DEBATE ABOUT DESIGN CROWDSOURC-‐ING AND THE SPEC-‐WORK

Alarmed by the popularity of this model, a group of

designers create an initiative called No!Spec to per-‐

suade other designers to say no to design contests.

The trade group AIGA, with around 22,000 designer

members, published an official position on spec

work on their website: “AIGA strongly discourages

the practice of requesting that design work be pro-‐

duced and submitted on a speculative basis in order

to be considered for acceptance on a project.”47

The critics of crowdsourcing design model state that

in opposition to open-‐source model, the crowsourc-‐

ing projects have hundreds of contributors, but only

three beneficiaries: 1) the company that requested

the design 2) the designer who produced the winning

work and 3) the company that hosted the project.48

Another aspect is the doubtful benefit of designers

and companies. According to crowdsourcing con-‐

trarians clients of such services risk compromised

quality as the little time and energy invested into the

project precludes a very important element of design

work -‐ the research and analysis phase, develop-‐

ment and testing of prototypes. Another risk for the

FIG. 18: No!Spec movement logotype (source: www.no-‐spec.com)

of payment) and it has always been considered the

work of last resort for writers, designers and other

creative professionals. Nonetheless apparently un-‐

sustainability of the service, the crowdsourcing de-‐

sign platforms continue to proliferate and increase in

number of customers and crowd-‐workers.

Since the time the term crowdsourcing got coined,

there is a huge debate about the rightness of this

approach. One of the first professional fields that

gets stroke by crowdsourcing platforms is profes-‐

sional photography. IStockphoto and other so-‐called

“microstock” agencies with their amateur users and

low prices took away a huge percent of market share

from professional photography stocks. The result

was the total disruption of the $2 billion stock photo

industry.46 According to Jeff Howe (Wired magazine)

the disruption of photography business was one of

the first examples of “barbarians at the gate” that

took away the profits from professionals and that

this shows the way where all the professional busi-‐

nesses are heading.

Nowadays the same debate is taking place in the

world of design. Crowdsourcing platforms like 99de-‐

signs, crowdSpring or similar propose services like

logo design for a fraction of what a design agency

would ask and allow to harness working power of

creatives from over the world. This work is called

“spec-‐work” (“on speculation,” or without guarantee

NOTES

[46] http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/03/is-‐crowdsourcin/

[47] idem

[48] http://opensource.com/business/10/4/why-‐

open-‐source-‐way-‐trumps-‐crowdsourcing-‐way

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company is so-‐called anti-‐marketing campaign that

might come out the crowdsourcing project: it’s called

‘crowdslapping’ (where the unruly crowd bites back

and instead of producing promotional content sub-‐

verts it into anti-‐brand propaganda, as was the case

for a 2006 Chevrolet Tahoe campaign.49

The risk for the designer is being taken as advantage

by clients and being considered as a source of free

profit and it also diminishes the true economic value

of the contribution designers make toward client’s

objectives. There are legal risks for both parties

should aspects of intellectual property, trademark

and trade-‐dress infringements become a factor.50

In addition there are some peculiarities about work

ethics in crowdsourcing. Jonathan Zittrain (author

of “The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It”) in

his talk “Minds for Sale: Ubiquitous Human Comput-‐

ing and the Future of the Internet“ identified three

main problems of crowdsourcing. “Firstly, agents

are not traditional employees; their employment is

totally deregulated from the point of view of labour

laws. Secondly, crowdsourcing can foster alienation

of workers, totally detached from the “real” mean-‐

ing of their production. Finally, oeuvres produced in

crowdsourcing are nearly useless from the point of

view of portfolios, curriculums, etc. “51 Additionally

the crowdsourcing community doesn’t offer protec-‐

tion from exploitative behavior to participants like in

open source communities, that set the acceptable

standards of behavior 52.

The tasks that are crowdsourced are usually execu-‐

tive tasks: crowdsourcing forgoes strategy and out-‐

sources execution. The brands are usually looking

for crowdsourcing solutions to cut costs, however

this model might not be sustainable over time. While

currently the crowd benefits from the participation

and pursuit of recognition, the future might present

something far less idealistic — a digital sweatshop

where crowd and brand each pays a high price only

to see diminishing returns.

However there are also positive sides of crowd-‐

sourcing, that its sustainers underline. It is appealing

to the businesses because it allows to obtain an im-‐

pressive amount of immaterial products with lower

expenses than usual systems53. Crowdsourcing is a

way to gain insights into how customers think about

a brand by telling us what is important to them. It

may eliminate the group dynamics that distort focus

groups and it may engage individuals that have inter-‐

est in a brand. 54

The process of crowdsourcing in design, when a

huge amount of proposals is created, it is part of

inefficiency of the process, which is needed for a

good creative design process. Designers participat-‐

ing in this process are building on each others ideas

and by the way are learning from this process. It al-‐

lows the less advanced designers to learn from the

experts and therefore the tacit knowledge exchange

takes place.

NOTES

[49] http://www.viralculture.com/downloads/crowdsourcing.pdf

[50] http://openwear.org/?p=230

[51] http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/

focusareas/technology/zittrain.html

[52] http://www.newkind.com/2010/01/open-‐

sourcing-‐crowd-‐sourcing-‐and-‐commodities/

[53] http://openwear.org/?p=230

[54] http://www.blackcoffee.com/blog/2010/03/01/crowdsourcing/

Design and crow

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59

Nonetheless the exploitative impression of some

of the crowdsourcing design platforms, they allow

equal possibilities to all designers to compete, to

work for a client and to win a competition. There are

currently 80.000 freelance designers alone in the

US and crowdsourcing sites is a solution for them to

get in contact with customers55. There is also a con-‐

tinuously increasing amount of start-‐ups and small

businesses that don’t necessarily have the possi-‐

bility to pay the service of a big agency56. Unfortu-‐

nately often the contact and feedback from clients

in crowdsourcing process is quite limited. However,

some of the designers manage to maintain a relation

with the customers and continue working for them.

Another argument for crowdsourcing design solu-‐

tions is the opportunity for young graduated design-‐

ers to build their portfolio and to gain experience by

working for real brands. An opportunity which is not

always there for young professionals and students.

Accordingly to Howe, even if the crowdsourcing

model causes a disruption in design market like it did

in professional photography market, it “doesn’t mean

the end of design, advertising, journalism, or any

of the other fields — product design and innovation

come quickly to mind — in which it has started to

compete with traditional methods.” <...> Writers will

still write, designers will still design, photographers

will still take photographs. The structures in which

it all takes place, however, are about to change for-‐

ever.” (Howe, 2008, p.XXIV)

One of the possible hypothesis for the future are

mixed working models, where the traditional work

environment will exist alongside the new community

collaborative models and complete each other. There

is a need for institutions which are independent from

institutions where people work, because these inde-‐

pendent communities might be the source of crea-‐

tivity which doesn’t happen in traditional institutions

(Gabriella Coleman)57.

In design field this kind of symbiosis might happen

when design agencies and design companies will

start using the crowdsourcing platforms extensively,

like some of the examples described before. In case

of this scenario the role of designers might change

from being service providers to service enablers

(Valsecchi, 2008). Designers will be needed as the

central figure of this collaborative work, as enablers

of the design process, as creators of services that

enable design process – the meta-‐design services,

and by designing toolkits for user participation58.

NOTES

[55] http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/03/is-‐crowdsourcin/

[56] http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/03/is-‐crowdsourcin/

[57] http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/06/collaboration-‐

instead-‐of-‐the-‐crowd-‐gabriella-‐coleman-‐karim-‐

lakhani-‐on-‐how-‐people-‐work-‐together-‐online/

[58] http://www.knowledgepresentation.org/

BuildingTheFuture/Summaries/Sanders_summary/

SandersQuicktime/SandersMovie.html

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A SHIFT IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS

CO-‐CREATOR

ADOPTER

PARTICIPANT

USER

CONSUMER

CUSTOMER

1960s 1980s 2000s

FIG. 19: Image source: Liz Sanders, Participatory Design: Information and Adaptation, IIID Conference, 2004,

http://www.knowledgepresentation.org/BuildingTheFuture/Summaries/Sanders_summary/SandersSummary.html

During the last decade of the XX century, users role

in design changed dramatically. Earlier companies

did user research, mainly through questionnaires,

observation and tests. Then companies shifted to

user centered design by orienting design activities

around the users needs, and rethinking the whole

offering for satisfying those needs. Later on compa-‐

nies went a step further by creating personalization

and customization services, where the user could

ask for a personalized product (design-‐on-‐demand),

for instance by combining the skin of the product

from the existing given elements. Already from this

step on we can interpret the involvement as crowd-‐

sourcing -‐ outsourcing creative activities to the

crowd -‐ even if this is just a superficial intervention

of the users.

Successively the companies gave the user a further

freedom: to combine and create new products out of

existing elements and see their products to be pro-‐

duced. In this process usually the lead users, having

enough competence and dedication, were involved.

Some companies came even further by proposing

Design and crow

dsourcing

61

the user to create the whole concept of the prod-‐

uct and were choosing the best proposals through a

contest. Many firms started to use the crowd crea-‐

tivity to create marketing campaigns and for infor-‐

mation diffusion purposes.

An even higher involvement of users is achieved

in bottom-‐up initiatives like open design, where in

many cases there is no need for the manufacturer

or company anymore. The designer Ronen Kadushin

sees open design as a possibility to get away from

established power-‐structures (Guth, 2010, p.71).

Kadushin changed his designs for making their pro-‐

duction with simple means possible (CNC-‐Machines)

and his new Motto became: “production without tool-‐

ing”. This made the distribution of design free and

worldwide. Kadushin’s designs: a “Hack chair”, a

foldable fruit bowl, candle holders, lamps, tables etc.,

can be downloaded freely by anyone and reproduced

locally.

In the last step of user involvement stands Do-‐it-‐

Yourself design, when the user invents, conceives

and produces his design independently from a com-‐

pany. At this step however, the design is loosing the

mass production aspect (Von Hippel, 2005) and with

it the commercial aspects as well.

Nabeel Hamdi and Reinhard Goethert proposed a

model used in Action Planning project approach,

showing different levels of citizen involvement into

architectural project process (Menichinelli, 2006,

p.198). The matrix contains participation degrees

on vertical axis and project phases on horizontal

axis. This matrix is an effective tool for analyzing

which level of participation is suitable for different

projects and which tools and strategies to choose

(Menichinelli, 2006, p.198). The matrix is based on a

fundamental concept: participation of the community

is not an objective, it’s a tool for achieving better re-‐

sults for the same community.

The five degrees of participation are described

through the relation between the community and the

external agent (someone who projects for commu-‐

nity but is not part of the community, for instance an

institution):

No involvement of the community: the external

agent is the only actor responsible of all the

project aspects, the community is not involved.

Usually this happens when there is a very spe-‐

cialized knowledge needed. The project might

not correspond to the needs of the community,

but allows a very fast development.

Indirect involvement: the external agent is gath-‐

ering informations about the community from

indirect sources. For this kind of participation

there is a need of sufficient information about

the community and the capacity to analyze this

information. In this case the the risk of a project

non corresponding to the needs of the commu-‐

nity is less, however it’s not convenient in the

times of fast changes.

Consultative involvement: the external agent

develops the project by relying on informa-‐

tions received directly from the community.

Successively he makes proposals and expects

comments from the community. This method is

suitable for receiving acceptance of an idea, but

not suitable for receiving suggestions from the

community.

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Involvement with shared control: at this level the

community and the external agent are involved

in the project on the the same level, where both

are stakeholders of the project.

Full control involvement: the community con-‐

trols the project process and the external agent

becomes a resource, observing the commu-‐

nity and providing professional support when

necessary (Hamdi, Goethert, 1997, from Men-‐

ichinelli, 2006).

We are going to modify slightly the model by adapt-‐

ing it to design process. For describing the design

process we are going to use the phases identified

by Cautela (2007). It’s a matrix with the action de-‐

fined by the horizontal axis (learning-‐doing) and the

characteristic of material produced in the process

(abstracting-‐materializing). In this matrix four phas-‐

es of design can be identified: research, analysis,

conceptualization and development. Research phase

is about finding inputs and base assumptions for

the project; analysis phase is needed for creating a

framework or a system of research results; concep-‐

tualizing means synthesizing what we learned from

INITIATE

NO INVOLVEMENT

More rapid and simple process but

with decreasing community role

A more complex and slow process

but with increasing community role

INDIRECTINVOLVEMENT

CONSULTATIVEINVOLVEMENT

SHAREDCONTROL

FULLCONTROL

PLAN DESIGN IMPLEMENT MAINTAIN

Minor definition project phases

user involvement level

Major definition

FIG. 20: Matrix of citizen involvement into architectural

project process (Menichinelli, 2006, p.198)

Design and crow

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63

the analysis and creating a schematic representation

of a proposal, of an idea; development is the defini-‐

tion of the project in detail, it makes the concept tan-‐

gible and verifies its feasibility (Cautela, 2007). The

development phase comprises therefore prototyping

and evaluation elements. We include these elements

for the further analysis of crowdsourcing projects,

where there is a distinct outsourcing of prototyping

and testing elements to the crowd.

We would like to propose therefore a model of Hamdi

and Goethert applied to the design process. The ver-‐

tical axis has the same elements of the vertical axis

of Hamdi and Goethert matrix, while the horizontal

axis has the phases of design process: research,

analysis, conceptualizing, development (prototyping

and evaluation).

In the next section we are going to examine some

cases of crowd participation in design projects, and

analyze what benefit crowdsourcing brings to de-‐

sign companies. We chose a wide range of partici-‐

pation examples: from idea jams, to customization,

to design contests and testing services. The cases

RESEARCH ANALYSIS CONCEP-TUALIZING

PROTOTYPINGDEVELOPMENT

EVALUATIONDEVELOPMENT

full control

shared control

consultative

indirect

no participation

FIG. 21: Matrix of the involvement of the

participants into a design project

XBOX AVATARSXBOX AVATARS

UTESTUTEST

ASUS AND INTEL WEPCASUS AND INTEL WEPCLEGO MINDSTORMSLEGO MINDSTORMS

NOKIA BETA LABSNOKIA BETA LABS

DELL IDEASTORM

NOKIA APPS TO BE WIREDNOKIA APPS TO BE WIRED

FIG. 22: Analyzed cases of crowd participation in design projects

were analyzed through a literature review and ex-‐

amination of the project websites.

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Michael Dell, the founder of Dell, created a direct

model by bypassing the middleman and selling cus-‐

tom built PCs directly to customers59. Therefore

the idea to ask directly to its customers about their

preferences and needs was a quite logical idea60.

Dell launches a crowdsourcing initiative called

IdeaStorm in 2007 and creates an ad-‐hoc website

where users would post ideas, suggestions, needs

and proposals to the website, then vote and discuss

them for being chosen successively to be imple-‐

mented by Dell. “Our goal through IdeaStorm is to

hear what new products or services you’d like to

see Dell develop. We hope this site fosters a can-‐

SEARCHING FOR OPPORTUNITIES: DELL IDEASTORM

FIG. 23: Dell’s IdeaStorm website screenshot

(source: www.ideastorm.com)

NOTES

[59] ttp://www.ideastorm.com/ideaAbout?pt=About+IdeaStorm

[60] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-‐

TFJwdD7Rno&feature=related

[61] http://www.ideastorm.com/ideaAbout?pt=About+IdeaStorm

did and robust conversation about your ideas.”61 The

initiative is comparable to collective product feature

suggestions. However, it stands a step earlier than

brainstorming process, because there is neither a

concrete problem nor a defined brief. The users are

invited to post any suggestion or idea that comes to

their mind, related to an existing Dell product or pro-‐

posals to create something that doesn’t exist, related

Design and crow

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65

RESEARCH ANALYSIS CONCEP-TUALIZING

PROTOTYPINGDEVELOPMENT

EVALUATIONDEVELOPMENT

full control

shared control

consultative

indirect

no participation

to hardware or software. They don’t receive any re-‐

ward for their suggestions, just the satisfaction of a

response from Dell.

The platform of IdeaStorm gathers and sorts ideas

by their popularity and their posting date. Users can

browse through ideas by others, vote (“promote”

ideas or “demote” them), comment on them and add

their own ideas. As the articles are promoted and

their score increases, this allows Dell to see which

ideas are considered to be most important by their

users. The feedback of the company to the proposals

is reflected in the status of the idea: it can be “un-‐

der review”, “acknowledged” or “implemented”. The

process between these two status: “under review”

and “implemented” is invisible to the users, never-‐

theless Dell is actively involving its team-‐leaders,

industrial designers and vendors into solving the

problem individuated in the proposals62.

Dell expresses its presence by changing the status

of the ideas, or by removing comments, although this

interrupts the flow of idea and eliminates some ideas

that were born in the process of commenting. An-‐

other problem that Dell encounters are the double-‐

dippers: people that create more than one account

for voting for an idea.

Since the launch of the platform in 2007, Dell col-‐

lected 14.000 ideas, and implemented 417 of them.

Recently Dell made a change on the website: after

this collective opportunity-‐gathering session they

initiated a more targeted, relevant and time-‐bound

discussion around topics defined by Dell.

One of the most popular current topic in the IdeaS-‐

torm discussions is the inclusion of free or open

source software and operating system in Dell com-‐

puters. Dell listened to the numerous requests and

offered computers with Ubuntu63 preinstalled.

The IdeaStorm allows Dell to communicate with

their customers, learn from them and improve nega-‐

tive aspects of their products64. IdeaStorm platform

also enables feedback at a fraction of the cost from

the willing participants. However, without requiring

to give proofs during the registration if the user is

Dell’s customer, Dell cannot know if the users of the

platform are really Dell’s clients.

FIG. 24: Matrix of the involvement of the

participants into IdeaStorm project

NOTES

[62] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0SOXW_K56w

[63] Ubuntu is a free anoperating system based

on GNU/Linux: http://www.ubuntu.com/

[64] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-‐

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MASS CUSTOMIZATION

Another phase is user-‐led-‐innovation process, or

bottom-‐up process, where the users manipulate and

change the artifacts and suggest their new unex-‐

pected uses or new features. The step of custom-‐

izing the superficial features of a product, like the

skin, involves the user into the process of creation

much more than just user research and feedback.

Many companies from clothing and sports sectors,

to computing and car manufacturers (for instance

Dell and BMW) provide to customers the possibility

to personalize the skin. However, it stays a very su-‐

perficial involvement, because usually the user cre-‐

ates combinations of already existing elements.

There are also many examples of customization in

electronics and game design field, for instance with

Arduino65 board (both electronic system and code

can be prototyped) or Beagleboard. Bug Labs66 mod-‐

ular system of computing parts is also customizable

(“giving your business the power to go from proto-‐

FIG. 25: The XBox Avatars Website (source: http://

www.xbox.com/en-‐US/live/avatars/)

NOTES

[65] http://www.arduino.cc/

[66] http://www.buglabs.net/

[67] http://www.buglabs.net/testkitchen

type to production twice as fast at half the cost”).

Buglabs has also an open-‐source R&D laboratory

called Test Kitchen, where users can meet, build and

test their prototypes, collaborating with others.67

Design and crow

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67

In the world of software development, Microsoft

with its Excel spreadsheet software is another ex-‐

ample of post-‐sale modifications by users (von Hip-‐

pel, 2005, p.128). StataCorp that produces and sells

Stata, a proprietary software program designed for

statistics, embraced the user-‐led innovation proc-‐

ess: they allow to develop new tests for operating

on Stata platform. This is used by advanced users of

Stata, many of them statisticians and social science

researchers, which develop tests and successively

publish them on their websites. Stata monitors this

development and incorporates the most successful

user-‐developed tests as modules of their software

(von Hippel, 2005, p.128).

Another example of user-‐led customization process

is the development of game modes and characters

in online computer games: vendors of online com-‐

puter games noticed that users deciphered the code

of the software and started developing game modes,

which attracted a large amount of followers. These

companies embraced this behavior and provided the

users with design tools for making it easier to them

to develop mods on their engines (von Hippel, 2005,

p.128). An easier possibility for personalization, ac-‐

cessible also to non-‐programmer gamers are the

tools integrated into the MMORPG68 games already

back in the 90ies: in the first series of DOOM game

there was included an editor similar to a simplified

CAD software, for modifying ambients and charac-‐

ters of the game (Ciuccarelli, 2007, p.87).

A more recent adaptation of customizable game

characters is the Microsoft’s Xbox game console

feature of customizable game avatars (every user

can choose or design his avatar). Users are able to

customize the shape of avatars body, the gender,

facial features, hair style and clothing69. In 2009 Mi-‐

crosoft released the Avatar MarketPlace where us-‐

ers can buy props (guitars, skateboards), premium

items and branded apparel for their Avatars70. Earn-‐

ing Achievements in the game can make users win

clothing for their avatars, for instance T-‐shirts and

First Aid Kit trophy. This involvement of the users

into customization process is beneficial for the com-‐

pany, that gains profit from the sells of virtual items

for Avatars71.

The customization is permitting to reduce the gap

that is produced by the stickiness of need informa-‐

tion, that von Hippel described as one of the main

characteristics of customer in-‐satisfaction. Sticky

need information is context specific, therefore dif-‐

ficult to formalize and transfer. The stickiness of

customer need information is including multiple fac-‐

tors, for instance the encoding of information. Cus-‐

tomers often use different languages for describing

their needs and different design parameters than the

manufacturer. Therefore customer research made

during development of new products is inaccurate.

Even in highly specialized industrial markets cus-‐

tomers face the difficulty in accurately specifying

their needs. Needs become more refined when cus-‐

tomers come in direct contact with the prototype of

the product. Such features for user co-‐design like

XBox Avatar is changing the user’s perception of un-‐

satisfied need, because some specifications of the

product are shifted into the domain of the user. 72

RESEARCH ANALYSIS CONCEP-TUALIZING

PROTOTYPINGDEVELOPMENT

EVALUATIONDEVELOPMENT

full control

shared control

consultative

indirect

no participation

NOTES

[68] massive multiplayer online role playing games

[69] http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-‐2008-‐xbox-‐360/37146

[70] http://www.xbox.com/en-‐GB/worldofreals/default.htm

[71] http://www.geardiary.com/2010/09/01/microsoft-‐shows-‐

empathy-‐for-‐recession-‐woes-‐by-‐raising-‐xbox-‐live-‐prices/

[72] http://open-‐your-‐innovation.com/2010/04/01/open-‐

innovation-‐crowdsourcing-‐and-‐the-‐rebirth-‐of-‐lego/

FIG. 26: Matrix of the involvement of the

participants into the XBox avatar project

Des

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HACKING AND USER-‐LED INNOVATION: LEGO MINDSTORMS

“Hacking is the interference in, or corruption of,

the authorship of designers and manufacturers,

usually by amateurs.” Scott Burnham

Lego experiences almost a bankruptcy in the begin-‐

ning of nineties, when children become more and

more interested in computers and video games. The

new elected CEO Vig Knudstorp is therefore to en-‐

gage the group in a new innovation policy. Around

the same time Lego becomes interesting to young

adults through the development of their programma-‐

ble toys.73 Lego initiates with robotics line toys called

Mindstorms production in 1998, originated from the

programmable brick invented at MIT Media Lab,

which can be programmed and connected to sensors

and motors using the official Lego software. This is

a quite revolutionary step in the history of the com-‐

pany, usually concentrated on production of tangible

toys and distant from the world of computers (Ciuc-‐

carelli, 2008, p.114).

FIG. 27: Lego Mindstorms website (source:

http://mindstorms.lego.com

NOTES

[73] http://open-‐your-‐innovation.com/2010/04/01/open-‐

innovation-‐crowdsourcing-‐and-‐the-‐rebirth-‐of-‐lego/

Design and crow

dsourcing

69

Lego addressed its usual target with this product,

however, about seven from ten buyers were adults,

because the process of its use is quite complex: the

instructions for managing the parts of Mindstorms

have to be written in programming language called

RCX-‐code. The kits are bought by informatics and

electronic experts that discover the construction

of Mindstorms through reverse engineering. Within

three weeks after its launch thousands of hackers

start working on it74. This is perceived as hacking

and attack to intellectual property by Lego, that even

starts a mass law-‐case against the hackers.

Later, however, Lego changes its position and de-‐

cides to add some changes to the licensing of

Mindstorms, adding “the right to hack”. This action

RESEARCH ANALYSIS CONCEP-TUALIZING

PROTOTYPINGDEVELOPMENT

EVALUATIONDEVELOPMENT

full control

shared control

consultative

indirect

no participation

changes radically the relationship user-‐manufactur-‐

er: Lego starts to learn from the changes proposed

by users and use this experience for production of

the next kits. Lego involves expert users in partici-‐

pation in beta-‐tests, as well as through a contest for

awarding best ideas. Lego also developes an lead-‐

user-‐innovation toolkit (according to von Hippel):

the Digital Designer tool75, which enables the user

to build their Mindstorms virtually, save them and

order the design, activating therefore the build-‐to-‐

order strategy. This close relationship with the us-‐

ers brought results: the Mindstorms product line is

a very successful line and the Mindstorm set is the

best-‐selling Lego ever.76

Lego adopted to the changes of the network econ-‐

omy differently that other companies (for instance

Sony sued their customers that hacked the Sony

Aibo robot). Lego learned the lesson very well, by

shifting the paradigm from being inventor, innovator

and producer, to the paradigm of user-‐led innovation

and by adopting the role of publisher (von Hippel).

A variety of manufacturers have found it profitable

to shift the tasks of custom product design to their

customers along with appropriate toolkits for inno-‐

vation (Von Hippel, 2005, p.148). Results of this are

development time cut by 2/3 and development costs

cut significantly (von Hippel, 2005, p.148).

FIG. 28: The involvement of the participants

into the Lego Mindstorms project

NOTES

[74] Eric von Hippel, Open Innovation & Lego

Mindstorms, http://fora.tv/2008/04/08/MITs_Eric_

von_Hippel_Open_Innovation#fullprogram

[75] Lego Digital Designer is an tool permitting to customize

Lego sets by arranging them from existing parts

[76] http://gizmodo.com/5019797/everything-‐

you-‐always-‐wanted-‐to-‐know-‐about-‐lego

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PRODUCT FEATURE SUGGESTIONS: FIAT MIO AND WEPC BY ASUS

Suggesting product features is another form of par-‐

ticipation, which allows to reduce the gap between

manufacturer and customer. Asus launches together

with Intel the crowdsourcing project for “dreaming

your pc”, called WePc. Participants have a variety of

tools for submitting their ideas: from simply posting

a description, to selecting a picture of a pc, to draw-‐

ing and customizing their own picture. Additionally

there is a simple design-‐toolkit, which permits to

choose from the basis of existing pc drawings, mod-‐

ify them by adding a background and monitor picture

and add specifications of hardware and pricing. The

proposals can be published, voted and discussed

with other users. They can be also shared through

social networks. Additionally Asus provides a con-‐

test, where for answering “a question with a qualify-‐

ing comment” it’s possible to win a pc.77

FIG. 29: Asus WePc website (source: www.wepc.com)

NOTES

[77] http://www.wepc.com/vote/contest

Design and crow

dsourcing

71RESEARCH ANALYSIS CONCEP-

TUALIZINGPROTOTYPINGDEVELOPMENT

EVALUATIONDEVELOPMENT

full control

shared control

consultative

indirect

no participation

The WePc project is comparable to brainstorming for

interaction design ideas because many ideas are not

only about hardware, but also about specific interac-‐

tions and experiences that it is designed for. Asus

ensures on their website to use the ideas submitted

by the users for the design of Asus pc: “our designs,

feature ideas and community feedback will be evalu-‐

ated by ASUS and could influence the blueprint for an

actual notebook PC built by ASUS with Intel inside”78

Meanwhile, from the launch of the project in 2008 till

2010 Asus developed a concept pc prototype based

on users ideas: a dual screen netbook, that allows

multiple configuration options to suit users’ needs.

This product was based on discussions and submis-‐

sions from wepc website: modular/docking pc; kid

pc/theft mode; touch interface/more intuitive use;

multiple screens79. Another project -‐ Asus Waveface

was also inspired by users suggestions and discus-‐

sions according to the holders of initiative.80

This kind of user participation strengthens Asus

brand perception and turns Asus users into fans.

The discussion with the community is not a one time

discussion: Asus invites some of the leading con-‐

DESIGN CONTESTS: NOKIA APPS TO BE WIRED

Nokia Apps to Be Wired contest that took place in

Italy in April 2010 is an example of a collective brain-‐

storming in a design contest. The contest organized

and sponsored by Nokia and Wired invited the us-‐

ers, especially university students, to submit ideas

for mobile applications for Nokia phones. However,

this is a particular example, because the contest was

made of three phases and three possibilities to win

an award. During the first, ideation phase, thousands

of ideas were submitted on contest website, voted

and commented by users. Successively ten ideas

were selected by a jury (according to what is writ-‐

ten on contests website82, the user votes were taken

into consideration during the selection). The win-‐

ning ideas were rewarded with 1000 Euro prize. The

second phase of the contest was opened: developers

and developer firms were invited to choose one of

ten applications, develop it in two days and submit it.

tributors to have conversations with their industrial

designers. The initiative allows to build a community

around the project.81

FIG. 30: The involvement of the participants

into the Lego Mindstorms project

NOTES

[78] http://www.wepc.com/about/index

[79] http://www.wepc.com/discussions/view/9840/

Exciting_announcements_and_updates_from_CES

[80] http://www.wepc.com/discussions/view/9840/

Exciting_announcements_and_updates_from_CES

[81] http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/10/31/how-‐

to-‐crowdsource-‐your-‐research-‐development/

[82] http://www.nokiaideas.it/comunicato_app/

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The developers of winning application “Buka Stop”

were rewarded with 30.000 Euro. The winning ap-‐

plication proposes to solve the problem of a national

emergency -‐ the “killer holes” on the streets of italy

which cause accidents and damages of vehicles.

With this application, every citizen is involved in this

road security campaign because it enables everyone

to send a photo of the hole noticed on the street to

the company responsible for the reparation.

In the third phase of the contest, all the developers

were invited to upload their application to Nokia Ovi

Store. The application that will be most downloaded

till 31 October 2010 will win an additional prize of

20.000 Euro. Nokia doesn’t get a direct profit from

selling the applications in this case, however a huge

marketing campaign is activated and a lot of word of

mouth is taking place, which draws peoples’ atten-‐

tion to Nokia and its Ovi Store.

RESEARCH ANALYSIS CONCEP-TUALIZING

PROTOTYPINGDEVELOPMENT

EVALUATIONDEVELOPMENT

full control

shared control

consultative

indirect

no participation

FIG. 31: Nokia Apps to be Wired contest website

(source: http://www.nokiaideas.it/en/contest/

FIG. 32: The involvement of the participants

into the Nokia Apps to be Wired contest

Design and crow

dsourcing

73

NOTES

[83] http://betalabs.nokia.com/about

[84] http://betalabs.nokia.com/about

[85] http://betalabs.nokia.com/about

TEST-‐DRIVING: NOKIA BETA LABS AND UTEST APPLICATION TESTING

Another way to participate on design of industrial

products or applications is testing. Testing is one

step farther the discussion about product features

and critics. Testing means an active participation on

product development last phase. Recently especially

in the world of software production there can be

seen a trend to make beta-‐releases of applications.

Beta-‐release means products or services that are of

“reasonably good quality, but may have rough edges

or occasional service breaks. They are not commer-‐

cialized yet, not guaranteed, and not officially sup-‐

ported. Usually they are also under active develop-‐

ment, free of charge and not used for commercial

purposes”83. However, recently many online services

and software are released and used by the communi-‐

ty in beta-‐release, some of them stay in beta-‐release

for a very long time. This trend was launched already

by Eric Raymond, who wrote in his “Cathedral and

Bazaar” essay: “release early and often”.

Nokia maintains a website for customers who test-‐

drive trial versions of cell phones and report back

to beta-‐lab community about their experience. Feed-‐

back from these “lead users,” Nokia executives say,

have been essential in determining the design and

functionality of the company’s phones. (Howe, 2008,

p.XI). Nokia expects the community of testers to be

lead-‐users, that means to possess a quite new and

advanced Nokia cell phone, that are willing to toler-‐

ate rough edges, that often get ideas of how to im-‐

prove gizmos they are using, want to make differ-‐

ence and are willing to share their opinions.84

The process of testing consists of following steps:

get a Nokia account, browse in the catalog of experi-‐

mental and beta applications, try them out and share

opinion: submit bug reports, suggestions, reviews

or questions to application forums. Nokia expects

the beta-‐lab members to be active and to connect

to other members by discussing, rating their con-‐

tributions, posting and answering to others posts.

The active community members earn an Active Con-‐

trbutor badge, visible in their profile. An additional

possibility is to earn the Top Contributor badge, by

the members that are active on the site and valued

by others: this happends when the other members

rate positively the posts and some of the posts are

picked up by Admins to Editors’ Picks. A very active

contribution during the current month is awarded by

Contributor of the Month badge. Some most active

contributors are invited to help admins and serve as

moderators of the site. By this Nokia wants to pro-‐

mote a “Community-‐Driven Open Innovation”85.

The Beta Labs is essentially a tool that enables the

developers and users have an unchaperoned dia-‐

logue, empowering both sides with a closer com-‐

FIG. 33: Nokia BetaLabs Website (source:

http://betalabs.nokia.com/)

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74

munication and more valuable outcome.86 Tommi

Vilkamo from Beta Labs: the reason behind Beta

Labs is simply “trying to attract one percent of the

most passionate, loud voiced Nokia users. We want

to work with them, leading to users helping the in-‐

novation process”.87

UTest88 is another application testing platform, for

desktop, mobile, gaming and web applications. The

business model of this company works as a mar-‐

ket place, where testers and companies are brought

together: the community of 25.000+ testers from

different countries are taking advantage of being

able to improve their testing skills and earn some

additional money, while the companies receive the

value from the most wide-‐spread and numerous

tester-‐community of the world, for a fraction of cost

of a normal testing service. uTest is taking care for

involving their testers into different kind of partici-‐

pation -‐ from remote testing to specially organized

testing evenings (uTest bug battles) with pizza and

beer, where the best testers that found most bugs in

a faster time possible win substantial material priz-‐

es. uTest management underlines the importance

of testing web applications through their service

for the following reasons: web application testing is

very complicated nowadays because of the variety

of browsers, plug-‐ins, operating systems, third par-‐

ty apps, programming languages and more; a large

network of experienced testers can help through

this complexity; testing through a crowdsourcing

community makes the testing faster because of the

number of involved testers and therefore the app

can be brought to market faster. Microsoft and iWoot

are two of the companies that used uTest for their

projects with positive results: Microsoft managed to

launch the project on a very agressive schedule with

a good degree of testing coverage89. The online retail

company iWOOT used uTest for testing their Website

for a fraction of the cost required for internal testing,

RESEARCH ANALYSIS CONCEP-TUALIZING

PROTOTYPINGDEVELOPMENT

EVALUATIONDEVELOPMENT

full control uTest

shared control Nokia Betalabs

consultative

indirect

no participation

NOTES

[86] http://conversations.nokia.com/?p=378

[87] http://conversations.nokia.com/?p=378

[88] www.utest.com

[89] http://www.utest.com/spotlight/microsoft-‐

security-‐essentials?page=0,2

FIG. 35: The involvement of the participants into

the Nokia BetaLabs and uTest projects

FIG. 34: Utest website (source: www.utest.com)

in a fraction of time required usually and with a much

better quality: “We had four people testing internally.

They all said the new site looks great. Then we had

Design and crow

dsourcing

75

NOTES

[90] http://www.computerweekly.com/

Articles/2009/07/31/237123/Video-‐I-‐Want-‐One-‐of-‐

Those-‐website-‐tested-‐with-‐crowdsourcing.htm

CONCLUSIONS

For drawing conclusions we took in consideration

following aspects: complexity of the project, user

participation level, and benefits that both users and

companies achieve.

As we’ve seen the most analyzed cases, only one

or few elements of design process are outsourced

to the crowd by the most of the companies. Espe-‐

cially when it comes to very complex projects, like

consumer electronics, the crowd gets a few precise

tasks, like concept proposals or technical sugges-‐

tions. When the company involves the community in

more than one task, it is usually split into precise

phases, like in Nokia Apps to be Wired project.

RESEARCH ANALYSIS CONCEP-TUALIZING

PROTOTYPINGDEVELOPMENT

EVALUATIONDEVELOPMENT

full control Nokia Apps to be Wired

Nokia Apps to be Wired

uTest

shared control Dell Asus Microsoft XBox, Lego

Nokia BetaLabs

consultative Dell, Asus Asus

indirect

no participation

FIG. 36: The summary of participants

involvement into analyzed projects

45 people testing externally saying they had found

30 bugs,” -‐ Sagar Vadher, the head of IT at iWOOT90.

In both described cases -‐ Nokia Beta Labs and uTest

only the last step in application development -‐ the

testing -‐ is outsourced to the crowd with a shared or

full control over the process.

Des

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76

As we’ve seen there is a different approach to

crowdsourcing when there are different needs of

customers. In the case of Dell IdeaStorm there is a

little user participation required, that can be com-‐

pared to product feature suggestions. The users are

not rewarded except the psychological rewards, for

instance the satisfaction that their request was im-‐

plemented. There is an idea selection and filtering

mechanisms implemented. The company benefits

from the discussion with the users and from the

information about their needs and preferences ob-‐

tained in a fraction of time and cost. This process

can be retained a crowdwisdom and crowdvoting

initiative.

DESIGN CASES DESIGN PROCESS KIND OF PARTICIPATION CROWDSOURCING TYPE BENEFITS TO DESIGN COMPANIES

MASS CUSTOMIZATION

PRODUCT FEATURE SUGGESTIONS

THE COMPANY BENEFITS BY INVOLVING EMOTIONALLY THE USERS, SUPPORTING CUSTOMER FIDELITY AND INCREASING BUZZ AROUND THE INITIATIVE. ANOTHER BENEFIT IS TO SELL THE ACCESSOIRIES AND APPAREL FOR AVATARS.

WEPC BENEFITS FROM USER PARTICIPATION, NEW IDEAS AND VIRAL NETWORKING EFFECTS.

NOKIA BENEFITS BY CUTTING COSTS OF PROFESSIONAL TESTING SERVICES AND AT THE SAME TIME IT GAINS CUSTOM-‐ERS' FIDELITY AND PRODUCT ADOPTION.

CROWD-‐CREATION, CROWD-‐FUNDING

CROWD-‐WISDOM, CROWD-‐CREATION,

CROWD-‐VOTING

BETWEEN CROWDWIS-‐DOM AND

CROWDCREATION

BETWEEN CROWDWIS-‐DOM AND

CROWDCREATION

DESIGN CONTESTTHE COMPANY BENEFITS FROM USER ATTRACTION, VIRAL EFFECTS , ADVERTISEMENT OF THEIR APP STORE

CROWD-‐CREATION, CROWD-‐VOTING

TESTING

TESTING

COMPANIES THAT USE UTEST BENEFIT FROM CUTTING THE COST OF APPLICATION TESTING AND TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE LARGE NETWORK OF TESTERS

HACKING

THE COMPANY RECEIVES BENEFITS FROM LEARNING FROM USER INNOVATION, EMPOWERING ITS USERS TO CREATE AND THEREFORE CUTTING THE COSTS OF PRODUCTION.

CROWD-‐CREATION, CROWD-‐FUNDING

CROWD-‐WISDOM, CROWD-‐VOTING

THE COMPANY BENEFITS FROM THE DISCUSSION WITH THE USERS AND FROM THE INFORMATION ABOUT THEIR NEEDS AND PREFERENCES OBTAINED IN A FRACTION OF TIME AND COST

RESEARCH

EXECUTION

EXECUTION

EXECUTION

EXECUTION

CONCEPTION

CONCEPTION, EXECUTION

IDEA JAMS, SEARCHING FOR OPPORTUNITIES

CASE STUDY ANALYSIS: DESIGN PROCESS full control shared control

FIG. 37: The analysis of crowdsourcing design cases

Design and crow

dsourcing

77

In the case of XBox Avatar, the user is involved a

step further, by customizing the design of the prod-‐

uct, even if it’s limited to a number of possible com-‐

bination of existing elements. In this process we

see crowdcreation, crowdfunding (people are buy-‐

ing accessories for their Avatars). The customiza-‐

tion permits to reduce the gap that is produced by

the stickiness of need information. The company

benefits by involving emotionally the users, by sup-‐

porting customer fidelity and increasing buzz around

the initiative.

User involvement in Lego Mindstorms goes further

than in Xbox Avatars. Even if it started as a hack-‐

ing project, Lego Mindstorms is another example of

mass customization. Lego supports user-‐led innova-‐

tion by selecting lead users and empowering them

as responsible for supporting and teaching other us-‐

ers. The designs created by users through the dig-‐

ital designer toolkit are produced and therefore this

is more similar to design-‐on-‐demand model. This

process has crowdcreation and crowdfunding ele-‐

ments. Users are rewarded psychologically through

attention, featuring of best designs and reputation in

the community. The company receives benefits from

learning from user innovation, empowering the us-‐

ers and therefore cutting the costs of production.

Asus WePc is an example of a collective brainstorm-‐

ing. The company already have a defined problem in

this cases and expect ideas about project features,

look-‐and-‐feel, and functioning. The ideas are se-‐

lected through user rating in the same way like in

PRODUCT USE INCENTIVES

PROFESSIONAL INTEREST,MONETARY INCENTIVES

SET PROBLEM UNSET PROBLEM

crowdwisdom, crowdvoting,collective brainstorming

user feedback, viral effects

possible material prizes

crowdwisdom, crowdvoting;

searching for design opportunities

benefit from gettinguser feedback

at a fraction of costno material reward

NokiaBeta Labs

NokiaApps to be Wired

Crowdcreationcrowdvoting

crowdfunding,benefit from buzz,

viral effectscontest form

LegoMindstorms

WePc

crowdcreation customization user empowerement benefit from sticky information,reducing production cost,psychological reward

uTESTcrowdwisdom

and crowdcreationbenefit from low cost testing

direct material reward

crowdwisdomand crowdcreation

benefit from free testing,psychological rewards

Xbox

crowdcreation customization,

benefit from sticky information

psychological rewards

FULL CONTROL SHARED CONTROL

DellIdeaStorm

FIG. 38: The matrix of crowdsourcing design cases

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IdeaStorm project. In the case of Asus WePc best

ideas are rewarded with a material reward. However

the main reward is the opportunity to see the ideas

to realize in an Asus Pc. This process has therefore

crowdwisdom, crowdcreation and crowdvoting ele-‐

ments. The company benefits from user participa-‐

tion, attention and viral networking effects.

Nokia Apps to be Wired is a crowdsourcing project

mainly for getting ideas about new applications and

for executing them. In the second phase of the project

it is more similar to a traditional design contest with

companies, because both individual programmers as

well as companies are invited to participate and the

price is very substantial. Nokia benefits from crowd

participation, brand awareness, viral effects as well

as advertisement for their app market. This project

contains crowdcreation and crowdvoting elements.

Nokia Betalabs community is involving the users in

one precise phase of the process: product testing.

This task is very well suited for crowdsourcing, the

same way like bug fixing in open source develop-‐

ment, because it’s splittable in small tasks and ben-‐

efits from a high number of participants. This case is

somewhere between crowdwisdom and crowdcrea-‐

tion, because it requires knowledge of the system

as well as creativity for solving the problems. No-‐

kia benefits by cutting costs of professional testing

services and at the same time it gains customers’

fidelity and product adoption.

uTest is similar to Betalabs even if its business mod-‐

el is similar to a mediator or broker. The companies

that work with uTest benefit from the large network

of testers, low testing cost and a high efficiency.

This process is between crowdwisdom and crow-‐

dcreation.

As we see in the previous table, all the companies

involving users in their design process benefit from

it. However it can be noticed, that the areas of re-‐

search are less explored crowdsourcing cases for

continuative user participation and not just one-‐time

campaign.

We analyzed the cases further by putting them into

the matrix with two variables. The vertical axis of the

matrix is defining the incentives that the crowd re-‐

ceives from the contribution: the incentives deriving

from the direct product use, or professional interest/

monetary incentives. The horizontal axis of the ma-‐

trix is defined by variables “set problem” (when the

problem is well defined by the company) and “unset

problem” (the company didn’t identify the problem

yet, still looking for opportunities). This matrix al-‐

lows us to individuate the clusters of crowd partici-‐

pation. The cases allocated in the left-‐top quadrant

of the matrix are customization cases, where the

company receives benefits from reducing the gap

of needs/information about needs and empowering

the user. In this case the user benefits directly from

the use of the customized product. The cases placed

in the right-‐top quadrant are “idea-‐jam” examples,

where the company benefits from receiving informa-‐

tion about users’ needs at a fraction of cost and time,

as well as from the viral effects. The two bottom

quadrants relate to the cases of more professional

services where more control is given to the crowd,

Design and crow

dsourcing

79

like in Nokia Apps to be Wired and uTest projects. In

this case the companies benefit from a fully devel-‐

oped product, the access to a wide network of pro-‐

fessionals. Another benefit is the cutting of the costs

for the professional services.

The analysis showed that in most cases the design

process has a partial user involvement and the com-‐

plete control is assigned to the crowd only in the

cases of well defined projects, and mainly in the ex-‐

ecution phase. The project complexity and the task

dimension plays an important role too. Such projects

like XBox Avatars have a lesser project complexity

than the car in the case of Asus WePC. When the task

becomes too complex, the intervention of the com-‐

pany is important. This leads to a conclusion that the

cases with less project complexity and smaller tasks

are better adapted to crowdsourcing. This confirms

the findings of Benkler, mentioned in the previous

chapter (see “Incentives and motivations in open in-‐

novation communities”).

We analyzed the benefits of the companies that use

crowdsourcing and how for different scopes differ-‐

ent crowdsourcing model is adopted. Some of the

analyzed projects have interaction design elements,

however we would like to explore better what is in-‐

teraction design and how crowdsourcing can be ap-‐

plied in the design process of web applications.

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80 2.4. INTERACTION DESIGN AND CROWDSOURCING

WHAT IS INTERACTION DESIGN?

According to Dan Saffer “Interaction design is about

people: how people connect with other people

through the products and services they use. Interac-‐

tion designers create those products and services”

(Saffer, 2007, p.XIV). Even if interaction design ex-‐

isted since a long time, the rise of networks and per-‐

vasive computing might make it to “one of the main

liberal arts of the twenty-‐first century.”92

Interaction design is tricky to define because of its

interdisciplinary roots: in industrial design, human

factors and human-‐computer-‐interaction and also

because a lot of it is invisible. A narrow definition of

interaction design is: “The design of the subjective

and qualitative aspects of everything that is both dig-‐

“We need Interaction design as a dis-‐cipline that can create solutions with human and subjective values in a digital context”

Bill Moggridge91

ital and interactive creating designs that are useful,

desirable, and accessible”, while a broader definition

is “design of everything, both digital and interactive”

(Moggridge, 2007, p. 659).

Interaction design as a young discipline tries to de-‐

fine its place between the related disciplines like

Information Architecture (IA), Industrial Design (ID),

communication design (and graphic design, CD),

user-‐experience design (UX), user-‐interface engi-‐

neering (UIE), Human-‐Computer-‐Interaction (HCI),

Usability Engineering (UE) and Human Factors (HF).

Also the listed disciplines are young and in phase of

definition. (Saffer, 2007, p. 17).

The interdisciplinary aspect of interaction design,

the same way like the interdisciplinarity of design

discipline in general, makes the participation of pro-‐

fessionals from different fields crucial for its proc-‐

ess. The founder of Fit Associates Marc Rettig ar-‐

gues that professions like graphic design, software

development, industrial design, theater and cinema-‐

tography, biology, counseling and therapy (because

of empathic view on users) and anthropology are im-‐

portant for interaction design. Especially, a new kind

of linguistics, called designed interaction linguistics,

is crucial for interaction design discipline (Saffer,

2007, p.16).

The purpose of interaction design is to foster com-‐

munication -‐ an interaction -‐ between two or more

human beings or between human and artificial en-‐

tity capable of responding in some manner, such as

computer, mobile phone or a digital appliance. (Saf-‐

fer, 2007, p.5). However, Interaction Design is not

necessarily only about interaction with computer

screens. The interaction design products can be dig-‐

ital (software, web applications) or analog (robots),

NOTES

[91] Bill Moggridge, Designing Interactions, MIT Press, 2007, p.658

[92] http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/

default.asp?tid=10083&ttype=2

Design and crow

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physical (PdAs) or incorporated (workflows), or

some combination thereof (Saffer, 2007,p.7).

Interaction design is by its nature contextual (Saf-‐

fer, 2007, p.4), therefore involving the community

for which interaction is created, is important. The

practice typically centers on “embedding information

technology into the ambient social complexities of

the physical world 93”. The problems that interaction

designers have to solve are often very complex prob-‐

lems, involving many people (stakeholders); they

have very fluid and scarcely defined confines and

unclear possible solutions. Design scholar J.H.Rittel

calls these kind of problems wicked problems.(Saf-‐

fer, 2007, p.25) Therefore there is a need of insight

into the complexities, which can be achieved, as

described in the beginning of the chapter, through

the intervention of networked communities, through

their intrinsic complexity.

USER-‐EXPERIENCEDESIGN

INDUSTRIALDESIGN

INTERACTION DESIGN

INFORMATIONARCHITECTURE

COMMUNICATIONDESIGN

USER-‐INTERFACEENGINEERING

USABILITYENGINEERING

HUMAN-‐COMPUTERINTERACTION

HUMANFACTORS

FIG. 39: Interaction design relation with other

disciplines (source: Saffer (2007))

NOTES

[93] http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/

default.asp?tid=10083&ttype=2

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INTERACTION DESIGN FRAMEWORK ELEMENTS

Further on, we are going to describe the interaction

elements proposed by Bill Verplank . Accordingly to

Verplank, the interaction design framework consist

of the following elements to be considered in every

project: 1. Motivation, 2. Meaning, 3. Modes and 4.

Mappings.

1. Motivation -‐ errors and ideas

Interaction design often starts from understand-‐

ing of the problems that people face (observation),

that means the errors or constraints. Many people

are motivated by the problems that they see and er-‐

rors that they observe (Moggridge, 2006). Design

also starts with ideas. Ideas and errors or problems

are creating motivation for starting a design project.

An example of this element is when people realized

the problem of not being connected to their friends

and loosing contacts with old university friends after

graduation. This was a motivation for inventing the

Friendster web service.

FIG. 40: Interaction design framework elements (source: Verplank (2009))

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2. Meaning -‐ metaphors and scenarios

When designing an interaction design concept it is

important to invent a good metaphor (invention),

which connects two things we would not thought

about before, for instance “this is not a computer

but a desktop” (Moggridge, 2006). The second ele-‐

ment that gives meaning to design are the scenarios

-‐ which tell the story of the users: where are they,

who are they and what are they doing. Optimally an

interaction design project needs to have a variety

of metaphors and scenarios. An example of a good

metaphor is “in the cloud” -‐ the remote data storage

on distributed servers.

3. Modes -‐ models and tasks

In order to create a conceptual model of interaction,

it’s important to know what the users are thinking

about. The modes are the behaviors that are defined

by what the users try to accomplish and what are

the tasks. There must be a step-‐by-‐step interaction

analysis for creating the conceptual model that user

will understand. For instance a conceptual model of

Facebook is that it connects you with your friends

and let’s you know what they are doing. The task in

this case would be to establish connections to your

friends or to “make a friend request”.

4. Mappings -‐ displays and controls.

Interaction designers usually design some kind of

displays and some kind of controls as a result of the

project (appearance). Display is the representation

of things that user manipulates through controls, for

instance buttons. The controls need to be mapped

into display. These mappings are the behaviors that

connect the controls to the display. For instance on

a website a login button is a control and click of this

button is the behavior that connects it to the display,

where the main page is loaded.

Previously we were talking about the building blocks

or the constructing elements, but we didn’t talk about

the process. Below we are going to describe the in-‐

teraction design process elements according to Bill

Moggridge.

INTERACTION DESIGN PROCESS

Accordingly to Bill Moggridge, the interaction design

process consist of ten elements: constraints, syn-‐

thesis, framing, ideation, envisioning, uncertainty,

selection, visualization, prototyping, evaluation.

However, the ten elements should not be seen as a

linear process, but rather an iterative process.

Constraints. Constraints come from everything that

can be useful for the project: ”The State of the Art”,

the needs and wants of the users, mental models

and expectations brand awareness, functional con-‐

straints, technology, environment, financial con-‐

straints, business constraints, competitive analy-‐

sis, conversations with relevant people, briefing

discussions,<...>”(Moggridge, 2007, p. 729). Usually

this phase is called research phase. Design research

is particularly important in large projects, which are

connected to unfamiliar domains and topics.

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Synthesis: it occurs as a subconscious process in

the shared mind of the design team when it absorbs

all of the relevant issues (Moggridge, 2007, p. 729).

This process phase is usually not described in the

literature about design process, because it’s hap-‐

pening on an invisible level, as the process of “the

invisible part of the iceberg”. This part of the proc-‐

ess is usually considered the mysterious process of

creativity, when solutions and inspiration come from

most unexpected sources.

Framing. Framework helps to create order from

the chaos of constraints and findings. There many

possibilities to frame the project: through a journey

through the experience (for instance a storyboard or

a use case), analysis of people’s attitudes or a hierar-‐

chy of attributes. Framing is required in the analysis

phase, when designers analyze the research results

for finding its implications on design (Saffer, 2007,

p.85). During this phase designers are finding out

patterns in their research data and creating maps,

diagrams or matrixes.

Ideation. There are multiple levels of design ideas:

some of them encompass the whole project, while

others consider only details (Moggridge, 2007, p.

731). A good framework helps to guide the ideation

process which usually takes place throughout the

whole project. The concept generation phase may

involve iterative rounds of discussions, brainstorm-‐

ing and refinements.

Envisioning is a phase when ideas are materialized

into some sort of representation. It is a communica-‐

tion of the idea to other people, that helps to under-‐

stand what the idea really is.

Uncertainty is the phase usually following the envi-‐

sioning, the visualizing and the prototyping phases

-‐ when deep uncertainties and doubts are coming

by analyzing the potential of the solution. Therefore

some alternative solutions should be created and

evaluated. The “shared mind” of the team is asking

a lot of questions during the phase of uncertain-‐

ties like: is it simple enough to understand? Can it

be made to work quickly? Is it consistent with what

comes before? (Moggridge, 2007, p. 734).

Selection. In the selection phase a manageable

number of alternatives must be selected for bring-‐

ing them to the next stage (Moggridge, 2007, p. 734).

Visualization element is related to both envisioning

and prototyping (Moggridge, 2007, p.734). The dif-‐

ference is that in the phase of envisioning the visu-‐

alization of the idea has the aim to give an overview

or a glimpse into the concept. In the further concept

representation and prototyping phase the aim of

this representation is to convince about the poten-‐

tial of the concept, to present it in a very realistic

way. Tools and techniques used in this phase are

sketching (for instance for interface design), model

making, storyboarding, making work flow diagrams,

use cases, moodboards and wireframes and others

(Saffer, 2007).

Prototyping. “Prototyping is about testing any aspect

of the way a design is expected to work” (Moggridge,

2007, p.734). As interaction design is an iterative

process, there can be many prototyping trials: early

prototypes might be rough and quick, while late pro-‐

totypes might include the most of the aspects of the

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INTERACTION DESIGN PROCESS ELEMENTS

VISU

ALIZ

ATIO

N

PRO

TOTY

PING E

VALUATION CONSTRAINTS SYNTHESIS FRAMING

SELECTION UNCERTAINTY ENVISIONING

IDEATI

ON

final design and look like the final design. The final

prototype before the release for implementation is

likely to look like the final design and include com-‐

plex interactions, behaviors and appearance which

can be tested during the evaluation phase (Mog-‐

gridge, 2007, p.734).

Evaluation is needed many times during the devel-‐

opment process (Moggridge, 2007, p.734). It can be

made by stakeholders -‐ team members, clients who

are assigned to the process, or users. More evolved

and complete prototypes require a more structured

user evaluation. The results of the evaluation can

be added to the constraints and another cycle of the

development of the artifact is triggered. According

to Moggridge evaluation must be started early and

made as often as possible.

Previously we defined the elements of interaction

design process and the building blocks, however

we didn’t talk about crowdsourcing opportunities

for each phase. We are going to conduct a survey

with some interaction designers for understanding,

what interaction design phases they consider to be

adapted for crowdsourcing.

FIG. 41: Interaction design process elements

(source: Moggridge (2007))

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In order to understand what are the opinions of

interaction designers about using crowdsourcing

in their design process and which application of

crowdsourcing would be most useful, we conducted

an online survey94 with some interaction designers

and design managers from different companies in

europe.

Among the questions about design company and

position the questionnaire contained the following

questions:

1. What research approaches/techniques do you

usually use for your interaction design projects?

2. What do you think about crowdsourcing applied

to design process?

3. Do you think that crowd involvement/crowd-‐

sourcing could be useful in your interaction de-‐

sign projects?

4. In which phases of your design process would

crowd involvement be especially beneficial? For

example choose among the following phases or

add your own:

Research

Analysis

Conceptualization

Visualization

Prototyping

Evaluation/testing

Other (please specify)

5. Would you use a crowdsourcing platform for

involving users into your interaction design

projects?

The questionnaire was answered by 12 interaction

designers, five of them based in germany, two in

france and four in italy. The most of the designers

are operating on the international level, for instance

the designers from the Vodafone group, Frog design

and Ideo. The most of the participants of the survey

have a senior designer, project manager or owner/

founder position and many years of experience in

the field. The research techniques most used by

the interviewed designers are interviewing, trend

grasping, desk research, ethnographic observation,

blue sky research and model building. The most of

the interviewed designers think positively about

crowdsourcing applied to design, some of them are

already using it for testing and feedback. Many of

them retain crowdsourcing to be a useful technique

for gathering unusual and original insights and a

feedback from a general array of participants, but

not for the execution of complex design jobs. 63% of

participants retain crowdsourcing technique useful

for their interaction design projects. The things they

retain positive about crowdsourcing is the possibil-‐

ity to get feedback, gather many different opinions.

The doubts of participants that responded negatively

are mainly about the limited target audience of their

NOTES

[94] http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HS7L388

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projects and the big amount of time needed to ana-‐

lyze the responses.

The most of the respondents retain evaluation/test-‐

ing, research and prototyping as well as visualiza-‐

tion and analysis phases of interaction design proc-‐

ess which could benefit best from crowdsourcing.

The most of the participants (70%) would use the

crowdsourcing platform in their projects. The nega-‐

tive concerns are: the difficulty to involve people, the

uniforming of the responses, the difficulty to filter

out useful things out of a lot of “noise” and how to

handle a big amount of input.

The survey results show that the majority of the re-‐

spondents take the idea of crowdsourcing positively

and would use a crowdsourcing platform in their

projects, mainly in the research, analysis, prototyp-‐

ing, visualization and evaluation phases. The critical

points that have to be overcome are: how to achieve

a high involvement of the participants, the filtering

and analysis of the results, avoiding the uniform re-‐

sponses (ensure a high heterogeneity level of par-‐

ticipants95).

FIG. 42: Interaction design survey results (source: http://

it.surveymonkey.com/MySurvey_Responses.aspx?sm=mjFA

U30h6qwRZ1aNbntTAYGu4qTaVFDQX07%2buplMOlg%3d

NOTES

[95] See in the previous chapter “the conditions

for building crowd intelligence”

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In this chapter we described the cases of design

crowdsourcing according to different kinds of user

participation. We saw that according to project com-‐

plexity, project type and business goals the compa-‐

nies were choosing different crowdsourcing models.

We’ve noticed that in the case of more complex and

abstract design project problems, the involvement of

the crowd is much lower, than in the case of less

complex tasks that have to do with the execution part

of the project. We’ve seen that crowd participation

is very suitable for “idea jams” -‐ for ideation and

concepting, as well as filtering of ideas and evolving

them further. This process can be collaborative and

a high amount of knowledge&information is shared.

In the case of the execution part of design projects

we see that contest model works better and less col-‐

laboration is taking place there. This crowdsourcing

type is mainly seen in the delivery of professional

design services, like in the case of uTest or Nokia

Apps to be wired.

We also described interaction design elements and

process and web application design layers.

Additionally we conducted a research about interac-‐

tion design and crowdsourcing with some interaction

designers. Their answers confirmed our hypothesis

about crowdsourcing opportunities in the phases of

research, prototyping, visualization and evaluation of

interaction design projects. The answers also point-‐

ed out the critical points about crowdsourcing proc-‐

ess: the filtering of useful results out of the noise,

the difficulty to handle the big amount of input and

the issue of involvement of the participants.

The research results bring up the hypothesis that

crowd involvement in interaction design process

should be guided by a company especially in the

elements of researching, planning, synthesizing

and framing, as well as evaluating the results of

crowd-‐creation. For this reason there is a need for a

platform that acts as intermediary between the en-‐

terprises that need a web application and the partic-‐

ipants that are passionate about interaction design

and want to contribute to such projects.

However we still don’t know how interaction design

process looks in crowdsourcing platforms, to what

extent the crowd is involved in different process

phases and what tools support this process. We don’t

know either what kind of business model the plat-‐

form should adopt for optimal crowdsourcing results

and sustainability of the community.

The analysis of three crowdsourcing platforms in the

next Chapter will provide us with these informations.

The three cases are quite different among them and

deal with different interaction design projects, nev-‐

ertheless they address very well the previously men-‐

tioned issues.

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CHAPTER 3

ANALYSIS OF THE CROWD-‐SOURCING PLATFORMS

The purpose of this chapter is to find out how interaction design projects are managed in crowdsourcing platforms. For this purpose we chose three cases of interaction design and crowdsourcing, quite different in their business model. The projects that were conducted on the platforms are very close to our topic of social web applications design: one case is a social networking application and two cases are web design projects.

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92 3.1. CASE STUDIES: INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this chapter is to find out how inter-‐

action design projects are managed in crowdsourc-‐

ing platforms. For this purpose we chose three cas-‐

es of interaction design and crowdsourcing, quite

different in their business model. The projects that

were conducted on the platforms are very close to

our topic of social web applications design: one case

is a social networking and crowd-‐funding applica-‐

tion and two cases are web design projects.

Accordingly to the crowdsourcing guidelines that

we created at the end of the first chapter “Guide-‐

lines for crowdsourcing project”, and accordingly to

the crowdsourcing and design issues described in

the previous chapter, we synthesized the following

framework for the analysis of the case studies:

1. Business model

2. System (system map)

3. Design process (on the example of a product

designed on the platform)

4. Project type/complexity

5. Tools that support design process

6. User involvement level in the project

7. Collaboration level

8. Feedback from platform administration or/and

customers

9. Transparency of information

10. Structure/roles

11. Access of knowledge&information (project

page, search, archive)

12. Mechanism of signing up

13. Intellectual property protection

14. Reward system

We conducted an analysis of the design process of

a product designed in the system, for analyzing in

which part of the activities the user is involved and

at which level. This allowed to create process pat-‐

terns for every project and compare the patterns

of the three crowdsourcing cases at the end of the

study. We based the analysis on the scheme of web

application design elements by James Jesse Garret.

The elements of user experience in designing web

applications are the five layers accordingly to Garret:

in the first layer there are user needs and site objec-‐

tives deriving from business, creative or other goals.

In the second layer we see functional specifications:

the functionality of the site that has to be imple-‐

mented. In the third layer there are the elements of

interaction design, that for Garret represent the user

tasks defining how user interacts with the web site.

In the fourth layer we see the interface elements and

the information design: presentation of information

that is needed to facilitate understanding. And final-‐

ly, in the last layer there are the elements of visual

design: the look-‐and-‐feel.

In addition to the five layers we added the engineer-‐

ing layer, because it is present in one of the cases (in

the case of Cambrian House).

One of the chosen cases -‐ Cambrian House -‐ failed

and closed the platform, while other two cases man-‐

aged to build a more or less sustainable business.

One of the hypothesis that we would like to proof

through this analysis is that the kind of design ac-‐

tivity and the proportion of the activity outsourced

to the community influence the business model and

Analysis of the crow

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MAPPINGS

CONCRETE

ID ELEMENTS WEB APPLICATION DESIGN LAYERS DETAILED ELEMENTS

ABSTRACT

MODES

MEANING

MOTIVATION

ANIMATION

ACCESS

TASK FLOW

ACTIVITIES

TECHNOLOGY

STRUCTURE

NETWORK

MAPS

IDENTITY

TRUST INCLUSION

ASSOCIATIONS

SHARING

COLLABORATIONCOMMUNITY

INTUITIVENESS

INTERFACE PARADIGM

NARRATIVE

COMMUNICATION MEMORY

METAPHOR

ERROR

USABILITY

CONTROLS

FEEDBACK INVOLVEMENTBEHAVIOR

AFFORDANCE

CONTEXT

MANIPULATION

SCENARIO

DISPLAY

MODELINTERACTION RHYTHM

FIG. 44: Interaction design elements for

design of social web applications

FIG. 43: The elements of user experience, Jess James Garrett,

source: http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf

the tools used in the platform. This hypothesis was

addressed by few researchers (Chanal, 2008, p.25).

Chesbrough (2006) underlined that the open innova-‐

tion paradigm gave birth to a new type of company,

called “Innovation intermediaries”. These companies

act as market places who either help innovators use

external ideas, or help inventors find markets where

others can use their inventions to mutual benefit

(Chanal, 2008). Chesbrough identified two models of

intermediaries: the agent, that represents one side

of the transaction, and the market place, bringing

parties together for achieving transaction (Chanal,

2008). He argued that an intermediary should be

able to help the customers to define the problem to

be solved and manage the problem by identifying

both parties -‐ problem seekers and problem solv-‐

ers (Chanal, 2008). Some of our examined platforms

represent a market place and deal with many compa-‐

nies -‐ CrowdSpring, ReDesignMe -‐ while Cambrian

House represent one of the transaction parties: the

community.

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Introduction

Cambrian House is a crowdsourcing platform found-‐

ed in 2005 by Michael Sikorsky. “Cambrian House

lives and breathes to liberate ideas that get stuck in

the backs of creative minds around the globe,” ar-‐

gues Michael Sikorsky96. Cambrian house is a pio-‐

neering business idea in tapping the crowds for new

software ideas.

BUSINESS

MODEL

Va

lue

pro

po

sit

ion

Designers/entrepreneurs can get their idea real with the

support of the community, develop it without need of in-‐

vestment and profit from it

Supporting the whole project development process from

idea generation to development to sales, no third parties

involved into the process a part from CH investors

crowdsourcing new software ideas and supporting them

in their realization, marketing and sales

Money received from investors, profits from product sales

(CH takes 50% of the top for product management, sales

and marketing)

Individual and small business markets: software develop-‐

ers, investors and designers

Compete on low cost of development and innovation gen-‐

eration from a collective effort

Va

lue

ne

two

rk

Va

lue

ch

ain

Re

ve

nu

e

ge

ne

rati

on

Ma

rke

t

se

gm

en

t

Co

mp

eti

tiv

e

str

ate

gy

FIG. 45: Website of Cambrian House (source:

www.cambrianhouse.com)

FIG. 46: Business model of Cambrian House

Analysis of the crow

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The innovativeness of the model lays not only in har-‐

nessing the crowd for ideas, but also in supporting

the development, marketing and selling process. All

committers are rewarded only if the idea succeeds.

Cambrian House team defines the project as crow-‐

dwisdom and crowd-‐participation case: “We want to

bring crowdwisdom and crowd-‐participation togeth-‐

er <...> it’s social software crowdsourcing”97.

Cambrian House is a platform where idea genera-‐

tors, marketers and investors get together for de-‐

veloping new software ideas. The platform team

supports them in marketing and business questions

as well as in the development of the projects. Par-‐

ticipants that propose ideas can vote on ideas of

others and participate in Idea Contests where the

“Champions” are chosen. Cambrian House is then

searching for project manager for every idea, which

has to take care for advertising the project, defining

jobs, searching for people etc. When the project is

developed the platform administration assigns re-‐

ward points to the team accordingly to their input.

The points act as percentage of the share of the rev-‐

enues for the project, if the project gets commercial-‐

ized.

CAMBRIAN HOUSE -‐ SYSTEM MAP

platform

the crowd

investors

marketers

champions

ideas

marketers investors champions platformmoderator

the restof the community

financial flowimmaterial flow

material flow

vote, comment,contribute

active communitymembers

develop,market, sustainmarket, sustainmarket, sustain

$

expertiseexpertiseexpertiseexpertise

support

revenues

$

part ofthe revenues

$

FIG. 47: System map of Cambrian House

NOTES

[96] http://www.gamevortex.com/gamevortex/

news.php/933/crowdsourced-‐game-‐development-‐

game-‐jobs-‐up-‐for-‐gwabs-‐pc.html

[97] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

YpCx8crjYxk&feature=related

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96Platform aspects Characteristics Failures/vulnerabilities

1. Business model Agent: helping innovators to develop their business, supporting them in marketing, production and financing Difficulty to fund the project development

2. Project type/complexity Software projects, high level of complexity

3. Tools supporting design process

Guided submission of the idea, idea refinement and enhancement mechanisms;

Idea promotion and voting mechanisms: multi-dimension voting on people, product, plan, potential, pitch, thumbs down/up, prioritization emoticons voting; IdeaWartz - tournaments of champions - where 16 ideas combat in four rounds, the winning proposal wins funding and fame (Libert&Spector, 2007)

Tools for threaded commenting/comment rating, managing a job, starting a discussion, wiki, promote a business, source code repository

Asynchronous communication tools: direct messaging, forum with the feature of uploading pictures, external discussion groups, for instance

google groups

task management tools are absent;

the overall communication structure is confusing and disorganized, it's difficult to keep track of the process

4. User involvement level in the project

High user involvement throughout the whole process: developed by people for people model; however the more complex project tasks are

done by internal CH team

the crowd never stepped forward to do the

developing;

5. Collaboration level High collaboration level. collaboration is supported by the system: through job assignment mechanisms; users build on each others ideas and

collaborate on project tasks;

Difficulty to keep track of the system and no clear

project management tools hinders successful collaboration;

6. Feedback from platform administration and/or customers

A lot of feedback from the CH team

7. Transparency of information The most of information concerning the project is transparent some steps in software development are not clearly

communicated to the community and dispersed over different communication tools

8. Structure/roles A flat horizontal structure, however the internal CH team has more responsibilities than the rest of the crowd. Roles: simple participants,

idea champions (whose idea won), investors, marketers

people didn't realize that CH was just an engine for

project development;

the core team ended up doing all the work;

9. Knowledge access (project page, search, archive)

The project site shows the members, comments, contributions and open jobs; project archive; search mechanism; tools for keeping track of

financial state of the business, awards and network

Different areas overlapping: ideas section and ideas

bazaar

10. Mechanism of signing up The entrance barriers for participating are low, therefore a huge amount of ideas is generated Triviality of most of ideas and difficulty to vote on

the growing amount of ideas

11. Protection of intellectual property

The Intellectual property of ideas stays to the author of the idea, however CH plans to earn revenue by implementing transaction fees when

royalties and Cambros are exchanged between members (Libert&Spector, 2007, p.13).

12. System of rewards Material plus psychological rewards. Material rewards with royalty points, or Cambros, the internal platform currency, where 1 Cambros

equals 1 dollar

"Everyone is a shareholder" mechanism is not clear

nor functioning;

No reward for the most of the functions in a project like idea promoting/suggesting/blogging etc

Analysis of the crow

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Example of a developed product: FilmRiot

FilmRiot is a social networking and funding plat-‐

form for independent film producing. It is an online

community-‐based service which allows independent

producers to seek for support and funding from the

public. The producers can post on the platform the

information about the movie, for instance scripts,

storyboards, trailer etc. They can also seek for dif-‐

ferent kind of support, either donations, a loan or

sale of equity (shares)98. The project was started

and developed at Cambrian House. We are going to

analyze mainly the web application development el-‐

ements. We extracted the information from the ar-‐

chive of Cambrian House website, by analyzing the

dashboard of the project, the posted jobs and the fo-‐

rum discussions as well as the external discussion

on google groups.99 and google docs100

The project won the IdeaWartz contest in 2006 and

was launched in November 2007. The development

continued till 2008 and stopped together with the

activity of Cambrian House (Cambrian House closed

down the community site in 2008).

The project team consisted of 19 members and the

Business Champion (responsible for the project)

Andy Doan, who worked as a clerk at a factory and

did web site design and programming for small busi-‐

nesses in his free time.

The analysis of the project shows, that only a small

group of people were working on the project while

the rest of the crowd was just commenting and post-‐

ing suggestions. There was a big communication and

project documentation problem, because the core

group decided to use google groups for the work,

which was not automatically accessible by the rest

of the CH members. One part of the process was

therefore documented in the google groups, one part

in google docs, some in the wiki and some in the

forum of CH. This made it difficult to follow the proc-‐

ess.

The design process of FilmRiot is not linear therefore

it’s difficult to represent when exactly which project

phase started. The first prototype got launched quite

early -‐ already after three months after the idea-‐

tion of the concept. A market test was conducted,

with surveys and pre-‐sells. After that development

started -‐ new features were suggested, more re-‐

search was done, new interface and new graphical

style was created. There is less discussion about

the interaction and graphical elements however, only

some initial interface mockups are created by the

team-‐members, while the rest of the work is done

by a graphic designer that the team assumes from

outside. Unfortunately after july 2007 the project

destiny is not clear, there is only a message from

Andy Doan appearing in Jan 2008, that the group is

searching for a graphic designer. According to CBS

News, in 2008 FilmRiot has already 70 members

FIG. 48: The aspects of the platform of Cambrian House

FIG. 49: The logo of Film Champ, former Film

Riot, source: www.cambrianhouse.com

NOTES

[98] http://www.cambrianhouse.com/business/view/fundablefilms/

[99] http://groups.google.com/group/fundable-‐films

[100] https://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ajk494h7dn38_115fxbq53

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and 11 film projects.101 The project is comparable by

its innovativeness to similar crowdfunding projects

that appear in the same timespan, for instance the

project “The Swarm of Angels”102 or the italian ver-‐

sion of crowdfunding -‐ Produzioni dal Basso103. Un-‐

fortunately the project disappears when Cambrian

House’s platform closes down.

The administrative Cambrian House team mainly

helped the process by assigning the project man-‐

ager, helping doing the market test, organizing demo

days, searching for funding and creating marketing

campaign. This example shows us that a project

of such a complexity like a social web application

needs a very good project management and more

guidance from the company. Especially the planning

and frameworking is missing in the layer “functional

specifications”, which should be defined on the basis

of the previous research findings. This plan/frame-‐

work has to be transparent, available to all the par-‐

ticipants and guide the whole design process.

CREATING THE IDEA

DEVELOPING CONCEPT

FIRST INTERFACE

LOGO, GRAPHICS

BLOG RESEASE

BUG FIXING

NEW INTERFACE

DETAILED FEATURES

NEW STRUCTURE

FEATURE SUGGESTIONS FEATURE SUGGESTIONS

FEATURE SUGGESTIONS

FIRST DEMO LAUNCH

MARKET TEST

RADIO PROMO

DEVELOPING BM DISCUSSING STRATEGY

RESEARCH ONSIMILAR PROJECTS

RESEARCH ONFILM TOPICS

WORKBOOK PAGEINTERFACE

DEVELOPING FIRSTPROTOTYPE IN FLASH

RESEARCH ABOUTE-‐COMMERCE

INTERFACEMOCKUPS

RESEARCH ABOUTHOSTING

FULL CONTROLCAMBRIAN HOUSE FILM RIOT WEB APPLICATION

AUGUST -‐ OCTOBER 2006 NOVEMBER 2006 -‐ JANUARY 2007 FEBRUARY -‐ APRIL 2007 MAY 2007 -‐ JULY 2007

SHARED CONTROL CONSULTATIVE CONTROL

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web application on Cambrian House platform

NOTES

[101] ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTprBa3yDxU

[102] http://aswarmofangels.com/

[103] www.produzionidalbasso.com

[104] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYyXX3jVwwI

Results of the platform activity:

From it’s founding in 2005 Cambrian House man-‐

aged to gather a community of 50.000 members that

came up with 6935 ideas. Sikorsky’s company raised

about 8 million dollars in venture capital since then

(Libert & Spector, 2007). In 2008 Cambrian House

closed down their CH platform and transferred what

rested from the community to the new start-‐up sup-‐

porting platform VenCorps104. Nowadays Cambrian

Analysis of the crow

dsourcing platforms

99

House is only selling/licensing crowdsourcing plat-‐

forms (Chaordix) to clients. In addition to VenCorps,

Cambrian House kept some of the projects that came

out of crowd collaboration: desktop fighter game

Gwabs105, independent-‐film funding service Film-‐

Riot, charity Greedy or Needy106 and mobile app test-‐

ing site Mob4Hire107. However, according to several

sources, the most of those projects were developed

by Cambrian House internal team themselves.108

CEO and founder Michael Sikorsky: “We are a great

innovator, but when it came to infusing venture

capital and deep investing experience into the com-‐

munity, we have chosen to seek a partner to realize

the promise of commerce that we made to our com-‐

munity.”109 “Indeed, our model failed. <...> The limit-‐

ing reagent in the startup equation is not ideas, but

amazing founding teams. A key assumption for us,

which proved out NOT true: given a great idea with

great community support and great market test data,

we would be able to find (crowdsource) a team will-‐

ing to execute it OR we could execute it ourselves.

We needed amazing founding teams for each of the

ideas – this is where our model fell short. What we

learned: it would have been better to back great

teams with horrible ideas because most of the heavy

lifting kept falling back on us, or a few select com-‐

munity members. A vicious cycle was created lead-‐

ing all of us to get more and more diffuse. Hence: the

wisdom of crowds worked well in the model, but it

was our participation of crowds aspect which broke

down. Trying to find people willing or capable to take

on the offspring (our outputs) of the CH model was

hard and/or incredibly time consuming.”110

From this talk we can draw the following conclu-‐

sions: the crowd-‐wisdom part of the project usually

works well, however the crowd participation, team-‐

building and collaboration is more difficult to con-‐

duct and needs a well through-‐thought system with

suitable incentives and accordingly designed tools.

NOTES

[105] http://download.gwabs.com/login.aspx

[106] http://www.greedyorneedy.com/

[107] http://www.mob4hire.com/

[108] http://techcrunch.com/2008/05/12/when-‐crowdsourcing-‐

fails-‐cambrian-‐house-‐headed-‐to-‐the-‐deadpool/

[109] http://www.cambrianhouse.com/press-‐

releases/20080520-‐doors-‐more-‐than-‐open/

[110] http://techcrunch.com/2008/05/12/when-‐crowdsourcing-‐

fails-‐cambrian-‐house-‐headed-‐to-‐the-‐deadpool/

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Introduction

CrowdSpring is a crowdsourcing company founded

by Ross Kimbarovsky and Mike Samson in 2008.

“crowdSPRING was started to help people from

around the world access creative talent, and to help

creatives from across the globe find new custom-‐

ers.”

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and creatives for graphic design and copywriting serv-‐ices through crowdsourcing with legal advice

Supporting startu-‐ups and companies to develop website design

Being mediator-‐platform between SMEs and creatives

Listing fee to post a project (for "buyers", 39$), plus 15% fee on each award ("buyers" have to award the winning projects)

Small/medium enterprises, freelance designers, copywrit-‐ers and amateurs

Differentiation on offer -‐ access to the services without geographic boundaries, at low cost and with legal protec-‐tion; for creatives: to work with real customers

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MODELFIG. 51: CrowdSpring website screenshot

(source: www.crowdspring.com)

FIG. 52: CrowdSpring business model

Analysis of the crow

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101

CrowdSpring underlines the fact that its services

are directed to small/medium enterprises and start-‐

ups, that cannot afford expensive design services:

“By helping Buyers reach countless creatives across

the globe, we’re changing the game for the little guy.

Now small businesses, one-‐man shops and individu-‐

als anywhere can tap into a global pool of creatives

for logo design, web design, company name, product

name, packaging design, and many other graphic de-‐

sign, industrial design and writing projects.”111.

The founders of the platform have background in

law, therefore they created a framework of legal ad-‐

vice and protection both for “buyers”(enterprises)

and “creatives” (designers and amateurs). Crowd-‐

Spring was the first crowdsourcing platform work-‐

ing with design agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the

initiative described in the previous chapter.

On CrowdSpring platform anyone who needs a web-‐

site can post his brief and start a contest. The con-‐

test holder (called CH by participants) indicates the

reward, the given time and compiles a description of

the project, his preferences and what functions and

features there have to be on the website, and up-‐

loads additional files like company logo, pictures etc.

Participants start proposing their designs directly

and upload their interface proposals that usually look

like a finished website. Often there is a discussion

between the contest holder and participants, that

want additional information or wish their design to

be rated. Participants cannot rate on others designs,

they only can comment.

By observing the project pages and discussions that

take place on them, often a conflict between contest

holder and participants can be seen: they blame the

contest holder for disinterest, for not giving feed-‐

CROWDSPRING -‐ SYSTEM MAP

platform

the crowd

enterprisemanagers

platformmoderator

crowdspringcommunity

financial flowimmaterial flow

material flow

challenge

fee for challenge placement, reward

challenge

?

$

financial reward

enterprise

websitedesign

websitedesign

$

back, for not accepting their proposals. This conflict

leads often to withdrawal of designs and quitting.

The rest of participants express their in-‐satisfaction

about the time spent uselessly. There is a real lack

of iterative process of prototype building and evalu-‐

ation, and especially there is a gap between the

problem-‐setting and the ideation phase. The missing

research, synthesis and framing phase can lead to

superficial and un-‐motivated solutions.

FIG. 53: CrowdSpring system map

NOTES

[111] http://www.crowdspring.com/about-‐us/

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102Platform aspects Characteristics Failures/vulnerabilities

1. Business model Market place: bringing designers and enterprises that need website design together; contest form

2.Project type/complexity Type of the project: graphic and web-design projects, writing services Clients ask often for a full web development (with coding)

3. Tools supporting design process

the submission of a project requires a high creative effort and proprietary creativity tools

tools for voting for an entry in a contest - the contest holder vote box and the crowd vote box (crowd can only increase the vote, not decrease it, for keeping the spirit of constructive feedback)

information and tutorials for design on the blog page

asynchronous communication tools: commenting, forum, direct messaging

no creativity support toolkits

4. User involvement level in the project

user involvement only in a particular part of the service

5. Collaboration level there is no communication between users on the project page; only some users post their designs in the "Forum" page for getting other users feedback; since everyone can see each others work, they are informed about what everyone else is doing and a funneling effect takes place.

no collaboration happens between users, there is a highly competitive atmosphere;

6. Feedback from platform administration/customers

Feedback from CH (contest holder) through rating of the project and through comments on activity page Clients often don't have any preparation about design and pick not necessarily the "best" designs, but the ones that to them look "best"

7. Transparency of information

Quite transparent system - the activity and projects in a contest are visible, except the "Pro" projects protected with an NDA. Each users participation, won entries, portfolio and ratings by customers are visible

8. Structure/roles hierarchic structure: the contest holder and the platform administration has all the power and control over the process

9. Knowledge and information access (project page, search, archive)

Clearly structured system: sections for browsing project, going to blog or forum, or post a project; the challenge page has the gallery with the entries, project details with the brief, project activity and creative tips for designers; dashboard consisting of project in which the user participates or which he buys (if I am contest holder), watch-list, messages, profile info and portfolio

10. Mechanism of signup Entrance barrier for creatives is low, entrance barrier for buyers is 39$ fee for posting a project

11. Protection of intellectual property

the intellectual property of the project passes to the Contest Holder only in the case he accepts it and pays the reward to the submitter

12. System of rewards Material reward for the projects that won the contest, psychological rewards are status and reputation supported on the platform through posting the winning entries to users' profiles; creatives are classified by the quantity of their participation (the ones that submitted more entries are on top)

Users are building on each others ideas, however, the ones that participate in this process of building don't receive any reward

Analysis of the crow

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Process of project development

An enterprise posts a challenge -‐ crowd posts ready

design proposals -‐ contest holder rates designs -‐

contest holder decides the winner -‐ wrap up phase

(the winner has to prepare the files for CH) -‐ pay-‐

ment to CrowdSpring and the winner -‐ eventual con-‐

tinuation of collaboration between the winner and

the enterprise.

Product designed within the system

We take as an example a website designed for the

company called “Homecare Homebase”, a software

company specializing in the medical home care and

hospice industries112. The company needed interface

design for their new website.

The company described exactly the project brief,

what they do and what kind of style they like, how-‐

ever some of the descriptions were quite ambigu-‐

ous and lacking in professional definitions, for in-‐

stance: “warm and welcoming” look. The customer

described exactly the technical specifications, the

technological platform on which the website will be

developed, the specifications of the information ele-‐

ments, as well as wireframes showing the position

of the interface elements.

The project took place between 7th and 21st July and

attracted a participation of 27 creatives that posted

225 entries at all. The level of participation was high

in comparison to other projects and was mainly due

to the high reward (1000$) and an active participa-‐

tion of the contest holder, that was giving feedback,

FULL CONTROLCROWDSPRING WEBSITE FOR “HOMECARE HOMEBASE”

7-‐14 JULY 2010 14-‐21 JULY 2010 21-‐28 JULY 2010 28 JULY -‐ 4 AUGUST 2010

SHARED CONTROL CONSULTATIVE CONTROL

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ASKS

BRIEF DEFINITION

WIREFRAMESPROVIDED BY THE CLIENT

MAIN INTERFACEELEMENTS FROM CLIENT

RATING ENTRIES

BRIEF UPDATE

DECIDING THE FINALISTS

NARROWING DOWNTO 3 DESIGNS

AWARDING THEWINNER

BRIEF UPDATE

WEBSITE INTERFACE DESIGN SUBMISSION

WEBSITE VISUAL DESIGN SUBMISSION

FIG. 54: (on the left page) CrowdSpring platform aspects

FIG. 55: (on the right page) The process of

product development in CrowdSpring

FIG. 56: (bottom) The Wireframe provided by the contest holder

in the creative brief, source: http://www.crowdspring.com/

project/2286186_homecare-‐homebase-‐website/details/

NOTES

[112] http://www.crowdspring.com/project/2286186_

homecare-‐homebase-‐website/details/

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CROWDSPRING WEBSITE FOR “HOMECARE HOMEBASE” AWARDED ENTRY

10 JULY 11 JULY 12 JULY 13 JULY 14 JULY 15 JULY 16 JULY 17 JULY 18 JULY 19 JULY 20 JULY 21 JULY

Analysis of the crow

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FIG. 57: The Diagram showing the “funneling” of the interface design process of Homecare Homebase website (based on analysis of the entries of the project “Homecare Homebase”, that took place in July 2010)

CROWDSPRING WEBSITE FOR “HOMECARE HOMEBASE” AWARDED ENTRY

10 JULY 11 JULY 12 JULY 13 JULY 14 JULY 15 JULY 16 JULY 17 JULY 18 JULY 19 JULY 20 JULY 21 JULY

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106

rating and adding informations during the contest.

Nevertheless many of the participants withdrew

their designs113.

Through the whole process of the contest we can

see clearly that design was evolving and design-‐

ers were building on each others ideas. The contest

holder, according to suggestions of CrowdSpring

was giving low ratings in the beginning of the project

and increased the rating level gradually. At the end

of the contest the CH narrowed down the submitted

designs to 3 finalists and on 2nd of August 2010 he

rewarded the winner.

It is interesting to notice that there was no direct

connection between activeness of participants and

the winning design: the most active participants

that submitted many entries and participated from

the beginning of the contest didn’t win. Many of the

most active participants only got 3 star ratings. The

winner, cloud168 only submitted 5 entries on 19 july

from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and they are basically only two

designs with minor variations, and all of them got 4

star rating.

The diagram above shows some of the submitted en-‐

tries from 10 to 21 july. The process works as a “fun-‐

neling process” according to CrowdSpring’s CEO

Kimbarovsky, when people are informing themselves

of others’ designs and of contest holder’s ratings,

in order to improve. For making the funneling proc-‐

ess visible only some entries were selected and put

into the diagram. Very similar entries and variations

of the same design from the same participant were

avoided. We can see from the diagram that the de-‐

sign process of participants was inspired by others’

entries, it is visible in some repeating elements like

images, buttons, colors and the overall organization

of the informations in the layout.

The participants orient themselves to the indications

of the brief very much. They are also very influenced

FIG. 58: (On this page) The winning entry for Homecare

Homebase website on CrowdSpring platform, by user

named Cloud168, source: www.crowdspring.com

NOTES

[113] crowdSpring FAQ explains that participants withdraw

their designs when they are not satisfied with the rating

of CH or when they change their idea to participate

Analysis of the crow

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by the ratings of the Contest Holder. It can be seen

that they follow the preferences of Contest Holder

blindly and in consequence don’t provide many crea-‐

tive and original solutions.

A very high amount of participants is submitting

quite acceptable quality design of webpages, howev-‐

er, only one of the wins the award. Unfortunately the

rest of the participants that participate in the proc-‐

ess and add value to it don’t get rewarded. It can be

also seen that no conversation between participants

takes place and a very competitive mood is created.

Comparing this project to the other projects hosted

on CrowdSpring it can be seen that other projects

didn’t have the same amount of entries. After study-‐

ing their brief and the activity, we can draw the con-‐

clusion that the high involvement of contest holder,

the bigger reward and the clearly formulated brief

leads to a better community participation.

The limitation of crowd involvement in the project

has both positive and negative sides: the fact that the

company provides clear brief and framework for the

web application project is very positive. It is provid-‐

ing constraints and indications that inspire the de-‐

sign process. However, the fact that the participants

are not involved in the previous design layers like

“Needs/Objectives”, “Functional Specifications” and

“Interaction design” is affecting the awareness of

the process as well as their interest for the project.

One can clearly see that the designs of most partici-‐

pants are simply “styling” or “creating a shell” to an

interaction design product. The results are therefore

lacking in originality and innovativeness.

By providing a very clear and restrictive brief and by

limiting the involvement of the participants, Crowd-‐

Spring doesn’t explore the real possible benefits of

crowd participation. According to Adam Fletcher,

an entrepreneur that funded several crowdsourcing

platforms, crowdsourcing provides unexpected and

creative solutions: “It’s a really hard balancing act,

as if you have a very clear idea what the winning de-‐

sign should look like before you start then you don’t

need to hold a crowdsourcing contest, just call an

agency.”114

Results

Since 2008 CrowdSpring reached more than 72.000

creatives, more than 1 million entries, more than

13.000 projects with an average 120 entries per

project and collaboration with over 11000 small

businesses and a few big ones, among them Star-‐

bucks, Forbes and LG. 96% of the businesses would

recommend CrowdSpring according to their online

survey115. In the provided example of the website for

Homecare Homebase we can see that the “buyer”

or the Contest Holder is engaged with CrowdSpring

already for a few months with nine projects116, this

shows that the customers are in general satisfied

with the provided service. We can assume that one

of the main reason for returning to the website is the

low cost of provided services.

NOTES

[114] http://www.thezig.co.uk/which-‐risks-‐and-‐problems-‐

will-‐companies-‐that-‐run-‐crowdsourcing-‐business-‐

models-‐face-‐in-‐the-‐future-‐amongst-‐other-‐things/

[115] http://www.crowdspring.com/

[116] http://www.crowdspring.com/user/cserold/

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Introduction

ReDesignMe is another example of crowdsourc-‐

ing applied to design activities. In many ways this

platform, launched in 2008 by Maxim Schram in

Netherlands, is similar to CrowdSpring, however it

presents several differences. Initially ReDesignMe

platform had two sections: design critique and RDM

challenges. Design critique section permitted the

users to upload photos of design objects they use

everyday, criticize them, show critical points, dis-‐

cuss possible changes with the community. Unfortu-‐

nately the RDM critique section disappeared later on.

The second section offers RDM challenges proposed

by RDM customers, where the brief is defined with

the help of RDM team and where the customers pay

a placement fee. Everybody can propose a solution

to the challenge, either by describing it, by uploading

sketches or photos or by using RDM design tool -‐

where it is possible to design on the top of an image

or start from zero. FIG. 59: RedesignMe website (source: www.redesignme.com)

Analysis of the crow

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109

The toolkit is very simple and contains all the nec-‐

essary functions -‐ drawing with a pencil, selecting

a color, selecting basic textures and even adding a

note. Users proposing a solution which fits clients’

needs, receive a prize in credits, that can be used

for buying products in RDM store (for instance elec-‐

tronic goods) or converted to vouchers spendable in

some online stores (Ciuccarelli, 2008, p.125)

The reward for the participation in the contests is

not a direct financial reward, but a virtual currency,

called RDM, where 100 RDM correspond to 10 euros.

The contest holder pays the project fee from which

part of the money is converted into RDM points,

which he uses for rewarding the participants. Usual-‐

ly more than one participant is rewarded with points,

even if the amount of every reward is very small -‐

about 50 RDM’s. However when more participants

are receiving the reward there is less tension and

we can see more discussion happening in the com-‐

munity. This can be observed through the compari-‐

tion with CrowdSpring, where there is no discussion

between participants.

The earned RDM points can be used for “buying”

consumer electronics products in the Redesignme

shop section, where iPods, cameras, drawing pads

and other items are available.

Currently ReDesignMe works with small and me-‐

dium enterprises, and a few bigger customers like

Pickwick and Vodafone.

REDESIGNME -‐ SYSTEM MAPplatform

the crowd

enterprisemanagers

platformmoderator

RedesignMe community

financial flowimmaterial flow

material flow

challenge

fee for challenge placement, reward

challenge

?

$

reward in points,exchangeable in productsor currency

enterprise

designconcepts

design concepts

partnerselectronicdevices

retailers of electronicdevices

$

FIG. 60: RedesignMe system map

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ion Provide enterprises access to creative pool of designers

and creatives for various design services

ReDesignMe is a mediator between enterprises and their customers, partnership with province of North Brabant, that gives co-‐creation vouchers to innovative SMEs.

Being mediator-‐platform between SMEs and creatives

Fee of 25% to post design challenges (for companies) and providing private co-‐creation portals as SaaS (Software as a Service) solution, consultancy services in co-‐creation

Small/medium enterprises, freelance designers and ama-‐teurs

Differentiation on their offer -‐ access to a creative com-‐munity for creative insights and market research; differ-‐entiation on low cost of research&development activities

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BUSINESS

MODEL

Process of project development

Placement of challenge (enterprise) -‐ proposals to

the challenge (RDM community) -‐ reviewing, com-‐

menting, rewarding best solutions (Enterprise) -‐ im-‐

plementing the solutions (enterprise).

Product designed on the platform

An example of an RDM challenge, one of the first

challenges right after the opening of the platform,

was Vodafone Betavine web application for mobile

devices. The challenge that Vodafone was seeking

from the participants was to design a more user-‐

friendly web application. The challenge concerned

especially the features and the interface design ele-‐

ments. It is not a typical RDM challenge, which usu-‐

ally deal with product redesigns, services or logo

design.

The fact that it took place right after the launch of

RedesignMe platform shows that it was rather an

FIG. 61: RedesignMe business model

FIG. 62: (The opposite page) RedesignMe platform aspects

Analysis of the crow

dsourcing platforms

111Platform aspects Characteristics Failures/vulnerabilities

1. Business model Market place: bringing designers and enterprises that need a design concept together; contest with multiple contest winners

2.Project type/complexity Type of the project: product design, service design, design concepts, graphic design, web design Clients ask often for a full web development (with coding)

3. Tools supporting design process

It is easy to submit a design, because a redesign tool for drawing is built into the page.

social networking functions like adding someone to a network, following someone and placing a "shout" - a short message on someones profile page; "redwork" - a redesigners network tool for building your own designers network173; and inviting people from outside to join;

tools for voting for the entries - both community and contest holder can vote through thumbs up/down tool and comment; when voting everybody needs to clarify his/her vote

unfortunately the saving function of the drawing tool doesn't work;

4. User involvement level in the project

User involvement only in a particular part of the service, Usually no continuation of collaboration

5. Collaboration level There is definitely more collaboration taking place between users than on CrowdSpring platform: more users receive rewards (sometimes 10 users can be rewarded with RDM points), therefore they are more collaborative and giving advices to each others about design, tools user etc.

6. Feedback from platform administration/customers

Feedback both from community and contest holder (thumbs up and down tool), commenting

7. Transparency of information

Quite a transparent system - the activity and projects in a contest are visible to everybody

8. Structure/roles The platform managers and the contest holders act as benevolent dictators; users act as peers. Mainly three roles: reading, commenting and contributing to a challenge; the levels of participants: Beginner, Creative, Innovatior, Expert, Genius and are calculated by the amount of earned RDM points.

9. Knowledge and information access (project page, search, archive)

Quite a clear structure: sections for challenges, community, redesigns (last proposals of community members), RDM shop and Forum;

The challenge page can be designed according to look and feel of the brand;

The Profile page contains profile information, portfolio, redesigns added and personal connections in RDM network; each users number of posted projects, earned RDMs and number of comments are visible.

some inconsistencies in navigation, it's not immediately clear how to participate in the challenges

10. Mechanism of signing up

Entrance barrier for creatives is low, entrance barrier for buyers is a fee for posting a project, starting from 130 (for basic package) and from 390 for "gold" package with privacy and longer time period options

11. Protection of intellectual property

The intellectual property belongs to the contest holder

11. System of rewards Reward with virtual currency of ReDesignMe - RDM points, that can be converted into money via paypal (500 RDM = 50 euro) or can be spent in RDM shop (on electronic devices like drawing pad, iPod etc.); Multiple users are rewarded with small rewards; psychological reward: reputation in the community, advancement status: "Beginner", "Creative", "Innovatior", "Expert", "Genius" status. Creatives are classified by quantity of RDM earned and by quantity of projects submitted

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112

an interesting example how an interaction design

project is developed in such a community.

The diagram below shows the participation patterns

of Betavine project. After the brief was announced,

a discussion about requests and features for the

Betavine website started. The discussion concerned

mainly feature suggestions, however a few members

also made suggestions for interface and visual de-‐

sign as well as the name of the website and usabil-‐

ity concerns. These were purely textual messages

though. The most of the entries concerned just in-‐

terface and visual design elements, that contained an

interface mockup accompanied by a textual descrip-‐

tion. A few members posted a more complete con-‐

cept, together with interaction elements, description

of interaction scenario, technical specifications. One

member tried to post an animated prototype, which

was not allowed by the technical characteristics of

the platform.

One of the interesting things to observe is that there

was just a small uniformization effect in the pro-‐

posed designs. The most of the members tried to

propose something different and to cover different

design elements (visual elements, colors, text, tech-‐

nical specifications). This shows a big independency

of the members.

Even if the most of the interface mockups were not

very original or outstanding, we can see the value

of the crowdsourcing process rather than it’s visual

results. The participants gave many insights about

the perceived needs of users of the application, for

instance what features would be more used and

more important, the scenarios of use, etc. Some of

the users gave very good suggestions for usability of

the application, for instance the user named “kamal”:

“I felt that the color combination also needs to be

changed say light yellow and pink fonts on white

background is not that readable. Imagine if your mo-‐

bile screen display is not that good, or you are trying

to read it at afternoon when the sun is shining, you

won’t be able to read it properly. Also do take care

of designing the pages so that it can be accessible

for color blind people. You might use this website to

check it how a colorblind person may see it. http://

colorfilter.wickline.or...”

FIG. 63: One of the contest entries by the user Hummel111,

implemented by Betavine, source: http://www.

redesignme.com/challenge/58/vodafone/betavine/

experiment. 29 members of Redesignme took part

in the contest, that started in March 2008 and ended

around february 2009 (the end of posting entries

and comments is intended) . The project got award-‐

ed with few iPods (at this time there was no vir-‐

tual currency system implemented yet) and some of

the ideas got implemented by Vodafone accordingly

to Maxim Schram, the founder of RedesignMe. It is

Analysis of the crow

dsourcing platforms

113

FULL CONTROLREDESIGNME VODAFONE BETAVINE WEBSITE

MARCH 2008 -‐ MAY 2008 JUNE 2008 -‐ AUGUST 2008 SEPTEMBER -‐ NOVEMBER 2008 DECEMBER 2008 -‐ FEBRUARY 2009

SHARED CONTROL CONSULTATIVE CONTROL

NEED

S/OB

JECT

IVES

FUNC

TION

ALSP

ESIF

ICAT

IONS

INTE

RACT

ION

DESI

GNIN

TERF

ACE

DESI

GNVI

SUAL

DESI

GNEN

GINE

ERIN

G/DE

VELO

PMEN

T

BRIEF DEFINITION

COMMUNITY MANAGERREQUEST

COMMUNITY MANAGERFEEDBACK

DISCUSSION ABOUTNEEDS

DISCUSSION ABOUTFEATURES

DISCUSSION ABOUTFEATURES

DISCUSSION ABOUT ICONSAND TEXT ELEMENTS

DISCUSSION ABOUTVISUAL ELEMENTS

DISCUSSION ABOUTTHE LOGOTYPE

TECHNICALSPECIFICATIONS

INTERFACE MOCKUP INTERFACE MOCKUP

INTERFACE MOCKUP

INTERFACE MOCKUP

INTERFACE MOCKUP INTERFACE MOCKUP

INTERFACE MOCKUP INTERFACE MOCKUP

LOOK-‐AND-‐FEEL MOCKUP

LOOK-‐AND-‐FEEL MOCKUP

INTERFACE MOCKUP

VISUAL DESIGN

TECH. SPECIFICATIONS

INTERFACE MOCKUP

INTERACTION SCENARIO

CSS SPECIFICATIONS

INTERFACE MOCKUP

INTERACTION SCENARIO

INTERFACE MOCKUP

INTERACTION SCENARIO

The results of this project would be probably much

better if the community management was more ac-‐

tive in the discussions. Nevertheless a notable en-‐

thusiasm of the community can be seen.

Other two examples of projects made on ReDesign-‐

Me platform -‐ projects of logos for startup compa-‐

nies -‐ showed that involvement in commenting and

communicating with the community and higher re-‐

wards assured higher user participation -‐ a study

made by ReDesign team themselves117.

Results

In two years ReDesignMe built a community of

5102 people, creatives, students and amateurs (the

number of the community members corresponds to

the ideal number of 5000 mentioned by Jeff Howe

(Howe, 2008). Only a small part of the community

-‐ 153 members -‐ are really active and earned RDM

points. ReDesignMe platform has seen fifty chal-‐

lenges so far and 3 of them are open currently. So

far, the community was challenged with very diverse

challenges: to create marketing plans, logo designs,

gadgets design, improve or refresh products and ad-‐

just the layout of a website. In total there were 234

ideas and designs submitted of which 72 have been

awarded with a total prize money of Euro 2250.118

FIG. 64: Diagram showing the design process of the

challenge “Betavine” for Vodafone, that took place on

Redesignme platform. The connected boxes mean that

the same entry contained different aspects, for instance

elements of visual, interaction and interface design.

NOTES

[117] http://www.redesignme.com/crowdwise/2010/03/06/

succesful-‐logo-‐co-‐creation-‐for-‐2-‐start-‐ups/

[118] http://www.redesignme.com/crowdwise/2010/06/10/

sme-‐challenges-‐innovation-‐through-‐co-‐creation/

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114 3.5. CONCLUSIONS OF CASE STUDY RESEARCH

By analyzing the case studies from the point of view

of their design process, it can be seen quite clearly

how different design process implies different struc-‐

ture of the platform and business model. There can

be seen “clusters” of crowdsourcing platforms here.

Cambrian House belongs to the first cluster, where

the community is strongly involved in the design

process, and is partially moderated, followed and

supported by the platform team. The projects that

take place on these platforms are very complex and

require a lot of different expertise. In this case the

platform plays an important role of supporting prod-‐

uct development. This is the case of crowd-‐wisdom,

crowd-‐creation, crowd-‐voting and crowd-‐funding.

The web application design process seemed to be

very unorganized in this case, therefore the project

has to be planned and managed carefully through

all the web application design elements. None of

the elements should be forgot or undertaken. It is

important to have project management tools and to

guide the community through product development,

by dividing it in clear steps with clear rules. A good

balance of material and psychological rewards has

to be respected. Supporting asynchronous commu-‐

nication (for transparency of process), making the

process modular with different sizes of modules (re-‐

member granularity aspect outlined by Benkler), so

everyone can find the right amount of contribution.

There should be good tools for filtering the ideas, but

not discourage too much the development of failing

ideas, if there is a good team around it.

Crowdspring belongs to the second case. This case

requires less moderation because the project part

crowdsourced to the community is much smaller.

Therefore the platform has the role of a pure bro-‐

ker that brings clients and communities together.

The business model that the platform adopted is a

broker and contest organizer. This is the case of

crowd-‐creation. Design process in this case was

too restricted to only one aspect -‐ the creation of

visual design of a website. The participants were

not allowed to change the specifications, features

or wireframes therefore their involvement was very

limited. The exclusion from the whole design proc-‐

ess brings to poor results that are not necessarily

innovative -‐ the real opportunities of crowdsourcing

stay unexplored. On the other hand, the positive as-‐

pect about this model is the fact that the process is

guided and limited by the company, the brief is very

clear and therefore the results of the crowd produc-‐

tion are very focused. In this crowdsourcing case it

is important to support communication and collabo-‐

ration between users, provide design tools and idea-‐

funneling. Less competitive and more collaborative

atmosphere that can be stimulated through a more

distributed reward system. The customers should

provide a constant feedback to the community.

Redesign me belongs to the same cluster like

Crowdspring: also in this case the platform has the

role of market place, bringing together the contest

holders and participants. However, in this case the

community is given the task to create the concept as

well as provide some insights for the research and

Analysis of the crow

dsourcing platforms

115

not only restricted task like in CrowdSpring. The re-‐

ward is much smaller and not payed out directly like

in CrowdSpring, but used as virtual points through

the e-‐shop section of the platform, where consumer

electronics products can be acquired. More equal

distribution of the reward among the participants

leads to less competitive atmosphere and to more

communication (also due to the smaller size of the

community -‐ 5000 members). The design process

is not very well organized and explained and the

project management tools are missing. The chaotic

commenting of users about one or another topic and

the lack of focusing lead to results that are difficult

to integrate into real design. The design process is

supported by the integrated toolkit, however it is

not working perfectly. There can be seen educa-‐

tion situation on the platform, where some partici-‐

pants share their knowledge with others. This could

be supported even better by splitting projects into

phases and stimulating participants learn from each

other and build on each others ideas.

By analyzing the case studies we’ve noticed a rela-‐

tion between the 12 elements of analysis. Therefore

we propose a framework where we map the ele-‐

ments/issues. These important issues for building a

crowdsourcing platform are: the involvement of the

platform into the process/the business model, col-‐

laboration between participants, system of rewards,

CASE STUDY ANALYSIS: DESIGN PROCESS

NEEDS/OBJECTIVES

FUNCTIONALSPECIFICATIONS

INTERACTIONDESIGN

INTERACTIONDESIGN

INTERFACEDESIGN

VISUALDESIGN

ENGINEERING/DEVELOPMENT

NEEDS/OBJECTIVES

FUNCTIONALSPECIFICATIONS

INTERACTIONDESIGN

INTERFACEDESIGN

VISUALDESIGN

ENGINEERING/DEVELOPMENT

NEEDS/OBJECTIVES

FUNCTIONALSPECIFICATIONS

INTERFACEDESIGN

VISUALDESIGN

ADMINISTRA-‐TION TASKS

Crowd-‐wisdom, crowd-‐creation,

crowd-‐voting, crowd-‐funding

Agent: helping inno-‐vators to develop their business, sup-‐porting them in mar-‐keting, production and financing

Job management and project man-‐agement dashboard, wiki, forum, direct messaging. Difficult over-‐view of the project process, not completely transparent process. Project management and collabora-‐tion should be supported better administrative team of CH.

Good tools for posting entries, rating, good process overview. However the communication and entry posting areas are separated, no comment possibility. Partici-‐pants cannot rate. Highly competi-‐tive athmosphere, no collaboration between participants.

Good tools for project process and documentation -‐ commenting, rating on entries, uploading multi-‐ple files. Good reward distribution system. Integrated design toolkit. Project should be split in phases. More feedback from contest holder.

Market place: bring-‐ing designers and enterprises that need website design together;

Market place: bring-‐ing designers and enterprises that need a design con-‐cept together;

crowd-‐creation

Crowd-‐wisdom, crowd-‐creation,

crowd-‐voting

PLATFORM NAME DESIGN PROCESSCROWDSOURCING

TYPE BM ASPECTS PLATFORM CHARACTERISTICS

FULL CONTROL SHARED CONTROL CONSULTATIVE CONTROL

FIG. 65: Summary of the analyzed study cases

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116Platform Variables

Cambrian house Crowdspring Redesignme

1. Business model Agent: helping innovators to develop their business, supporting them in

marketing, production and financing

Market place: bringing designers and enterprises that need website design together; contest form

Market place: bringing designers and enterprises that need a design concept together; contest with multiple contest winners

2.Project type/complexity

software projects, high level of complexity graphic and web-design projects (only visual design part) Redesigning or designing concepts for service, product, interaction design

3. Tools supporting design process

Guided submission of the idea, refinement, promotion and voting

mechanisms: Tools for threaded commenting/comment rating, managing a job, discussion, wiki, source code repository; direct messaging

tools for voting for an entry in a contest; design tutorials; commenting, forum, direct messaging

Redesign tool built-in; social networking functions, voting, commenting

4. User involvement level

High user involvement throughout the whole process: developed by people

for people model; however the more complex project tasks are done by internal CH team

user involvement only in a small part of interaction design process: the interface design

user involvement only in a particular part of the service, Usually no continuation of collaboration

5. Collaboration level

High collaboration level. collaboration is supported by the system: through

job assignment mechanisms; users build on each others ideas and collaborate on project tasks;

No collaboration nor communication between the users, only a funneling effect takes place

sometimes collaboration happens (max two users), high discussion level, sharing knowledge

6. Feedback from platform administration/customers

A lot of feedback from the Cambrian House team Feedback from the CH (contest holder) through rating of the project and through comments on activity page

Feedback both from community and contest holder (thumbs up and down tool), commenting

7. Transparency of information

The most of information concerning the project is transparent Quite transparent system - the activity and projects in a contest are visible, except the "Pro" projects protected with an NDA.

Quite a transparent system - the activity and projects in a contest are visible to everybody

8. Structure/roles flat horizontal structure, however the internal CH team has more

responsibilities than the rest of the crowd. Roles: simple participants, idea champions (whose idea won), investors, marketers

hierarchic structure: the contest holder and the platform administration has all the power and control over the process

The platform managers and the contest holders act as benevolent dictators; users act as peers. The levels of participants: Beginner, Creative, Innovatior, Expert, Genius and are calculated by the amount of earned RDM points.

9. Knowledge and information access

Confusing system. project site shows the members, comments,

contributions and open jobs; project archive; search mechanism; tools for keeping track of financial state of the business, awards and network

Clearly structured system: challenge page, project brief, activity feed, dashboard; watch-list, messages, profile info and portfolio

Archive of old projects, challenge section with info about the company, profile page, search function, community page

10. Mechanism of signing up

The entrance barriers for participating are low, therefore a huge amount of

ideas is generated

Entrance barrier for creatives is low, entrance barrier for buyers is 39$ fee for posting a project

Entrance barrier for creatives is low, entrance barrier for buyers is a fee for posting a project, starting from 130 (for basic package) and from 390 for "gold" package with privacy and longer time period options

11. Protection of intellectual property

Intellectual property of ideas stays to the author of the idea the intellectual property of the project passes to the Contest Holder only in the case he accepts it and pays the reward to the submitter

the intellectual property belongs to the contest holder

1 2 . S y s t e m o f rewards

Material rewards with royalty points, or Cambros, the internal platform

currency, where 1 Cambros equals 1 dollar

Monetary reward for the projects that won the contest Reward with virtual currency of ReDesignMe - RDM points, that can be converted into money via paypal (500 RDM = 50 euro) or can be spent in RDM shop

Analysis of the crow

dsourcing platforms

117FIG. 66: Summary of crowdsourcing platform analysis

NOTES

[119] http://www.thezig.co.uk/which-‐risks-‐and-‐problems-‐

will-‐companies-‐that-‐run-‐crowdsourcing-‐business-‐

models-‐face-‐in-‐the-‐future-‐amongst-‐other-‐things/

feedback and transparency, structure of the design

process, project complexity, user roles, tools sup-‐

porting the process etc.

1. Business Model.

The business model of “Agent” like the case of Cam-‐

brian House is difficult to sustain because of the lack

of investment and support from external companies.

The other extreme -‐ the “Market” model of Crowd-‐

Spring, which sees the platform as a professional

design services provider is not sustainable either

from a long term perspective (the innovators might

feel undertaken and abused as virtual sweatshop

workers). There is a need of a model that is in the

middle: that acts as an advisor, not only bringing

the two parties together, but providing consultancy

services and helping companies to adopt a suitable

crowdsourcing model for their specific needs.

2. Project complexity.

Project complexity one of the factors determining

the crowdsourcing process. Adam Fletcher, crowd-‐

sourcing entrepreneur and manager, writes how

crowdsourcing design project type is deciding the

process of crowdsourcing. For instance the project

complexity influences the way crowdsourcing model

should work: the more complex is the project, the

more vital is feedback and comments by many par-‐

ticipants: “That product has to solve many different

problems, for many different people, things the origi-‐

nal designer may have never considered. Feedback

and versioning will allow that.”132 Fletcher also men-‐

tions that producing a consumer electronics prod-‐

uct like at CrowdSpirit requires an intervention of

different professionals and is a much more complex

project than designing a T-‐shirt like at Threadless.

As we see from the study cases, some of them re-‐

quired a very high level of collaboration and knowl-‐

edge of different people than the others. For instance

in Cambrian House the collaboration of people with

different expertise was indispensable -‐ web design-‐

ers, programmers, graphic designers, interface de-‐

signers etc. In a different case like CrowdSpring,

interface designers could come along with the prob-‐

lem-‐solving by themselves.

3. Tools for collaboration.

The tools of crowdsourcing platform should have

the following features: 1) they have to support trans-‐

parency and communication between users. How-‐

ever mainly asynchronous communication should be

supported, that is easier documentable and visible

to all the users; 2) the tools for communication of

advancement of the project and other projects suc-‐

cesses; 3) tools for structuring the design process;

4) tools for rewarding and feedback from the enter-‐

prise; 5) tools for creation directly on the website (so

there is no need for proprietary design programs)

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4. Involvement of the participants.

By analyzing the different study cases we came to

a conclusion, that there must be a balance between

user involvement and collaboration. The platforms

that involved users in the whole process of prod-‐

uct development were rather unstable. For instance

Cambrian House failed at this point, because the

crowds didn’t go forward when it came to develop-‐

ment phase (as we mentioned previously). Crowd-‐

Spirit was another crowdsourcing platform attempt-‐

ing to follow Cambrian House example that had to

change their business model soon as they realized,

that there must be an enterprise involved in the

process, that alone crowd creativity is not enough

for producing a product.120

5. Structure of the design process.

The structure of the project process is also cru-‐

cial for the success of the platform. Every step of

the process has to be defined: when the process is

spontaneous and self-‐organized, the people don’t

feel guided and don’t know what actions to take (the

failure of Cambrian House).

The interaction design process in three analyzed

cases confirms our hypothesis about crowdsourcing

opportunities in different interaction design phases:

the crowdsourcing process is very suitable for gath-‐

ering insights about needs and perceived problems

in the “Needs and objectives” layer as well as feed-‐

back for functional specification definition in the

“Functional Specification” layer. New and original

interaction scenarios can appear in the “Interaction

design layer” (what can be seen in the analyzed Re-‐

designme project). “Interface design and Information

design” layer can benefit from different points of

view on what information elements are more use-‐

ful and how they can be organized on the screen.

However this phase could be facilitated by providing

wireframing toolkits with already existing interface

design elements. Visualizing is another area that is

well adapted for crowdsourcing as we have seen

in the previous examples, however it can be more

effective when the participants are involved in the

previous layers and guided through the process by

providing them a framework, which can be a project

plan, a diagram showing the project specifications,

a graphic that summarizes the research results and

provides guidelines for the project, etc. Analysis and

frameworking is often the missing link in the previ-‐

ously analyzed cases. As mentioned before a good

framework determines the results of the project.

This element of the process should be guided by the

company or the platform administration.

6. Collaboration between participants.

Another conclusion made from analysis is the fac-‐

tor of collaboration between the users and with the

enterprise: the platforms that managed a good level

of conversation and collaboration appear to be more

stable and sustainable, like ReDesignMe. However

the level of collaboration required depends also on

type of project (the more complex tasks require a

higher level of user collaboration).

NOTES

[120] according to David Lionel, the founder and

CEO of CrowdSpirit, www.crowdspirit.com

Analysis of the crow

dsourcing platforms

119

PLATFORM INVOLEVEMENT IN THE BUSINESS MODEL

AMOUNT OF MONETARY

REWARDS

TOOLS SUPPORTING

DESIGN PROCESS

USER INVOLVEMENT LEVEL

IN THE PROJECT

COLL

ABOR

ATIO

N

FEEDBACK FROM ADMIN/

CUSTOMERS

TRANSPARENCY OFINFORMATION

FLATNESS OF THE

ORGANIZATIONAL

STRUCTURE

KNOWLEDGE AND

INFORMATION ACCESS

PROJECT COMPLEXITY

PROT

ECTIO

N OF T

HE

INTE

LLEC

TUAL

PRO

PERT

Y

OF TH

E CO

NTRIB

UTOR

S

ENT

RANC

E BA

RRIE

R

CASE STUDY ANALYSIS: VARIABLES

FIG. 67: Variables of the analysis of the case study

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7. Feedback and transparency.

The feedback is another crucial factor: users have

to see the feedback of the enterprise and the proc-‐

ess of the project. Where there is a lot of feedback,

users are more motivated. The project should be

documented and accessible to everyone: all the dis-‐

cussions, files, informations that have to do with the

design process have to be organized in a way that

everyone can join the process and have an overview

of it at any time.

8. User roles and the structure of the community.

From this case study research we came to a conclu-‐

sion that there are three main user categories cru-‐

cial for running a successful crowdsourcing project

1) the active users, that participate and post actively

2) the less active users that comment and rate 3)

the passive users that only browse and read. Adam

Fletcher, underlines the importance of the less ac-‐

tive and passive users: “I’m talking instead of the

people who lack the design talent to submit, but

instead rate, give feedback and connect with other

members to keep the message boards and blogs in-‐

teresting places to go while you wait for new prod-‐

ucts to buy, or designs to vote on. These guys are

the lifeblood of the company, the ambassadors...”121

The structure of the community should be based

on meritocracy like in FLOSS communities. A be-‐

nevolent dictator (initiator of the project in CH case)

should control and manage the process. In the case

of “market” model like CrowdSpring or RedesignMe

the community manager together with the contest

holder should be involved in the process as facilita-‐

tor and enabler of the design process.

9. Access of knowledge&information.

Access to knowledge&information facilitates the de-‐

sign process. The main points that have to be ac-‐

cessible in the system are: information about the

project, the brief and the company, the project ac-‐

tivity with entries, comments and votes (it can be

set to private if the Contest Holder wants to have

privacy); project archive, success stories, search

mechanisms, available awards, watch-‐list, profile

infos (can be private or public) participant portfolio,

community information

10. Sign up mechanism.

The signing up should be for free for the innovators

and should contain entrance fee for the contest hold-‐

ers. The experience with CrowdSpring shows that

entrance fee of 39$ can be to small because this

doesn’t make the contest holder feel responsible for

rewarding the results. Different available “plans” like

at Redesignme starting at 130 Euro give the choice

opportunities as well as ensure the reward to the

community.

11. Intellectual property protection.

In CrowdSpring and RedesignMe the intellectual

property belongs to the community till the moment

the Contest Holder rewarded the project. From this

point on the IP passes to the Contest Holder. How-‐

ever CrowdSpring provides consultancy and IP pro-‐

NOTES

[121] http://www.thezig.co.uk/which-‐risks-‐and-‐problems-‐

will-‐companies-‐that-‐run-‐crowdsourcing-‐business-‐

models-‐face-‐in-‐the-‐future-‐amongst-‐other-‐things/

Analysis of the crow

dsourcing platforms

121

tection services and therefore ensures the rights

of both sides. At Cambrian House the IP passes to

the company (Cambrian House) after the idea is se-‐

lected through IdeaWartz competition process: this

might influence negatively the contribution level of

the ideator of the service, especially because the

monetary reward system is not defined very clearly

at Cambrian House either. Ensuring a clear and well-‐

defined IP protection system is very important for a

platform that delivers professional services to com-‐

panies, like CrowdSpring is doing.

12. System of rewards.

The rewarding system is also an important factor:

the platforms where the rewards are distributed

more equally between users (like ReDesignMe) cre-‐

ate less tension between users. They feel more in-‐

volved because of their passion for the subject or

because of the educational interests, rather than just

material rewards. The amount of financial reward

does not necessarily correspond to growing amount

of participants and doesn’t ensure the functioning of

the model according to David Lionel122. Psychologi-‐

cal rewards and expectation of collaboration can be

much more effective “there are high profile exam-‐

ples like Threadless hiring the guy that won there

12, 13 times.” (Adam Fletcher)123. Learning benefits

should also be underlined by the administration of

the system, for instance in ReDesignMe people ex-‐

change their knowledge and give tips to each other,

while in CrowdSpring there is a blog where tutorials

and other information is posted.

By mapping the 12 elements into the matrix above,

we can see some relations between the elements.

First of all, a higher collaboration between users and

higher user involvement leads to a critical situation

like Cambrian House, where much effort has to be

put into holding the project together, managing the

design process, the community and keeping the re-‐

ward promise. The other extreme is CrowdSpring,

where no collaboration is happening and the partici-‐

pants are involved only into a very small and limited

design task. RedesignMe is more in the middle be-‐

tween the two platforms. According to our analy-‐

sis of the communities, we’ve seen that the Cam-‐

brian House model of the community was not very

sustainable, as well as the model of CrowdSpring,

where there is a lot of tension and coming-‐and-‐go-‐

NOTES

[122] http://www.crowdspirit.com/blog/174-‐10-‐

idees-‐recues-‐sur-‐le-‐crowdsourcing

[123] http://www.thezig.co.uk/which-‐risks-‐and-‐problems-‐

will-‐companies-‐that-‐run-‐crowdsourcing-‐business-‐

models-‐face-‐in-‐the-‐future-‐amongst-‐other-‐things/

ing of people. RedesignMe exist already since a few

years and its small community keeps growing. We

can see a quite high level of participation and dia-‐

logue between the members. This might be again the

confirmation of the theory of Clay Shirky about com-‐

munity size, mentioned in the first chapter (see “The

conditions for building crowd intelligence”).

The question that we would like to ask further is: is

it possible to create a balanced crowdsourcing plat-‐

form where all of the described elements are solved

in a balanced and sustainable way? We try to answer

this question in the following chapter.

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A CROWDSOURCING PLATFORM FOR INTERACTION DESIGN

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A CROWDSOURCING PLATFORM FOR INTERACTION DESIGN

CHAPTER 4

PLATFORM FOR CROWD-‐SOURCING INTERACTION DE-‐SIGN IN SOCIAL WEB APPLI-‐CATIONS The questions that we are trying to answer in this project part are the following: what value could crowdsourcing of social web applications bring to companies, how to organize the crowdsourcing design process for the design of social web applications, what business model to choose and how to develop the platform according to the previous findings.

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WEB APPLICATIONS: INTRODUCTION

Previously (in the second Chapter) we described

interaction design elements and building blocks. In

this chapter, before describing the project, we are

going to introduce the social web applications and

the opportunities that crowdsourcing presents in the

design process of such applications.

Recently the market for interaction design in crea-‐

tion of digital products -‐ especially web applications

is growing exponentially.

Web application is an application, or a software

product, that can be accessed over a network, over

intranet or internet. It can mean also an application

that is hosted in a browser-‐controlled environment

and therefore programmed in a browser-‐supported

language, for instance java-‐script. Web application

structure is usually broken into layers or “tiers”.

The most of the web applications contain three tiers:

presentation (the browser), application (an engine

using a dynamic web content technology, containing

application logic) and storage (a database that con-‐

tains informations). There is a big similarity between

desktop applications and web applications -‐ and the

borders between the categories are blurring more

every day (Moggridge, 2006). However the web-‐ap-‐

plications are different from software, because they

don’t need to be installed or purchased (sometimes

access to them might require a registration and pay-‐

ment) and they can be accessed everywhere and

used at the same time with many other users. This

is one of the main conveniences of web applications,

that they don’t have to get installed and the updates

can be distributed automatically. Another reason of

the popularity of the web applications is the ubiquity

of web browsers used as a client124, and the constant

access to internet that many people have. Further-‐

more, another advantage of web applications is the

cross-‐platform compatibility eliminating the need to

care for different operating systems and only requir-‐

ing to use certain browsers. The benefits of using

web applications instead of desktop applications can

be reassumed as following:

1. Web applications don’t need to be “rollout” in

the enterprises with complex configuration and

installation processes -‐ they can be run in the

browser;

2. They don’t require much space in the disk of the

client;

3. There is no need for upgrade procedure, be-‐

cause all the update procedures are done auto-‐

matically on the server;

4. It is easier to integrate web applications with

other web applications and functionalities, for

instance e-‐mail and web-‐search;

NOTES

[124] A client is an application or a computer

system that accesses a remote service or another

system known as server through a network

4.1. INTERACTION DESIGN OF SOCIAL WEB APPLICATIONS

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NOTES

[125] McKinsey Quarterly conducted a Survey with

2847 executives worldwide in 2007, source: https://

www.mckinseyquarterly.com/How_businesses_are_

using_Web_20_A_McKinsey_Global_Survey_1913

5. Web applications provide cross-‐platform com-‐

patibility.

Jess James Garrett synthesized the elements of

user experience in web design (that we described

in the previous chapter), which is showing clearly

the shift from content-‐oriented web and interaction-‐

oriented web (the shift from web 1.0 and web 2.0).

Before web 2.0 it was reasonable to talk about de-‐

sign of web sites and today it’s more reasonable to

talk about design of web applications, which inte-‐

grate more rich user interaction. Nowadays in the

design of web applications it is more important to

define how the users will interact with the system,

rather than what content will be present there, there-‐

fore Web applications are rather task-‐oriented than

information oriented.

Nowadays we can observe the proliferation of web

applications that provide much more features and

interactivity than just clicking and searching: they

allow us to chat in real time, to add pictures, to post

our content, to comment and vote, to create our

friendship and professional networks, to broadcast

our information and so on. The data is saved not on

our desktop but on the server of the provider. These

technical peculiarities make it possible not only si-‐

multaneous access to the application but also a si-‐

multaneous collaborative design and programming,

where results can be seen immediately. Typical

web applications are webmail, online shops, social

networking sites and so on. The latter -‐ social net-‐

working sites -‐ is a growing aspect of web 2.0 ap-‐

plications, because it corresponds to one of the main

needs of the user -‐ to socialize.

SOCIAL WEB APPLICA-‐TIONS FOR B2C COM-‐MUNICATION

The social interaction aspects have been integrat-‐

ed into many Enterprise 2.0 applications, because

enterprise managers recognized the importance of

social aspects in B2C communication (Business-‐

to-‐Customer). Enterprise 2.0 software is a soft-‐

ware that integrates the web 2.0 characteristics,

for instance the enterprise social software, which

includes social and networked modifications to cor-‐

porate software used for internal and external com-‐

munication. The main features it provides are collab-‐

oration, information sharing and social networking.

The typical tools that social software includes are:

wikis, search tools, blogs, microblogging, rss feeds,

idea banks, user social profile, social search, file

sharing, groups, social bookmarking, social net-‐

working functionalities etc.

Accordingly to McKinsey Qurterly Global Survey125

“How Businesses are using Web 2.0”, 80% of sur-‐

veyed executives of companies are using or are

planning to invest into web 2.0 services for their

business. 70% of the respondents of the survey

used the web 2.0 technologies to interface with their

customers for customer services (34%), customer-‐

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to-‐business feedback (19%) or for acquiring new

customers and new markets (47%). This shows that

many enterprises realized the benefits of socializa-‐

tion of their employees, customers and stakehold-‐

ers, therefore they start to integrate social functions

into their corporate websites or integrate web serv-‐

ices for internal and external interaction. Corporate

blogs, wikis and social networks become more and

more common in the corporate culture. Commercial

social networks is one of the versions of the social

functionalities integrated into corporate websites.

This kind of service supports commercial function-‐

alities and trust building between the customer and

the brand. This kind of social networking is also

called brand networking and is part of the wider

CRM (customer relations management) field in the

Enterprise management. The earlier described Dell

IdeaStorm and Sony Ericsson SE-‐dot initiatives can

be interpreted as a hybrid of brand networking and

crowdsourcing.

Social software for B2C relations and marketing

purposes brings the following benefits

it allows positive public relations: “social soft-‐

ware tools allow businesses to put a human face

on their organization leading to more effective

public relations with their clients and customer”

(Pressley, 2006, p.5, through Brown&Heinrich,

2005)

it allows to respond immediately to customer

concerns and build effective customer-‐to-‐cus-‐

tomer communication

getting “a fresh perspective from the customer”

(Pressley, 2006, p.5, through Cone, 2005)

engaging in a conversation with the customers

through user-‐generated-‐content applications126

allowing to harness ideas from the customers

enhancing the process of viral marketing in-‐

creasing the speed in which customers share

their experiences and opinions

reducing marketing expenses

generating a better exposure for the business127

The most used application fields for social media are

the following: Publicity, marketing and advertising,

direct online selling, Research&Development, com-‐

munication, collaboration, customer service (Thonis,

2009). The growing web 2.0 trend in corporate cul-‐

ture can be visible in the participation of enterprises

in Facebook communication, corporate blogs, cus-‐

tomer support forums, “twittering” etc. There is a

growing demand of social web applications for B2C

communication and marketing purposes accord-‐

ing to Alterian study, where 66% of 1068 market-‐

ers worldwide stated that they are going to invest

in social media and transfer one fifth of their direct

marketing budget for funding social media marketing

(Alterian study, via Techcrunch, source: http://tech-‐

crunch.com/2010/01/21/alterian-‐social-‐media-‐mar-‐

keting-‐study/). There has never been a time more

NOTES

[126] IAB 96Platform Status Report, User Generated Content,

Social Media and Advertising -‐ an Overview, 2008, source:

http://www.iab.net/media/file/2008_ugc_platform.pdf

[127] Alterian study, via Techcrunch, source: http://techcrunch.

com/2010/01/21/alterian-‐social-‐media-‐marketing-‐study/

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important to market businesses online because an

increasing number of consumers is going online for

looking what is on offer, investigate what people

say about brands, purchase products or services128.

In this growing demand for social web applications

there is a possible field of engagement for interac-‐

tion designers and developers. Let’s see first what

are the most used applications of social media for

marketing purposes.

1. Corporate Blogs -‐ used for distributing the in-‐

formation about the company and getting cus-‐

tomers feedback

2. Social Media Platform profile -‐ a company cre-‐

ates a profile on Facebook or MySpace for com-‐

municating with the customers. The customers

can add the page to their “friends” network or

become a “fan”.

3. Applications on social media platforms: devel-‐

oped with personalized features requested by

the company on an existing social media plat-‐

form like Facebook. Many of those applications

are UGC (user-‐generated-‐content, allowing us-‐

ers to express their likes, dislikes, communi-‐

cate and post content); Open Social launched

by Google in 2007 is a platform which allows

to write social media applications for multiple

platforms like MySpace, Friendster, Linked-‐in

etc. An example of a branded application on Fa-‐

cebook is Nike Training widget.

4. Social Bookmarking -‐ allows consumers to

share their favorite web destination by sub-‐

mitting links to social bookmarking sites like

Digg129, Delicious130 or Reddit131. Publishers and

NOTES

[128] http://www.marketing.co.uk/b2c-‐sector/

marketing-‐for-‐the-‐b2c-‐sector/

[129] www.digg.com

[130] http://delicious.com

[131] www.reddit.com

portals often add the social bookmarking fea-‐

tures to their content.

FIG. 68: Nokia Conversations corporate blog, source:

http://conversations.nokia.com/

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5. Widgets -‐ portable applications that allow users

and sites to have a hand on the content, have re-‐

cently become a popular form for brand distri-‐

bution. The publisher of the content can control

the widget, while the user can integrate it into

his website, blog or social networking profile

(IAB report, 2008)132. There are two ways for

publishing the widget: by paying the usage fee

to the platform distributor or have the platform

distributor sell the advertising for a revenue

share. Alternative to advertising in and around

widgets embodying content, widgets can be the

advertising message itself (IAB report, 2008).

The examples of widgets are weather widget

from weather.com or NBA rankings widget. The

widgets are rapidly gaining in popularity as a

social media tool (IAB report, 2008).

6. Custom social hub. Custom communities are

the hub for a brand to entertain or engage the

users through interesting content, games, polls,

quizzes or contests. Common examples are the

custom communities of brands like Nike or Adi-‐

das on MySpace or Facebook.

7. Dedicated channels: a company creates their

own community on a content-‐sharing site like

Youtube.

8. Branding wrappers or “skins”: this transforms

the social networks landing page into a brand

experience: with images, videos, music and

wallpapers. The user can often turn their profile

page into a branding wrapper page by becoming

therefore an advocate of the brand.

The described forms of social media present oppor-‐

tunities and change the way companies communi-‐

cate with the customers: it changes from one-‐way

communication to an interaction. The companies that

choose social web applications to present their prod-‐

ucts to the customers enter an environment where

the conversation is owned and led by the customers

themselves. This requires the companies to behave

differently than they are used to. The guidelines for

the B2C communication on social media are there-‐

fore (from IAB report, 2008, Deuze, 2008):

1. Becoming part of the social media environment

and therefore not lead a conversation but talk

with the customers;

2. Not only promote the brand but provide an add-‐

ed value to the customers: for instance by en-‐

tertaining them, by providing a useful service,

by engaging them into a conversation with other

people etc.;

3. Follow the rules of User-‐generated-‐Content -‐

“speak the language of users”;

4. Being credible, present clearly the objectives;

FIG. 69: Nike Training widget, source: www.facebook.com

NOTES

[132] Interactive Advertising Bureau, User Generated Content,

Social Media and Advertising -‐ an Overview, source: http://

www.iab.net/media/file/2008_ugc_platform.pdf

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5. Being authentic: not trying to cheat on consum-‐

ers;

6. Ensure transparency of the campaign/applica-‐

tion: no hidden objectives or rules; all the steps

of the process and what is happening on the

platform should be visible to the customers.

What can crowdsourcing bring into the process?

What benefits can crowdsourcing bring to the design

of social web applications for companies? First of all,

social web applications is a service for the existing

or potential customers of the company, therefore let-‐

ting it design by the community of interaction design

professionals increases the possibility to predict the

needs and expectations of the customers. Crowd-‐

sourcing of advertisement for companies has already

shown its benefits in many cases (Howe, 2008). So-‐

cial web applications for marketing purposes is be-‐

tween advertisement and web design field, therefore

we can suppose, that if it works well in advertise-‐

ment business it can work well in social web ap-‐

plication business. A variety of ideas, originality and

freshness of proposals as well as viral effects are all

advantages of crowdsourcing process. Accessing a

pool of wide-‐spread talent is another advantage. An

additional motivation is the complexity of the design

of social web applications, where many factors have

to be taken in consideration: the community factors,

the interaction scenarios, the technological issues.

Therefore for creating a successful social web ap-‐

plication multi-‐disciplinary knowledge and compe-‐

tences are needed, which can be harnessed from

a wide-‐spread number of interaction designers and

programmers. Another factor that makes social web

application suitable for crowdsourcing is that the de-‐

sign and the testing can be made in a community of

potential customers therefore by learning from the

first insights (“release early and often”). An addition-‐

al benefit that crowdsourcing can bring to the design

of social web applications is the increasing of brand

awareness in the community of co-‐creators.

Social web applications are suited for co-‐designing

them with the community because by their nature

they are addressed to solve the communication is-‐

sues of a community. Therefore getting feedback

from the community (of customers of a brand for

instance) is important for every step of the process

when defining the structure and the design aspects

of the social web application. Another reason why

social web applications should be crowdsourced is

the opportunity for the enterprise to “test” its com-‐

mercial social application in the community and tai-‐

lor it to the needs of the community.

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User needs and site objectives

The first bottom level in designing web applications

is about defining the users needs that can derive

from observation, from identified errors and prob-‐

lems that user meet with existing interfaces and

from their expressed and unexpressed needs. It also

contains the identification of Site Objectives: what

are the business or creative derived goals for the

site. In the case of social web applications it has to

be taken into consideration as we mentioned before,

that the sociability, the community and its needs, the

activities of the community, the sharing and collabo-‐

ration are important issues as well as how to build

relations between people based on trust. This layer

has to do especially with the question “why?”: “Why

BUILDING BLOCKS OF SOCIAL WEB APPLICATION DESIGN

According to what we found out during research about interaction design elements, dimensions and the elements of user experience and the peculiarities of social software design, we are going to attempt to synthesize the important elements for the design of social web applica-‐tions. We are not going to concentrate on the engineering part, but rather on the interaction design part of the design. We are also going to describe how the different parts might benefit from crowdsourcing.

does the company need the social web application?”,

“Why should it get implemented?” The answers to

these questions could get clear during the research:

the social web application is needed in this company

primarily for keeping everyone updated on the last

projects, or to create a denser social network, to

keep in touch with remote collaborators, etc. The

answers depend on the activity of the company and

the situation.

Some of the aspects of social networking web ap-‐

plications can be found in the definitions brought by

1st International Workshop on Social Software Engi-‐

neering and Applications132:

“Social software engineering, can be defined as

the application of processes, methods, and tools to

enable community-‐driven creation, management,

deployment, and use of software in online environ-‐

ments.”

During the mentioned workshop the following char-‐

acterization of social web application requirements

was proposed:

NOTES

[132] http://www.cs.tut.fi/sosea08/

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1. The software has to be community -‐ centered:

focusing on community rather than individuals;

2. Collaboration/collectiveness: supporting the

collaboration between users;

3. Companionship/relationship: making explicit

the associations between people;

4. Social activities: the software has to be de-‐

signed to support human activities and address

social issues;

5. Social inclusion: the software should support

social inclusion by fostering links and building

trust133.

These factors have to be taken into consideration

when designing social web applications addition-‐

ally to the interaction design elements that we men-‐

tioned before.

This first layer would benefit from crowd participa-‐

tion especially because this would help to identify

the needs that users have when dealing with social

web applications, the perceived problems, the trends

in communication and socialization.

This layer corresponds to the “constraints” process

element from the scheme of Moggridge. The con-‐

straints phase offers opportunities to reset the prob-‐

lem and is crucial for creating innovation (Laurel,

2003, p.149). Broader thinking allows to break out

from current mind-‐set, therefore talking to experts

from different fields, with different perspective and

frame of reference is crucial in the research process

(Laurel, 2003, p.148).

MAPPINGS

CONCRETE

ID ELEMENTS WEB APPLICATION DESIGN LAYERS DETAILED ELEMENTS

ABSTRACT

MODES

MEANING

MOTIVATION

ANIMATION

ACCESS

TASK FLOW

ACTIVITIES

TECHNOLOGY

STRUCTURE

NETWORK

MAPS

IDENTITY

TRUST INCLUSION

ASSOCIATIONS

SHARING

COLLABORATIONCOMMUNITY

INTUITIVENESS

INTERFACE PARADIGM

NARRATIVE

COMMUNICATION MEMORY

METAPHOR

ERROR

USABILITY

CONTROLS

FEEDBACK INVOLVEMENTBEHAVIOR

AFFORDANCE

CONTEXT

MANIPULATION

SCENARIO

DISPLAY

MODELINTERACTION RHYTHM

The innovative breakthroughs are also connected

to the phenomenon of the stickiness of information,

defined by Eric von Hippel, that takes into considera-‐

tion the user-‐led invention process, where the idea

for changing a product or for inventing a new one

originates from bottom-‐up. According to von Hippel

the gap of the stickiness of information should be

FIG. 70: Interaction design elements for

design of social web applications

NOTES

[133] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Software_Engineering

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avoided during the whole design process, therefore

the exchange with the users should happen as often

as possible.

Saffer provides an example of developing an online

banking application, where during the user research

designers find out that users want to see their ac-‐

count status in every page (Saffer, 2007, p.29).

Without user research designers might have not

found out about this exigence.

The needs and expectations of users are not al-‐

ways formalizable (Ciuccarelli, 2008). Showing pic-‐

tures of the concept, prototypes or visualizations is

making this task easier, however there is a need of

mechanisms that translate the information received

from users to formalizable and “codified” state

(Ciuccarelli, 2008). A toolkit designed for user the

creative involvement of users and analysis of these

informations could be a solution. The tools that Asus

was providing in the WePc project were a first trial

to create with a different medium of expression, than

traditional “idea jams134” tools. Other possible tools

for conducting research, especially for organizing

information and creating connections are Mindmap-‐

ping tools for creating diagrams used to represent

words, ideas, or other items arranged around a cen-‐

tral node.

Functional Specifications

Functional Specifications or “feature set” are the

detailed descriptions of functionality that the web

application has to include in order to meet the goals

and users needs specified in the previous layer. This

layer deals principally with the question “what?” –

what functionalities will the application offer. In this

section it has to be answered, what collaboration

tools there will be provided, what will be communi-‐

cation channels, what kind of communication will it

be – synchronous (chat or VoIP clients) or asynchro-‐

nous (wiki, messages) or mixed. What functionalities

will the community need, what are the main activi-‐

ties of the community and what are the features sup-‐

porting them. What will support trust building? What

material will community members share – pictures,

videos, bookmarks, textual information, other files?

What will be the content of the application – mainly

user generated content or also deriving from other

sources? What access restrictions will there be?

What will be the context of interaction? What will be

the associations between people – friendship asso-‐

ciations, groups according to interests? And another

more technical question to ask – what will be the

structure of the application: what “triers” will it have

and what sections etc.

In this phase already the questions about the mean-‐

ing of the service should be asked: what could be

the possible use scenarios? This part is similar

to building a plan or a framework for the project

which corresponds to the findings from the previ-‐

ous layer. Frameworking should be mainly executed

by the company together with the crowdsourcing

platform administration, because as we saw in the

previous analysis of participation in design, the firm

has to analyze and interpret the expressed and un-‐

NOTES

[134] traditional “idea jams” tools comprise

commenting, posting short texts and voting

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expressed users needs and “translate” them into

specifications and functionalities. In this phase us-‐

ers could participate by providing feedback about the

company decisions.

The Functional Specifications layer corresponds to

the synthesis and the framing elements from Mog-‐

gridge’s scheme. This is when designers synthesize

the research and create a framework for the next

phases. The tools commonly used in this process are

diagrams, mindmaps, blueprints specifying the func-‐

tionalities and connections between them etc.

Interaction Design

In this layer the questions “how?” are asked -‐ how

will the interaction be for facilitating users task and

how the user will interact with the functionality of

the application. In this phase interaction scenario is

defined as well as the conceptual model of interac-‐

tion and what will be the tasks of the user. TaskFlow

diagrams are elaborated where the narrative aspects

of the interaction as well as rhythm of interaction

should be made clear. Different user behaviors are

taken into consideration, therefore elaborating per-‐

sonas profiles can be useful. The aspects of usability

of the application are elaborated that is connected

to the kinds of controls, the manipulation (direct or

indirect manipulation), the intuitiveness of use etc.

In this layer crowd participation could be useful for

ideating the concept of interaction and getting new

and unexpected points of view. This process is simi-‐

lar to defining a theater scenario (user-‐computer in-‐

teraction has been compared to the theater by Bren-‐

da Laurel135). In the theater scenario different users

or personas can have different behaviors connected

to their goals. Crowd participation might be useful to

have a wide range of possible interaction scenarios.

The crowdsourcing interaction design could be simi-‐

lar to a collective scenario building where different

roles, interactions and touch-‐points are defined.

The interaction design layer corresponds to the ele-‐

ment of ideation and envisioning, however the ele-‐

ments of uncertainty and selection as well as pro-‐

totyping and evaluation can be also present. Tools

that can be used in this phase are moodboards

which help to define and communicate the overall

mood of the concept, mindmaps for organizing the

brainstorming, personas, storyboards as well as use

cases and flow chart diagrams for defining the inter-‐

action in a more detailed way.

Interface design and information design

In the fourth layer interface elements are defined

to facilitate user interaction with the functionality.

Information design elements are elaborated to facili-‐

tate understanding of the controls and of the content.

In this layer the interface metaphors or paradigms

are defined, for instance what elements will corre-‐

spond to information containers, what elements will

trigger controls -‐ clickable buttons or drag-‐and-‐drop

elements etc. The interface elements consist of con-‐

trols, like buttons, sliders, knobs, input boxes, dials

etc. Other elements typically present in a web ap-‐

plication are labels, text boxes, submit buttons, error

messages, hyperlinks, menus, toolbars with widgets,

NOTES

[135] In her book Computers as Theatre Brenda Laurel is

talking about similarity between Theater and User-‐Computer

Interaction, especially of the narrative aspects of interaction

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content placeholders. The type of display and the

technical constraints will also affect the choice of

the interface. In oder to provide affordance differ-‐

ent metaphors and animations can be adopted (for

instance a closed container might not disappear im-‐

mediately after closing but slide away instead). The

interface elements also act as maps or paths, that

indicate the way and make the model of interaction

comprehensible.

In the case of interface design crowdsourcing could

provide a variety of different interface concepts.

However it should be more connected to the inter-‐

action layer than it happens in the crowdsourcing

initiatives like CrowdSpring or 99Designs136, where

interface design is reduced to graphic arrangements

of traditionally used website elements. The design

of this layer should be guided by the company and

MAPPINGS

CONCRETE

ID ELEMENTS WEB APPLICATION DESIGN LAYERS DETAILED ELEMENTS DESIGN PROCESS CROWDSOURCING OPPORTUNITIESDESIGN METHODS AND TOOLS

ABSTRACT

MODES

MEANING

MOTIVATION

ANIMATION

ACCESS

TASK FLOW

ACTIVITIES

TECHNOLOGY

STRUCTURE

NETWORK

MAPS

IDENTITY

TRUST INCLUSION

ASSOCIATIONS

SHARING

COLLABORATIONCOMMUNITY

INTUITIVENESS

INTERFACE PARADIGM

AVAILABLE TECHNOLOGY“BlUE SKY” RESEARCH

ETHNOGR. OBSERVATION

ETHNOFUTURISM

DIAGRAMS

BLUEPRINT

TESTING

GRAPHS

MINDMAPPING

MINDMAPPING

MOODBOARD MINDMAPPING

FLOW CHART

USE CASES

PERSONAS

STORY BOARDS

WIREFRAME USABILITY TEST

USABILITY TEST

USABILITY TEST

USABILITY TEST

CLICK-‐THROUGH PROTOTYPES

UI DESIGN TOOLS

HIGH-‐FI PROTOTYPES

SURVEYS

STATE OF THE ART

INTERACTION SCENARIOS DIFFERENT BEHAVIORS

VARIETY OF VISUALS

VARIETY OF VISUALS

UNEXCPECTED METAPHORS

PROJECT CONTEXT

ONLY FEEDBACK

UNEXPECTED IDEAS

“STICKY” INFORMATION ACCESS

VISUALIZATION

EVALUATION

PROTOTYPING

VISUALIZATION

EVALUATION

EVALUATION

ENVISIONING

UNCERTAINTYSELECTION

IDEATION

PROTOTYPING

PROTOTYPING

FRAMING

SYNTHESIS

CONSTRAINTS

NARRATIVE

COMMUNICATION MEMORY

METAPHOR

ERROR

USABILITY

CONTROLS

FEEDBACK INVOLVEMENTBEHAVIOR

AFFORDANCE

CONTEXT

MANIPULATION

SCENARIO

DISPLAY

MODELINTERACTION RHYTHM

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the platform administration, in a continuous dialogue

with the co-‐creators.

The interface layer corresponds to visualization and

prototyping elements in Moggridge’s scheme. This

is when the interaction concept is connected to the

FIG. 71: Interaction design elements for design

of social web applications: summary

NOTES

[136] www.99designs.com

controls and elements which the user manipulates.

For this process the tools like wireframing and low-‐fi

and click-‐through prototypes are used, which bring

“into life” the interactions and task flows defined in

the previous layer. Wireframes are the most impor-‐

tant documents that designers produce when work-‐

MAPPINGS

CONCRETE

ID ELEMENTS WEB APPLICATION DESIGN LAYERS DETAILED ELEMENTS DESIGN PROCESS CROWDSOURCING OPPORTUNITIESDESIGN METHODS AND TOOLS

ABSTRACT

MODES

MEANING

MOTIVATION

ANIMATION

ACCESS

TASK FLOW

ACTIVITIES

TECHNOLOGY

STRUCTURE

NETWORK

MAPS

IDENTITY

TRUST INCLUSION

ASSOCIATIONS

SHARING

COLLABORATIONCOMMUNITY

INTUITIVENESS

INTERFACE PARADIGM

AVAILABLE TECHNOLOGY“BlUE SKY” RESEARCH

ETHNOGR. OBSERVATION

ETHNOFUTURISM

DIAGRAMS

BLUEPRINT

TESTING

GRAPHS

MINDMAPPING

MINDMAPPING

MOODBOARD MINDMAPPING

FLOW CHART

USE CASES

PERSONAS

STORY BOARDS

WIREFRAME USABILITY TEST

USABILITY TEST

USABILITY TEST

USABILITY TEST

CLICK-‐THROUGH PROTOTYPES

UI DESIGN TOOLS

HIGH-‐FI PROTOTYPES

SURVEYS

STATE OF THE ART

INTERACTION SCENARIOS DIFFERENT BEHAVIORS

VARIETY OF VISUALS

VARIETY OF VISUALS

UNEXCPECTED METAPHORS

PROJECT CONTEXT

ONLY FEEDBACK

UNEXPECTED IDEAS

“STICKY” INFORMATION ACCESS

VISUALIZATION

EVALUATION

PROTOTYPING

VISUALIZATION

EVALUATION

EVALUATION

ENVISIONING

UNCERTAINTYSELECTION

IDEATION

PROTOTYPING

PROTOTYPING

FRAMING

SYNTHESIS

CONSTRAINTS

NARRATIVE

COMMUNICATION MEMORY

METAPHOR

ERROR

USABILITY

CONTROLS

FEEDBACK INVOLVEMENTBEHAVIOR

AFFORDANCE

CONTEXT

MANIPULATION

SCENARIO

DISPLAY

MODELINTERACTION RHYTHM

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136

ing on products (Saffer, 2006). They are means of

documenting the features of the product as well

as technical and business requirements and some

elements of visual design, like the controls. Wire-‐

framing is also a visualization tool that is crucial for

communicating the product to the stakeholders: the

clients see whether the design meets the business

goals, programmers see how the design works and

how to code it, visual designers see what visual ele-‐

ments have to be designed. Copywriters see what

they need to write (Saffer, 2006). The community of

potential users can see what functionalities the site

has and whether it meets their needs. The evaluation

element is present in this layer as well -‐ as early the

evaluation of usability and intuitiveness starts -‐ as

better the design will be. The positive thing about

crowdsourcing testing process together with the

creation process is that the cross-‐fertilization of the

processes is happening. The users create and test

their designs reciprocally, which may lead to a faster

and more efficient design process.

Prototyping is a very important tool in designing a

web application. It can start with a paper prototype,

however a digital prototype is more comfortable for

testing it when many stakeholders are involved into

the process and in the case of on-‐line participation.

They are easily distributed and tested. The only dan-‐

ger in this phase is that the clients may think it’s the

final product (Saffer, 2006).

Visual Design

Visual design layer has to do with the graphic treat-‐

ment of interface elements – their “look” and the

“look-‐and-‐feel”. This layer is connected very closely

to the previous layer and is also influenced by the

bottom layer, by the goals of the business and the

existing corporate identity elements. Visual design

consist of organization of the elements as well as

personality or style. The organization constructs a

visual narrative, through which designers can com-‐

municate the steps for task completion, the relation-‐

ships between information, the hierarchy between

interface elements. This has to do with the maps,

paths and districts mentioned in the previous chap-‐

ter. The second aspect of visual design – the person-‐

ality – is achieved through colors, typography, pat-‐

terns, images, and visual elements which are design

to communicate a message to the audience (Saffer,

2006).

This layer is very suitable to crowd participation

because the result of such co-‐creation process can

give a variety of graphic design inspirations. How-‐

ever, the brief has to be communicated very clearly

in this phase, especially the strategy of the compa-‐

ny, the existing corporate identity elements and the

goals of the business. At the same time this phase

can be used for testing the ideas conceived in the

previous layers.

Web application business as well as software busi-‐

ness adopted online participation methods for devel-‐

oping parts of the application, for creating the visual

aspects of web sites. However, the previous parts of

Project part

137

the process are often missing, therefore the design

is often disconnected from the context and the brief

defined by the company.

The visual design layer is connected to visualization,

prototyping and evaluation elements as well as the

previous layer. In this phase the visual elements are

defined more precisely and high-‐fi prototypes are

created as well as all the UI design and corporate

identity elements are defined and tested.

Conclusions

The graphic above is summarizing the points men-‐

tioned before: the web application design elements,

layers, detailed elements, design process elements,

techniques and tools as well as crowdsourcing op-‐

portunities for each phase.

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138 4.2. DEFINITION OF THE PROBLEM AND THE STRATEGIC QUESTIONS

As we mentioned above, the design of social web

applications for B2C communication and market-‐

ing purposes is an emerging field, which is going

to grow in the future. Therefore there is an emerg-‐

ing need for social web application design. Numer-‐

ous design agencies specialized in web design and

software development integrate the “design for web

2.0” services, however it stays a niche market and

the amount of request from the companies is in-‐

creasing. One of the reasons of this growth is the

speed of development of technical platforms and

tools, the variety of social media platforms and the

migration of consumers from one social network to

the other. In order to stay in pace with these devel-‐

opments the companies have to predict and develop

fast new ways of accessing the customers com-‐

munities. Therefore either it is a development of a

new social web application or the integration of new

social functions into existing corporate website, or

adapting an application developed for one platform

to the other platform (for instance from Facebook to

OpenSocial, from Facebook to an iPhone application

etc.) – there is an increasing need for interaction de-‐

sign and development services.

As we mentioned in the previous chapters, crowd-‐

sourcing can bring benefits to the process of social

web application design: it brings different opinions

of people spread over the globe together, it combines

different competences and knowledge, it leads inter-‐

action designers, visual designers and programmers

under one “virtual roof”– therefore by stimulating a

productive atmosphere for discussion and opinion

exchange. It increases the chances to provide un-‐ex-‐

pected ideas and solutions. An additional motivation

that we mentioned before is the community-‐oriented

nature of the social web application which can ben-‐

efit from the insights of the community developing it.

It can be released and tested early enough, through

automatic crowd-‐voting and selection mechanisms

mentioned above.

However, there is also a risk to develop a service

similar to the described case studies and to fall into

the same pitfalls of participant un-‐satisfaction, tem-‐

porariness of the community, superficiality and uni-‐

formity of the results. For this reason we need to

create a solution, which differentiates from the de-‐

scribed services from the point of view of the busi-‐

ness model and the tools provided to the community.

Interaction design of social web applications is a

complex process, to which crowd-‐participation can

bring benefits when the process is organized well,

when there are tools supporting the community

building and the design process. The questions that

we are trying to answer in this project part are the

following: what value could crowdsourcing of social

web applications bring to companies, how to organ-‐

ize the crowdsourcing design process for design

of social web applications, what business model to

Project part

139

choose and what kind of platform should be devel-‐

oped. The main strategic questions are:

1) What business model will the platform adopt?

2) Who are the target customers of the platform

(companies and innovators)?

3) What product/services does the Platform offer to

its customers (companies and innovators)?

4) Define the value proposition for the customers

(both companies and innovators)?

5) How to demonstrate the value of the service to

the customers?

6) How to access the two-‐sided market?

7) What are resources and capacities needed to im-‐

plement the platform?

The main questions regarding the platform system

are (referred to the issues identified in the previous

chapter):

1) What is the project type/project complexity?

2) What tools will be needed for supporting the de-‐

sign process?

3) To what extent should participants be involved in

the project?

4) How to enable and support collaboration be-‐

tween members of the community?

5) How to motivate members in order to ensure

their contribution and to provide value. How to

provide feedback?

6) What is the right incentive/reward system?

7) How to organize knowledge&information ac-‐

cess?

8) What kind of organizational structure should the

platform adopt?

9) What are the entrance barriers to the platform?

10) Managing the IP issues with the contributors and

the customers, according to the nature of the

knowledge transferred.

In the following text we are going to describe the

Project strategy, the System (how it works?) and the

Implementation of the platform. The Project Strategy

section aims to answer all the questions related to

the business model as well as the project strategy.

The System section contains the system map, the

service description, the motivations of the custom-‐

ers, the scenario describing a use case, the benefits

that every participant receives. The Implementation

section contains the platform development part: the

web application architecture, the wireframes as well

as visual design elements and the technological part

of the platform.

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140 4.3. THE BUSINESS MODEL AND THE STRATEGY OF THE PLATFORM

According to Chanal and Caron (2008) through Voe-‐

lpel et al. (2004), “The term business model can be

defined as the particular business concept (or way

of doing business) as reflected by the business’s

core value proposition for customers; its configured

value network(s) to provide that value, consisting of

own strategic capabilities as well as other (e.g. out-‐

sourced/allianced) value networks and capabilities

to continually sustain and reinvent itself to satisfy

the multiple objectives of its various stakeholders.”

For defining the business model of Cobeee we used

the business model proposed by William Chesbrough

(Value Proposition, Market Segment, Elements of the

Value chain, Revenue Model, Position in the Value

Network and Competitive Stategy).

Introduction. For achieving competitive advantage

companies should integrate social media strategy

into their projects, that changes the way how the

companies communicate with their consumers and

promote their brands. Social media tools are known

for adding a value into companies marketing and

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) proc-‐

esses137. The need for social web application design

and development is growing as mentioned above as

more and more companies are willing to invest into

the social media. We decided to concentrate on the

social web application design for B2C communica-‐

tion and marketing especially for the companies that

want to increase brand awareness and promote their

new products and services.

Instead of giving the task of designing the social

web applications to design and software develop-‐

ment agencies companies could crowdsource this

process, for the reasons and benefits we mentioned

above. Crowdsourcing could bring in a variety of

fresh ideas outside the field of view of the market-‐

ing department of the company. The service that is

directed to a community and should speak the lan-‐

guage of a community could be designed by people

that are closer to those communities -‐ the partici-‐

pants of crowdsourcing process.

However, one of the biggest challenges in creating

a crowdsourcing platform is creating a well consoli-‐

dated and loyal community, as well as a community

where the members are independent and possess

heterogeneous knowledge and competences. The

crowdsourcing initiative shouldn’t have superficial

and low quality outcome. For achieving this, we need

to create a network of professionals that are able to

provide high quality services. Therefore there is a

need to provide an added value and incentives strong

enough for attracting the participants.

For this reason we decided first of all to concentrate

on a creation of a co-‐creation space for interaction

designers and programmers, which provides them

with necessary tools for design, communication,

documenting and managing the process. The basic

functionalities are provided as a Freemium plan,

NOTES

[137] for the reasons we listed above in “Social Web Applications”

Project part

141

while the advanced tools can accessed with a Pre-‐

mium account, paid as a yearly/monthly subscrip-‐

tion. After having a more or less consolidated com-‐

munity of at least 400 members, we introduce the

companies as the possible customers of the com-‐

munity. The companies join Cobee when they need

to design a social web application for promotion of

their products/services. The design process is or-‐

ganized in three main parts: the selection part, the

design part and the implementation part. The selec-‐

tion part is open to all the participants for free and

is organized in a form of a collective brainstorming:

for the research and concept generation phases. For

this first part the participants are supported by the

tools for mind-‐mapping, drawing and wire-‐framing.

After the research and concepting phases the first

selection is conducted: the most promising direc-‐

tions are selected by the company and the platform

moderator; the groups of participants with similar

ideas are suggested (if they want they can join the

groups). The company retributes the best ideas with

a monetary prize. In the second – the design part

the groups work on the project through interaction,

interface and evaluation phases. After the end of

this part, the company can decide about proceeding

with the project and developing the application. The

company has to retribute the group/groups for their

work. If the company’s decision is to proceed, the

“implementation” phase is open to the members of

the selected group/groups, which can also search

for developers external for the group if they don’t

have sufficient programming knowledge. Cobee is in

partnership with some software development com-‐

panies as well, which can bring in their competences

in this phase. The selected group develops the appli-‐

cation using the programming and project manage-‐

ment tools provided by Cobee and the company pays

the group on a previous accordance of the wages.

Value proposition. For the companies: Develop inno-‐

vative social web applications through the participa-‐

tion of the creative community passionate about in-‐

teraction design, without geographic boundaries and

with multi-‐disciplinary knowledge and competences.

Gaining added value to their design process through

original and unexpected solutions. Get solved de-‐

sign issues as well as technological issues of a fast

changing social application landscape through the

multiplicity of knowledge and competences pos-‐

sessed by the Cobee community.

Va

lue

pro

po

sit

ion For companies: develop innovative social web applica-‐

tions through a multi-‐disciplinary pool of professionals; for designers: improve competences, socialize, collaborate

Intermediary between interaction design and program-‐ming professionals and companies that need interaction design service

Intermediary platform that connects B2C sector compa-‐nies with the innovators in interaction design field.

Revenues from the challenge placement fees, 30% from the project reward, from the premium subscriptions

Companies: Consumer Products Companies, mainly ap-‐parel, footwear, consumer electronics; Participants: inter-‐action design freelancers, programmers

Focus on differentiation: differentiate by a unique service (occupying the niche in interaction design for social web applications and providing collaboration space and tools)

Va

lue

ne

two

rk

Va

lue

ch

ain

Re

ve

nu

e

ge

ne

rati

on

Ma

rke

t

se

gm

en

t

Co

mp

eti

tiv

e

str

ate

gy

BUSINESS

MODEL

cobee

FIG. 72: Cobee business model

Pro

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142

For the innovators: get access to design tools and

become part of a community with similar interests,

find collaborators, participate on interaction design

projects with real customers, gain new knowledge

about interaction design.

Market Segment: companies: mainly companies op-‐

erating in B2C sector, providing products and serv-‐

ices for consumer market: consumer electronics,

automotive industry, apparel, beauty products, ac-‐

cessories; companies which need an external social

branding or B2C communication platform especially

for marketing purposes, for instance for presenting

their new products, for letting consumers customize

their product, for engaging them into a game-‐like or

entertaining application.

Innovators (participants of the projects): freelance

interaction designers, programmers and amateurs

interested in interaction design

Elements of Value chain: intermediary platform that

connects B2C sector companies with the innovators

in interaction design field.

Revenue generation: revenues from from project

placement fees (100%) and a percentage from the

reward fees (30%). For instance if a firm pays 1000

euro award for the project, Cobeee’s bottom line will

be 300 euro (without subtraction of the taxes). An

additional revenue source is the payment for the

subscription of Premium services by the advanced

community members, and the fee from the software

development companies which wish to participate in

the second (implementation) phase.

Position in value network: mediation between the

companies and innovators, partnership with web

tool providers (tools that are going to be integrated

on the platform) and software development compa-‐

nies.

Competitive Strategy139: differentiate on exclusivity

of offer (provide qualitative design research data,

design concept and implementation service) and

the combination of tools for design and program-‐

ming. Provide a niche service (interaction design

crowdsourcing platforms for social web application

design, which provide a full service for the whole

design and implementation process, don’t exist yet).

The competitors in this field would be international

interaction design agencies, which both design and

develop social web applications. Cobee competes

with them by providing tools for collaboration, equal-‐

ity of the participation and access to projects, the

advantages of a networked community of practice,

with multi-‐disciplinary professionals without time or

space boundaries.

For the purpose of mediation between the com-‐

panies and the community of users, the proposed

platform could adopt the “innovation intermediary”

or brokering strategy. However the business model

of Cobee would be between the brokering and the

agent service, because additionally to a simple in-‐

termediation Cobee design manager and platform

moderator would provide firms consultancy services

by suggesting the crowdsourcing model they should

adopt, according to their exigences. Cobeee plat-‐

form should be therefore quite flexible and provide

tools that can be customizable for each separate

case. Innovation intermediary specialized in crowd-‐

sourcing for benefit of their clients can take care

not only for the platform, but also for the service of

developing the right crowdsourcing model for the

NOTES

[138] strategy is about how the business is going to differentiate

to compete with its rivals: what customers is it going to serve

and what products and services will it offer (Magretta, 2002)

Project part

143

COBEE -‐ SYSTEM MAP

INNOVATION INTERMEDIARY

CONSUMER

PRODUCT

COMPANY

CROWDSOURCING

PLATFORM FOR

SOCIAL WEB APPLICATIONS

INTERACTION DESIGNERS

AND DEVELOPERS

Needs a social web

application for

communication with

the consumers (B2C)

and marketing

purposes

?

Offers crowdsourcing

service for social web

application design

?

Need tools for collabo-‐

ration and freelancing

opportunities; offer

ideas and concepts

?

$

IDEAS, DESIGN,

END PRODUCT

$

financial flow

immaterial flow

material flow

FIG. 73: Cobee system map

Pro

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144

problem of the client (Chanal, 2008, p.25). However

Cobee would not only consult the companies as an

advisor, it would also provide services for the com-‐

munity of interaction designers and programmers

in first place. Cobee would provide them with tools,

with support, with the space for collaboration and a

marketplace for their projects. Cobee would there-‐

fore be the advisor of the companies as well as the

advisor of the community.

Resources and capacities necessary to develop the

concept and its solution

The estimated implementation time would be around

3 months by using the open source social network

technology as well as plugins of external providers.

The resources necessary to develop the platform

are:

1. Management resources for creating the busi-‐

ness plan and financial plan (at least one busi-‐

ness management expert for the time of imple-‐

mentation)

2. Marketing resources for building the marketing

campaign (at least one online marketing expert

for the time of implementation)

3. Design resources (service and communication

designers, at least 1 person for the implementa-‐

tion time)

4. Developer resources for programming the plat-‐

form (1 developer engaged in implementation

and helping to create the mash-‐up)

5. Platform moderation (at least 1 moderator from

the Cobee team, that would support and com-‐

municate with the community)

By counting together the requested resources we

get the number of 12 months work for one person,

as well as one full-‐time engaged person for platform

moderation. The technology needed for implementa-‐

tion of the platform:

1. An open source social networking platform

2. Mindmapping tool from Wisemapping, that can

be used for free (with a possibility to embed the

widget on the website)

3. Interface wireframing tool from Mockingbird

(www.gomockingbird.com), available for 25

projects and unlimited number of users at 40$

a month, or Mockflow, (http://www.mockflow.

com/signup/), available for 4,91 Euro a month

for unlimited users and projects

4. Drawing widget integrated in the web applica-‐

tion, which can be used for free (SVG-‐edit from

Google, www.svg-‐edit.com)

5. Costs for using the tools of version control for

programming: the service provided by Bean-‐

stalk, for 40 Euro a month for 40 users and

12GB storage space (http://beanstalkapp.com/)

6. Server costs: around 34 Euro a month for an ad-‐

vanced hosting with 100 Gigabyte of space and

1000 Gigabyte of traffic a month (http://www.

fastnom.it/hosting-‐reseller.html)

Project part

1454.4. SERVICE/SOLUTION (HOW)

The platform works first of all as a collaboration

space for a community of interaction designers and

programmers. The designers and programmers can

join the basic (Freemium) service for free, while

the Premium service with the use of the tools pro-‐

vided in the “Implementation” part would require a

subscription fee. The designers and developers can

search for collaborators in Cobee network as well

as develop their interaction design projects and pro-‐

pose them to the public or companies interested in

their work in the projects space. The platform con-‐

sist therefore of three areas: the Basic Area, the Pro

Area and the V.I.P. Area (= Very Interesting Projects).

Cobeee is a co-‐creation space for interaction designers and programmers as well as an innovation intermediary platform between com-‐panies and a community of interaction design innovators. The aim of the platform is to provide the space and tools for collaboration for interaction design and programming professionals, as well as an interaction design service to the companies that need to implement social web applications for external communication (B2C), for marketing and branding purposes. The name Cobee refers to the following concepts: co-‐design, collaboration, communication and “bee” as a symbol for collective intelligence. It is a platform for collaborative knowledge gen-‐eration, based on knowledge exchange process, and on experience-‐based learning.

A MULTI-‐SIDED, MULTI-‐LEVEL PLATFORM

The basic area consists of a collaboration space for

interaction designers and programmers, on which

they can use the basic tools: all of the design tools

except the Code repository tool; the network analy-‐

sis tool, the wall and the account dashboard (will be

described later). The members of the community can

join others projects from the Pro level or work on

their individual projects. The basic participants can

take part in the V.I.P. projects. They cannot manage

their own group-‐project space though, for which the

Pro subscription is required.

The Pro area is accessed by paying the subscription

fee (monthly or annually). This area provides more

advanced tools: the Code Repository, the Project

Analysis dashboard. The members of this area can

participate in the V.I.P. projects or work on their own

collaborative projects. They can search for collabo-‐

rators through the wall announcements or through

the social network.

The V.I.P. area can be accessed by companies by

paying a subscription fee (by according the plan pre-‐

viously).

Pro

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146

BASIC PRO

V.I.P

V.I.P.

V.I.P.

PRO

V.I.P.PRO

DASHBOARD

ACCOUNT

PLATFORM TOOLS

MIND-MAPPING

DRAWING

WIREFRAMING

CODING

self.redirect('/blog/')

elif which == 'list'

NETWORKING

COMPANY

MANAGER

COBEE

MANAGER

V.I.P.

PARTICIPANT

PRO

MEMBERS

BASIC

MEMBER

WALL

BLOG

BASIC

V.I.P.PRO WHO: ADVANCED PARTICIPANTS, WHAT: INITIATE PROJECTS, USE THE ADVANCED TOOLS, CALL FOR COLLABORATORS

= VERY INTERESTING PROJECTS, WHO: COMPANIES, PARTICIPANTS, WHAT: CO-DESIGN PROJECTS IN A MULTI-STAGE SELECTION PROCESS

WHO: BASIC PARTICIPANTS (FREEMIUM ACCOUNT), WHAT: USE THE BASIC PLATFORM TOOLS FOR INDIVIDUAL PROJECTS COBEE PLATFORM

TARGET GROUP:

INTERACTION DESIGNERS

AND PROGRAMMERS

FIG. 74: Cobee – map of the areas

Project part

147

BASIC

PRO

WORK ON PERSONAL PROJECTS

JOIN V.I.P. AREA

JOIN PRO AREA

CONTRIBUTE TO OTHERS

TARGET GROUP:

INTERACTION DESIGNERS

AND PROGRAMMERS

BASIC AREA TOOLS

ACCOUNTMIND-MAPPING DRAWING WIREFRAMING NETWORKING WALL

COBEE PLATFORMBASIC WHO: BASIC PARTICIPANTS (FREEMIUM ACCOUNT), WHAT: USE THE BASIC PLATFORM TOOLS FOR INDIVIDUAL PROJECTS

PRO

BASIC

MEMBERS

PRO

MEMBERS

WORK ON PERSONAL PROJECTS

JOIN V.I.P. AREA

SEARCH FOR CONTRIBUTORS

TARGET GROUP:

INTERACTION DESIGNERS

AND PROGRAMMERS

PRO AREA TOOLS

ACCOUNTMIND-MAPPING DRAWING WIREFRAMING NETWORKING WALL

COBEE PLATFORM

DASHBOARD

PRO WHO: ADVANCED PARTICIPANTS, WHAT: INITIATE PROJECTS, USE THE ADVANCED TOOLS, CALL FOR COLLABORATORS

CODING

self.redirect('/blog/')

elif which == 'list'

JOIN PRO AREA

TARGET GROUP:

INTERACTION DESIGNERS

AND PROGRAMMERS

V.I.PCOMPANY

MANAGER

COBEE

MANAGER

V.I.P.

PARTICIPANTBASIC

MEMBERSPRO

MEMBERS

BLOG

CO-DESGN SOCIAL WEB APPS WITH A COMPANY

V.I.P. AREA TOOLS

ACCOUNTMIND-MAPPING DRAWING WIREFRAMING NETWORKING WALL

COBEE PLATFORM

DASHBOARDCODING

self.redirect('/blog/')

elif which == 'list'

V.I.P. = VERY INTERESTING PROJECTS, WHO: COMPANIES, PARTICIPANTS, WHAT: CO-DESIGN SOCIAL WEB APPS

THE V.I.P. = VERY INTERESTING PROJECT AREA

Cobee, as an innovation intermediary platform, will

contact design companies that need to design and

implement social web applications for themselves or

another company. The company signs up for one of

the subscription plans proposed by the platform and

formulates the challenge brief according to the in-‐

dications provided by the Cobee platform. After that

the company pays the participation fee (depending

on the plan), the challenge is posted to the platform

“Challenges” section and is visible to the partici-‐

pants. The participants can take part in the project

by placing entries, joining other’s projects, com-‐

menting on other entries or voting.

The process is divided in phases and can have differ-‐

ent durations accordingly to the plan chosen by the

company. The project is divided in three main parts:

Selection, Design and Implementation. The Selection

Part consist of “Research” (the research about needs

and objectives is made as well as opportunities and

inspirations are posted) and “Concept” phase, when

the concept of the project is proposed. After the se-‐

lection phase the company decides to form a group/

groups for entering the design part, consisting of

“Interaction design” (the interaction system, scenar-‐

io, use cases, task flows etc. are defined), “Interface

design” (the main interface elements and visual ele-‐

ments are defined) and “Evaluation” (the company as

well as the participants can test the prototypes, vote,

comment, evaluate the entries). The participation

has the form of an initial collective brainstorming in

the selection part and group-‐work in the design part.

At the end of the Selection part the best ideas are

selected and retributed with monetary rewards. The

ideators are incouraged to form groups with other

people that might add to their idea. The design part

consist of a group work, where one or few groups

or individuals can be selected at the end for entering

the implementation phase. The work in design and

implementation phases is rewarded as a freelance

work. At the end of each phase the company can de-‐

cide to close the contest or to proceed, however the

initial accordance of the plan has to be respected: for

instance if the company took the basic plan, just for

gathering ideas in the research phase, it can close

the project after the research phase finished. If the

company has the advanced plan, where the interac-‐

tion design phase is included, it has to continue the

project till this phase and reward the community.

After the evaluation phase the company can decide

to proceed to the Third part: the Implementation of

the application. In this phase the selected group can

accord the wages with the company, without any in-‐

FIG. 75: Cobee “Basic” Area FIG. 76: Cobee “Pro” Area FIG. 77: Cobee “V.I.P.” (= Very Interesting Projects) Area

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termediation of Cobee. The winning group can de-‐

cide to develop the application by themselves or to

invite a developer or a designer from the community.

If they don’t find enough competences, Cobee en-‐

gages a developer from the network of the partners,

software development companies. In this case the

wages of every group member are decided with the

company managers.

By doing this Cobee combines therefore the crowd-‐

sourcing model with the business model of an inter-‐

action design agency: in the first part the participants

take part in a collective brainstorming and selection

process, while in the second part they work for the

company as freelancers.

The platform’s activity is going to be brokerage of

knowledge in the area of social web application de-‐

sign. The brokerage of knowledge service will con-‐

sist in bringing together the community of interac-‐

tion designers and programmers with companies

that need their services.

FIG. 78: Social web application design

elements and Cobee design processCONCRETE

SOCIAL WEB APPLICATION DESIGN LAYERS COBEE DESIGN PHASES

ABSTRACT

III PART

II PART(DESIGN)

I PART(SELECTION)

RESEARCH

CONCEPT

INTERACTION

INTERFACE

EVALUATION

IMPLEMENTATION

The service that Cobee platform provides consists

in providing a framework platform for the interaction

design process of social web applications. For this

purpose we take the social web application design

elements defined previously and simplify the steps

till a manageable level.

The design process on Cobee platform will consist of

six phases, which are represented by “Project Phas-‐

es” on the platform. Before the design process there

is going to be the brief definition phase.

Project part

149

Briefing

The Brief definition is when the brief of the chal-‐

lenge is defined by the company together with Co-‐

bee administration. The Brief is defined accordingly

to Brief definition indications provided by Cobee

as well as the subscription plan. According to the

subscription plan the durations of different project

phases will be proposed (they can be also changed

during the project). The platform administration can

help to define the brief according to the needs of the

company. As soon as the brief is defined and posted,

it becomes visible on the project challenge page.

During the definition of the brief the following points

should be included: the finality of the project, the

target consumer group, the brand identity elements

which have to be reflected, the expectations about

the service, the functionalities and features that the

application should include.

1. Research

During the research phase the community is invited

to post inspirations, ideas, observations and desk

research elements. They can use Mind-‐Mapping and

text tool in this phase. The Mindmaps and posts are

tagged by the participants and therefore the platform

administration and the company have a clear “ten-‐

dency” structure at the end of this phase, which per-‐

mits to make analysis of the process and to define

the framework, web application functionalities and

goals of the project. This part has to be conducted

by the design company together with the platform

administration. The framework can be created in the

form of a mind-‐map, a diagram, a plan with objec-‐

tives specifications and functionalities that have to

be present on the platform.

2. Concept generation

During this phase the participants are posting their

ideas and concepts for the project in the form of

Mind-‐Maps and text. The participants are enticed to

provide ideas and concepts of a social web applica-‐

tion, including the aspects like the community, the

tools needed, the collaboration support, the activities

that happen in social web applications, the techno-‐

logical aspects.

At the end of these first two phases the most inter-‐

esting directions and ideas are identified both by the

community, the platform moderator and the company

manager. The best ideas get retributed with a mon-‐

etary reward. As soon as the main directions are

identified, the participants are encouraged to cre-‐

ate groups with other users that have similar ideas/

directions, however this is not a forced creation of

groups.

3. Interaction

Interaction part starts after the framework is defined

at the end of the research and concepting phases. In

this part the participants are welcomed to define the

interaction scenario, the behavior, the involvement

of the community, the narrative, the task flow as well

as the interaction model. It is also requested to de-‐

fine the usability part connected to intuitiveness, to

the controls and kinds of manipulation as well as the

overall structure of the social web application. The

participants will be supported by the build in tools for

drawing and Mind-‐Mapping.

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FIG. 79: V.I.P. area – the process of a social web application design

COBEE PLATFORMV.I.P. = VERY INTERESTING PROJECTS, WHO: COMPANIES, PARTICIPANTS, WHAT: CO-DESIGN SOCIAL WEB APPS

V.I.P

COBEEMANAGER

COMPANYMANAGER

BRIEF RESEARCH CONCEPT INTERACTION INTERFACE EVALUATION IMPLEMENTATION

SELECTION PHASE

IDEASIDEAS

DESIGN PART IMPLEMENTATION PART

COBEEMANAGER

SELECTED GROUP/GROUPS

SELECTED PROTOTYPE

COMPANYMANAGER

SOCIAL WEB APPLICATION

SOCIAL WEBAPP

TEST, VOTE, COMMENT

SELECT, FORM GROUPS, ADVICE, EVALUATE, REWARD REWARDS THE PARTICIPANTS

COMPANY!

!

BASIC AND PRO PARTICIPANTS

EXTERNALDEVELOPER

ACCOUNT

MIND-MAPPING DRAWING MIND-MAPPING DRAWING WIREFRAMING WIREFRAMING

NETWORKING NETWORKINGWALL WALL

DASHBOARD DASHBOARD

DASHBOARD

CODING

self.redirect('/blog/')

elif which == 'list'

BLOG BLOG

Project part

151

The outcome of this phase is expected as conceptual

models of interaction system -‐ in form of drawings,

story boards, task-‐flow-‐diagrams, blueprints, mind

maps etc. The participants are going to tag their

entries, therefore the platform administration and

design company representatives will be able to get

the whole “picture” of the direction of the projects

produced by the community. During every phase the

participants as well as the platform moderator and

design company are invited to vote and comment on

the entries, which permits a filtration and selection

of the most appropriate/successful concepts. At the

end of this phase the company and the platform ad-‐

ministration create a synthesis text, which shows

the tendencies and the expectations of the company.

4. Interface Design

During this phase the participants are invited to cre-‐

ate interface and visual design aspects on the basis

of the wireframing and mock-‐up tool integrated in

the platform. The tool permits to create interactive

mock-‐ups as well, therefore the participants create

interactive prototypes..

The interactive prototypes and interface mockups

have to be coherent with all the elements defined in

the previous phases.

5. Evaluation

During this phase all the members of the platform

are invited to test the prototypes of others as well

as vote and comment on others entries. The most of

the weight will be given to the vote of the platform

administration and the company, which will decide

the selected prototypes on the basis of the following

elements: coherency to the brief, originality, creativ-‐

ity, idea generation, collaboration and attention fac-‐

tors. Collaboration, idea generation and attention are

the three elements that define the activity meter of

every participant according to the number of com-‐

ments, entries and number of votes received/given

to other participants.

The group/groups that worked in the Design Part are

rewarded with a monetary reward from the company

as soon as they deliver all the material that they pro-‐

duced.

6. Implementation (the third project part)

After the evaluation phase the company decides

whether to proceed to the implementation phase or

not. If he decides to proceed, the selected group that

developed the final version of the application is invit-‐

ed to the “Implementation” phase, which is normally

only open to the winning group and the premium us-‐

ers. In this phase the participants can accord with

the company the wages and start developing the

project by using the repository/version control tools

provided on the platform. The length of this phase

and the outcome requirements are decided and com-‐

municated by the company. If the group members

don’t possess the necessary technological knowl-‐

edge, Cobee community is searched for collabora-‐

tors or the external Cobee network of software de-‐

velopment companies is contacted.

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As the material produced on the platform will be not

only research and idea material, but implemented

projects as well, the intellectual rights management

is going to be the following: by signing up to the plat-‐

form and by signing the agreement to Terms and

Conditions every participant has the right to apply

Creative Commons licenses to his projects, which

can be tailored to every case. The participant which

proposes an idea or direction which is going to be

selected at the end of the research phase has the

right to continue the development of the idea and can

attribute a Creative Commons license to the project.

At the end of the project when the selected project is

decided, the participants attribute the rights of use of

IP to the company. In any case the participants retain

the right to use the ideas and material produced in

the contest. In the implementation phase an accord-‐

ance between the participants and the company is

met for what kind of license to adopt.

INTELLECTUAL PROP-‐ERTY MANAGEMENT

WHAT WOULD THE PROJECT BRING TO THE CUSTOMERS?

3. Getting inspirations and opportunities for re-‐

setting the project problem (divergent thinking);

4. Making people acquainted with the project from

the early stages;

5. Getting develop a fully functional application (if

they decide to proceed to the implementation

phase);

6. Benefiting from the multiplicity of competenc-‐

es and heterogeneity of knowledge possessed

by the community members, indispensable for

achieving innovation and solving technological

issues in a fast changing web application design

landscape.

The result that the participants would obtain is a

project experience, visibility, reputation in the com-‐

munity as well as learning benefits. The participants

could also benefit from the possible future collabo-‐

ration with the company.

The result that the company would obtain from the

crowdsourcing project would be the information

from the mindmaps, ideas, concept drawings, in-‐

terface mockups. This would be a basis for imple-‐

menting a social web application. The implementa-‐

tion (detailed visual design as well as programming)

phase would then provide a fully implemented social

web application.

The reasons why companies would need this kind of

service are:

1. Gathering insights about users needs and pref-‐

erences;

2. Gathering insights about the current trends and

technologic possibilities;

Project part

153

WHO JOINS THE PLAT-‐FORM?

We are going to define the platform participants pro-‐

files or personas: the company manager, and the

three types of participants according to their profes-‐

sion and the style of activity in the platform: the Basic

Member, The Pro Member and the V.I.P. area partici-‐

pant. We are going to use the defined profiles in the

scenario of a use case.

The company manager joins the Cobee platform be-‐

cause he is motivated by the need of a social web

application for promoting his brand, communicating

with the customers etc.

Claim directed to the companies: “Cobee with its

international multi-‐disciplinary pool of talents will

create a social web application for you, for estab-‐

lishing a dialogue with your consumers and promot-‐

ing your brand online“.

Participants of the platform

The platform target participant group are freelance

interaction designers and programmers. According

to Forbes Magazine, the estimated number of free-‐

lance designers in USA alone is around 80.000 (in

2009) and this number might reach 200.000 free-‐

lance designer in the whole world. The growing

communities of crowdsourcing platforms and free-‐

lance intermediary platforms confirms this (at the

end of this chapter we are going to provide some

statistics about the current situation in freelancing

design business).

The profiles that Cobee wants to attract are joung

graduate interaction designers and programmers as

well as freelancer professionals. The three possible

profiles could be:

1. Basic member: interaction design/communica-‐

tion design graduate; searching for collabora-‐

tion opportunities and possibilities to learn

FIG. 80: Cobee potential participant profiles

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more about the profession; the main motivation

to join the platform is because of the collabora-‐

tion space and tools.

2. Pro member: freelance developer, joins the plat-‐

form mainly because of the tools and the need

to find interaction design collaborators for his

projects; might participate in the V.I.P. projects,

especially in the last part (implementation).

3. V.I.P. member joins the platform as a Basic

member and enters the V.I.P. area immediate-‐

ly because he/she is in search for interaction

design collaboration opportunities. The V.I.P.

member is an interaction design freelancer.

The participants join the platform mainly because of

the following benefits: to use the collaboration space

for working, socializing and sharing knowledge with

people who have similar interests; use the tools for

design and project management; find collaboration

opportunities with companies; see their ideas being

realized (hedonistic and socio-‐psychological incen-‐

tives); learn new things outside their field of com-‐

petence.

Claim for potential participants: “join the collabora-‐

tive space at Cobee, participate in the real-‐world so-‐

cial web application design projects”.

gives

Cobeee platform

administration

contest holder coordinator

participants

generator

participants

commenter

participants

software

development

firm

Cobeee

platform

administration

revenues, reputation,

experience

mediation for tapping the

creative crowd, tools for co-

design

mediation for collaboration,

tools for co-design and

communication

visibility, learning

environment

environment for

socialization, recognition

of their efforts

mediation for introducing

the customers for

development of the web

projects

contest holder percentage from the reward,

posting fee

getting help for developing

social web applications,

insights about user needs

visibility, experience and

reputation

collaboration promise,

material rewards, visibility,

feedback

collaboration proposals,

material rewards,

visibility

giving a job -

development of web

projects

coordinator

participants

visibility, support for the

"health" of the community

expertise, value for the

customers

break-through innovation,

expertise, experience,

visibility, helping develop

business

hedonistic motivations,

enjoyment, self-realization,

reputation in the community

sharing knowledge,

teaching, visibility

sharing knowledge,

visibility

providing the knowledge

for the design part of the

project

generator

participants

ensures a good number of

submissions

ensures a good number of

submissions, fresh insights

visibility, feedback, the public

of the leader

learning, improving skills,

participating in real-world

projects, opportunity for

collaboration

material for commenting

as well as public for

socialization

providing the knowledge

for the design part of the

project

commenter

participants

supports functioning of the

community, drives forward

the projects

communication and insight

providing abilities, enthusiasm

experience, learning, fun,

sharing knowledge, altruistic

motivations, socializing,

curiosity, following

interesting projects

motivating, commenting,

suggesting refinements

socializing, fun, learning

about curious projects,

being part of a

community

providing the knowledge

for the design part of the

project

software

development

firm

competence in software

development for the

implementation part of the

project

development of the social web

application (implementation

part)

collaboration opportunities collaboration opportunities collaboration

opportunities

getting customers for the

development of the web

projects

FIG. 81: Motivation matrix of Cobee shareholders

Project part

155

The structure of the platform community is going to

be a horizontal organizational model with some ele-‐

ments of meritocracy structure from FLOSS com-‐

munities, that we described in the first chapter. The

decentralization in layered meritocracy is one of the

important factors for achieving crowd intelligence.

In this system, the moderator of the community is en-‐

couraged to act as a benevolent dictator, that doesn’t

command, but enables and directs the activities of

the community. The customer (design agency man-‐

ager) achieves in this structure the role of a peer

or a leader, depending on his attitude and his goals.

The community in this structure act as peers and

can choose the roles they want at any time, no-‐one

is forced to adopt a role. The more active members

are encouraged to act as leaders of the community,

stimulating and motivating the others.

STRUCTURE OF THE COMMUNITY

Generators

Commenters

Coordinators

Readers

The roles of participants

Three main roles or activity styles, that we already

mentioned previously will be:

1. Coordinator: these participants are the most ac-‐

tive participants, that contribute a lot and have

established a network of connections in the

FIG. 82: The roles of participants on the Cobee platform

community as well as a strong reputation. Their

activity style is mainly to coordinate, to commu-‐

nicate, to manage the project and they gather

the most of activity points from “collaboration”.

This kind of users should be encouraged to col-‐

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laborate and share their knowledge, therefore

they will be invited to discuss with other users

and to share their experience.

2. Generator (idea generator): these users partici-‐

pate very actively by contributing a lot of ideas,

even if not all of the ideas attract attention.

These are the active participants, that are the

basis of every community. They are very impor-‐

tant for producing the main bulk of material on

the platform. This kind of users should be en-‐

couraged to learn from gurus and to refine their

ideas, as well as collaborate more with others.

3. Design Critic: these participants don’t post

many ideas, but review, comment, vote and dis-‐

cuss actively as well as motivate others. They

act as peer reviewers in open source projects.

This is a very valuable group of participants,

that should be encouraged to comment and col-‐

laborate even more and be rewarded for this

activity (mainly psychological rewards).

4. Reader: these are inactive participants that only

read and browse through the sites content. Nor-‐

mally the newbies have this role. They should

be encouraged to participate more actively.

The incentives and rewards

There will be two kinds of incentives: symbolic or

psychological incentives and monetary incentives.

A symbolic system of participation levels is adopted

for showing the differences between members and

for encouraging them for being more active. The lev-‐

el depends on two factors: the time of being member

of the community, the activity in the community, that

are calculated with “activity points” as well as the

participation in different levels of a project.

There are three ways to gather activity points: though

“generation” (every contribution adds 20 points);

through “collaboration” (building on someones idea,

adding to it ads 10 points); the “commenting” points

are gathered by voting on others designs or by re-‐

ceiving votes as well as commenting (3 points for

every vote and 5 points for every comment). The

passage to the next phase of the project also adds to

the activity points: every passage adds +50 points.

The three components of the activity show the ten-‐

dency of the member versus one or few of the roles

described previously and therefore act as a filter for

discovering the members activity “style”. The par-‐

ticipants that gather most points in commenting,

and discussing are “Design Critics”, members that

submit most ideas are “Generators”, while partici-‐

pants that have many points collaborating as well as

generating are “Coordinators”. Of course there will

be no one-‐sided “style”, most probably the members

will have a mixture of these activity styles, for in-‐

stance 20 percent of generating, 50 percent of com-‐

menting and 30 percent in collaborating.

Additionally to activity styles there will be also Lev-‐

els that define the advancement level of a member.

Project part

157

The Levels

The first level “Newbe” are the members that just

joined (till 1 month of membership) or that were not

very active. As soon as a member gathers 200 ac-‐

tivity points he passes to the “Advanced” level. From

600 activity points the member becomes “Expert”,

while from 1000 activity points he becomes “Guru”.

As we see every kind of activity provides points

therefore every member will get the possibility to be-‐

come a “Guru”. For instance the members that com-‐

ment and collaborate a lot will become “Guru” with

activity style of Coordinator. The levels are shown

as descriptions in the profile of every member and

can be made private if he doesn’t want to share his

status.

A further incentive will be the display of the most

active members on the homepage with their success

story. The activity of most advanced users will be

published in the activity status of the platform as

well.

Newbie

Advanced

Expert

Guru

0 Activity Points

200 Activity Points

400 Activity Points

1000 Activity Points

20 AC -‐ GENERATE

10 AC -‐ COLLABORATE

05 AC -‐ COMMENT

03 AC -‐ VOTE

50 AC -‐ ENTER THE NEXT PHASE

100 AC -‐ WINN THE CONTEST

The material incentivation mechanism will work

the following way: when a project client submits a

challenge on the platform, he signs a contract with

Cobee where he commits to reward the project (ad-‐

ditionally to the subscription fee). Part of the project

reward (70 percent) goes to the community in the

selection part. For instance from the reward of 2000

euro, 1400 goes to the ideators of the selected ideas.

In the next phase the groups are making an accord-‐

ance with the company about the wages and sign a

contract. At the end of the project the company is

obliged to reward the group members.

FIG. 83: The levels of activity (depending on the amount

of activity points), that participants occupy

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the phase of “Interaction design” for drawing sto-‐

ryboards and concepts. Wireframing tool is one of

the most important tools for interaction designers,

which would permit to visualize the interface and

make fast interactive prototypes.

The platform would also provide the dashboard for

monitoring the process of a project, with the analy-‐

sis tools which analyze the contributions by tags, the

definition of the brief, the file-‐uploader, the number

and names of participants, as well as the time of

every contribution. This kind of tool would be availa-‐

ble to the Premium users for managing their projects

as well as the Contest Holders. The Freemium us-‐

ers package would just contain the the account page

with the informations about the challenges, the con-‐

tributions, the network of collaborators, the activity

points, the settings and the profile info.

Additionally there would also be communication

tools provided on the platform: the network analy-‐

TOOLS SUPPORTING THE DESIGN PROCESS

The tools supporting the design process will be the

structure supporting knowledge sharing and docu-‐

mentation of the project process that would make

the process over-‐viewable for every participant. The

platform would have the project archive containing

all the project phases as well as results (some of

them might be protected in case the client requests

a Non Disclosure Agreement). The communication

process would be supported by the asynchronous

communication tools for the reasons mentioned

in the previous chapter (it helps to document the

process better and makes users concentrate on the

project): commenting and direct messaging. The

tools regarding design process would be: Mind-‐Map-‐

ping tool, Drawing tool, Wireframing tool for creat-‐

ing wireframes and interactive mock-‐ups, Code Re-‐

pository tool (for the implementation phase). These

tools are essential for transferring tacit knowledge

of the users. MindMapping tool could be used for

visualizing the research and concepting, as well as

organizing the ideas. Drawing tool could be used in

sis tool for analysing the community network and

searching for the needed competences. Another

tool is the Wall, where members can post their an-‐

nouncements, as well as the Blog tool, editable only

by the V.I.P. members and Cobee manager, where

they would post the news about the community ac-‐

tivities, project updates etc.

Design process tools

Cobee platform contains the following tools for the

design process: Mind-‐Mapping tool, Text tool, Draw-‐

ing tool, Wire-‐framing tool and Version Control tool.

These tools support the project process. As soon as

the participants decide to take one of the challenges,

they will be led automatically to one of the tools (de-‐

pends on the process phase). For instance if we are

in the research phase, the participant will be led to

the Mind-‐Mapping tool.

Project part

159

WIRE-‐FRAMING TOOL FOR INTERFACE DESIGNWIRE-‐FRAMING TOOL FOR INTERFACE DESIGN

design INTERFACE

BLOGGING TOOL FOR COBEE COMMUNICATIONBLOGGING TOOL FOR COBEE COMMUNICATION

communicate NEWS

FILE REPOSITORY TOOL FOR CODE AND GRAPHICSFILE REPOSITORY TOOL FOR CODE AND GRAPHICS

design THE CODE

self.redirect('/blog/')

elif which == 'list'

BUILT-‐IN DRAWING TOOL FOR NTERACTION DESIGNBUILT-‐IN DRAWING TOOL FOR NTERACTION DESIGN

design INTERACTION

WALL TOOL FOR POSTING TO THE COMMUNITYWALL TOOL FOR POSTING TO THE COMMUNITY

communicate NEEDS

WEB-‐BASED MIND-‐MAPPING TOOL FOR RESEARCH BUILT-‐IN DRAWING TOOL FOR NTERACTION DESIGN WEB-‐BASED MIND-‐MAPPING TOOL FOR RESEARCH

design IDEAS

TOOLSFOR

DESIGN

COMMUNICATION,SOCIALIZING

PROJECTMANAGEMENT,

ANALYSIS

manage CONNECTIONS

COMMUNITY NETWORK ANALYSIS TOOL

manage PROJECTS

DASHBOARD FOR PROJECT MANAGEMENT

manage ACCOUNT

DASHBOARD FOR ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT

COBEE PLATFORM TOOLS

FIG. 84: The tools supporting the design

process explained on the web platform

This feature of the platform supports the partici-‐

pants in their activity, by providing integrated tools

and therefore by eliminating the need for proprietary

software installed on their personal computers. This

permits a better integration of the produced content

and the possibility to work collaboratively in real

time as well.

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FIG. 85: Taking the challenge:

Mind-‐Mapping tool

Mind-‐Mapping tool allows to organize the research

data as well as brainstorming data in a collaborative

way, with real-‐time-‐editing functions. It also permits

to link to examples from other fields than interaction

design, which can be useful for finding a metaphor

of interaction model. For this reason there is a li-‐

brary of interaction example images.

What is it for? How is it used? Technological aspects

Creating a new mind-‐map or building on someone’s

elses, adding nodes, tagging, adding pictures from

the picture archive / from flickr / from the harddrive,

collaborative real-‐time editing (on permission of the

author); mainly used in research phase; it is possible

to comment and vote on a mindmap.

The Mind-‐Mapping tool would be build around the

framework provided by mind-‐mapping software

companies, integrated into the Cobee platform with

ad-‐hoc interface elements and front-‐end written in

Java Script. All the data from the Mind-‐Maps would

be stored on the server, analyzable and reusable

through the library of images and key-‐words.

Project part

161FIG. 86: Taking the challenge:

adding a textual description

The text posting feature is the basic feature avail-‐

able on the Cobee platform: it allows to add a textual

description of an idea to an existing entry or create a

new entry. The text is then added to the entry togeth-‐

er with the drawings, mind-‐maps and wireframes. It

can be analyzed by the system, which retrieves the

keywords and draws accordingly the synthesis map

in the project dashboard.

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The Drawing tool can be used for drawing as well

as for creating a collage containing textual elements.

It is needed for drawing quickly in a collaborative

mode Task-‐Flow diagrams, story-‐boards or interac-‐

tion models. It can be used in all the phases of the

project and is accessible by all the members

What is it for? How is it used? Technological aspects

The created content can be then exported and placed

on the Entry page as well. The Drawing tool can be

used for creating a drawing, adding a description,

composing a collage out of provided elements from

the library of the platform. It can be shared and new

members can be invited to collaborate.

The drawing tool is based on the open-‐source SVG-‐

Edit technology provided by Google. SVG (Scalable

Vector Graphics) permits to create vector drawings

and export them, print them, share them over the

web. The SVG-‐Edit tool has the features of draw-‐

ing different forms, choose colors, group and align

them, export and save the drawing.

FIG. 87: Taking the challenge: drawing tool

Project part

163

The third tool – Wire-‐framing – can be used mainly

in the interface design phase, for designing static as

well as interactive prototypes (the tool allows the

building of interactive clickable prototypes).

What is it for? How is it used? Technological aspects

It can be used to build an interface out of existing

common web interface elements, preloaded in the

library of the platform. The elements can be layouted

in many pages for building an interactive clickable

prototype. New shapes can be created and added to

the library. Other users can be invited to test the pro-‐

totype, to comment and vote.

The Wire-‐framing tool is based on the technology

provided by one of the partners of Cobee, for in-‐

stance an existing Wire-‐framing tool from Mocking-‐

Bird (gomockingbird.com), which can be adapted to

the interface style and features of Cobee platform.

FIG. 88: Wire-‐framing tool

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The Code Repository tool is going to be accessible

only by the “Pro” users and by the users invited into

the “Implementation” phase of the project.

What is it for? How is it used? Technological aspects

The tool contains a file depository with the version-‐

ing control and branching (the edits that a member

did are going to be added to the main project branch

only after they are approved by the rest of the team,

every new version is saved in the file depository –

therefore nothing get’s lost). The tool is used for de-‐

positing the files and controling the process.

The Code Repository system would be based on the

technology provided by BeanstalkApp, which pro-‐

vides a hosting service for file repositories, with

both Subversion (revision control system for main-‐

taining historical and current versions of files) and

Git (distributed revision control system, free soft-‐

ware ideated by Linus Torvalds) support.

FIG. 89: Code Repository tool for

developing applications

Project part

165

FIG. 90: Dashboard tool (for the platform

administrator and the company manager)

The dashboard tool is needed for controlling the

process of the project: it is targeted to the company

manager and the administrator of the platform, as

well as the “Pro” users, who wish to manage their

group-‐projects.

What is it for? How is it used? Technological aspects

The dashboard tool can be accessed through the

challenge/project page or through the personal ac-‐

count page; it can be used for analyzing the data of

the project, the process, the participants, number of

entries, comments etc.; managing the project: invit-‐

ing participants, editing the brief, add files; export

the report.

The Dashboard tool would be based on an existing

open source project management platform, for in-‐

stance Collabtive (http://collabtive.o-‐dyn.de/), which

has the features of time-‐tracking, reporting, project,

task creation etc. These features would be adopted

to the characteristics of the Cobee platform.

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FIG. 91: Project process analysis

tool integrated in the dashboard

The managers can export the report of the project,

which contains the analysis of the process: the du-‐

ration, the phases, the number of entries and par-‐

ticipants etc. During the selection phase the syn-‐

thesis tool in the dashboard shows the directions

of the project, according to the most used tags as

well as the connections between them; the process

tool shows the entries in a timeline where it is vis-‐

ible when and by whom it was created, when it was

modified, how many votes and comments it got. It

permits to track the process, open each entry, com-‐

ment or vote on it.

Project part

167

Challenge placement and report (contest holder)

The dashboard includes also the Challenge Place-‐

ment Page for the company managers. The Chal-‐

lenge Placement Page contains the controls for up-‐

loading pictures as well as other files, writing the

project description, the technological specifications,

requirements, expectations and specifications for

every phase of the project (the project phases con-‐

FIG. 92: Challenge placement formular

(for the company manager)

troller is a slider). The company manager is invited

to add tags and describe his company as well.

The Dashboard page of the platform administrator

contains the informations about all the Challenges.

The dashboard consist of the same elements like the

contest holder’s Dashboard, with the only difference

that it has a list of Challenges as well as administra-‐

tive tools for reward payment, financial state, com-‐

munity administration (for instance the feature of

banning a community member), managing the “Wall”,

the “Blog” and the “Forum” (“Contact”) sections.

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The Community network tool permits to see the

community as a social network, analyze the connec-‐

tions, search for competences, contact people, etc.

It is helpful for finding the collaborators with the re-‐

quired competences.

What is it for? How is it used? Technological aspects

The “Community” page can have two different view

options: it can be seen as a social network graph or

as a list. This permits to see at a glance the existing

connections, to individuate groups of members, and

to find a person that has the characteristics and the

expertise necessary in a project. Every member can

be contacted directly with a direct message.

The tool is going to be based on an existing open

source social network visualization web software,

for instance LastForward, a widget for analyzing so-‐

cial networks of Last.Fm. The interface elements are

going to be adapted to the style of the Cobee plat-‐

form, as well as the code is going to be adapted to

the required features and functionalities.

FIG. 93: Community network visualization

tool (for finding a needed expertise)

Project part

169

My Account page is the information hub, which

shows the personal information, the challenges I

took, the status in the platform (newbie, advanced,

expert or guru); it also shows the CoMeter: the activ-‐

ity meter indicating the activity style of the member;

another feature is the recent activity.

What is it for? How is it used? Technological aspects

The Account page can be accessed through “MyAc-‐

count” button in the main menu. It can be used for

modifying the profile information, for analyzing the

activity, for accessing the entries of the challenges,

for reading the direct messages and comments, as

well as displaying the contacts from the network.

The Account Dashboard is build on the basis of an

open source social networking system, called Elgg

(www.elgg.org) on which the whole Cobee system

is going to be built. This system has the main build-‐

ing blocks, like access control and a flexible data

model for creating different entities.

FIG. 94: “My Account” Dashboard tool

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The subscription plans are going to be applied for al-‐

lowing customer segmentation. We are going to use

a dynamic pricing plan, depending on the phases and

duration of the project, which is flexible enough for

the customers, which can decide at every moment to

close the project or to continue.

The subscription plans for the companies are go-‐

ing to be decided dynamically in the beginning of

the project and during the project. Some companies

might need to conduct a research and ideation on

Cobee platform, while others might need a fully im-‐

plemented product. Other firms also might need to

evaluate their product at the end of the implementa-‐

tion phase. The project phases are therefore flexible

and can be repeated in an iterative way.

The subscription system is going to work like in the

Freemium model, where the free plan has a limited

functionality while the Premium plan has the full

SUBSCRIPTION PLANS

functionality. The participants can choose between

the free and the premium plan, while the companies

have to subscribe to one of the Premium plans for

companies.

Plans for the participants:

Free plan: a free subscription plan allowing to use

the platform for searching for collaboration as well

RESEARCH

CONCEPTING

INTERACTION

INTERFACE

EVALUATION

IMPLEMENTATIONDYNAMIC SUBSCRIPTION PLANS(FOR THE COMPANIES, V.I.P. AREA)

PLAN EXAMPLE 1

PLAN EXAMPLE 2

PLAN EXAMPLE 3

PLAN EXAMPLE 4

FIG. 95: The Dynamic subscription plans

as use the basic tools when collaborating on a

project with the company or the premium users.

The Premium plan: using all the platform tools, cre-‐

ating a project, searching for collaborators, using the

design and the development tools, the dashboard.

Project part

171

FREE

PREMIUMANNUAL/MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION FEES

FREEMIUM SUBSCRIPTION PLANS(FOR THE CROWD)

MIND-‐MAPPING,WIRE-‐FRAMING,

DRAWING TOOLS,PARTICIPATION IN THE V.I.P. PROJECTS,

COLLABORATING WITH OTHER MEMBERS

MIND-‐MAPPING,WIRE-‐FRAMING,

DRAWING TOOLS,CODE REPOSITORY TOOL

PARTICIPATION IN THE V.I.P. PROJECTSCREATING OWN GROUP PROJECTS

PROJECT ANALYSIS TOOLS

FIG. 96: The Freemium subscription plans for participants

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COMMUNITY ATTRACTION DIFFERENTIATION PROJECT INTRODUCTION

OFFERING ALL TOOLS FOR FREE: PARTICIPANTS CAN USE THEM FOR THEIR PERSONAL WORK; OFFERING A PROJECT SPACE

INTRODUCING THE PRO PLAN FOR PARTICIPANTS THAT ARE INTERESTED TO USE ADVANCED TOOLS AND THE GROUP PROJECT FEATURE (FOR A SUBSCRIPTION FEE)

WHEN THE COMMUNITY IS LARGE ENOUGH, THE COMPANIES ARE INVITED AND THE SOCIAL WEB APPLICATION PROJECTS ARE INITIATED

FIG. 97: Community Building-‐up plan

BUILDING-‐UP THE COMMUNITY

The creation of the community would be conducted

in three steps: first of all we are going to provide

the collaboration space for the interaction designers

and programmers, with all the basic tools that can be

used for free. This first phase is needed to attract a

sufficient number of members.

In the second phase we are going to introduce the

Pro plan for the advanced users interested in ad-‐

vanced features like project management and ad-‐

vanced design tools, as well as a collaboration space

for group projects, where other participants can

be invited. The Pro plan would be accessible via a

monthly or annually subscription fee.

In the third phase the companies interested in so-‐

cial web application design would be introduced (the

area V.I.P. = Very Interesting Projects), where the

projects can be conducted in collaboration between

the platform members and the company managers.

This would ensure that the community is consoli-‐

dated and receives a value from the platform itself

even without the introduction of the crowdsourcing

projects. When a sufficient number of professional

members is reached, the projects can be introduced.

Project part

173

USE CASE SCENARIO

This use-‐case scenario describes how the service

works. The previously described platform custom-‐

ers and participants will be part of this scenario. The

scope here is to show how different participants in-‐

teract with it and with each other.

Davide, a manager of the marketing department at

Geox aims to create a social hub for communicating

with the consumers as well as establishing a better

brand image and enter the sportswear market. Dav-‐

ide has an idea to create social web application con-‐

nected to the main website of Geox, that promotes a

healthy and ecological lifestyle as well as a positive

brand image.

Davide meets the managers of Cobee. they decide

together about the duration of the project and pre-‐

pare the brief. Davide decides for the “Extra” Plan

which comprises all the phases of the project avail-‐

able in the Cobee framework.

Davide registers to the Cobee service and defines all

the details about the project.

He chooses the “New Challenge” option and de-‐

fines the brief: “Creating a social web application for

Geox, for communicating with the consumers, pro-‐

moting the brand image, communicating the sustain-‐

ability image of Geox.”

He describes the requirements: the social web ap-‐

plication should be placed or connected to the exist-‐

ing social networks (Facebook), it should reach the

target group of consumers in the age of 25-‐45 years,

both genders, from the middle socio-‐economic class;

the brand identity of Geox should be communicated

(the main elements of brand identity attached); the

possibility for the users to socialize with each other,

to build a positive impression about Geox. The func-‐

tionalities of sharing, commenting, posting pictures

should be included. Another functionality is the sup-‐

port of the feed of images from the newest collection

of Geox, which have to be visualized in the applica-‐

tion.

FIG. 98-‐100: Storyboard scenes

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The company manager uploads the images repre-‐

senting the brand identity of Geox -‐ the logo, the ele-‐

ments of the collection, the look of the Geox store.

The project starts with the research phase for op-‐

portunity exploration and inspirations. The indicator

on the website shows, that the project is in the “Re-‐

search” phase. The members of the platform read

the project brief and click “Take the challenge”. They

post inspirations and research data about social web

applications with MindMapping and textual descrip-‐

tion tools.

In the next (Concept) phase Marco – the interaction

designer – chooses the Mind-‐Mapping tool under

the challenge brief and creates a mindmap with the

ideas and directions for the project: a walk-‐meter

tracking the walk, eco-‐footprint-‐meter, walking ex-‐

perience. He elaborates one of the directions: the

walk-‐meter which shows how many carbon points

were saved by walking instead of taking the car. He

is also comments on the project brief page: he thinks

that the functionality of Geox “tips” should be sup-‐

ported as well as the link to the last Geox collection

on the website.

After 10 days of research and concepting the status

bar of the “Geox social web app” project shows the

end of the phase. The main three directions elabo-‐

rated by three members are shown: Geox fitness

trainer, Geox shoe customizer, Geox personal eco-‐

meter. Cobee moderator together with Davide decide

to propose a group creation in the three mentioned

directions: the members with the similar ideas are

invited to form groups. Matteo, Marco and Gabriella

form one of the groups. Davide also makes some

additions to the brief, by adding the functionalities

proposed by Marco.

FIG. 101-‐104: Storyboard scenes

Project part

175

On 11th day starts the “Interaction” phase. The par-‐

ticipants of the three selected groups are invited to

create interaction design concepts. Matteo uses the

drawing tool for making a visualization on the basis

of the idea proposed by Marco: he makes a flow-‐

chart diagram showing the main interaction steps.

Meanwhile Marco creates a detailed description of

the concept and loads additional pictures into the

mind-‐map, showing the “mood” of the concept. The

concept developed on the basis of the idea “Geox

personal eco-‐meter” combines the functionalities

of personal trainer and tracker of the daily walking

activity: it should make the users aware how they re-‐

duce their carbon-‐footprint by walking more, instead

of taking the car. The user has to register to the app

via facebook and download the geo-‐localization app

to his smartphone. Every time he walks he should

click the button “track” in the smartphone app. At

the end of the day the user logs into the web app on

his computer and sees the tracking results in a rep-‐

resentation of a “meter”, showing the time of walk-‐

ing and the saved carbon-‐points. He can publish the

meter on his wall and invite his friends to join the

application. Another functionality is the uploading

Gabriella draws a storyboard with the drawing tool

embedded into the platform, which shows how the

users interact with the social web application. She

takes into consideration the commenting, sharing,

posting functionalities described in the brief. She

describes in detail the functionalities of geo-‐local-‐

ization that can be implemented through a web app

on the smartphone of the user.

of the pictures of the favorite walking places. Some

pictures of Geox shoes from the collection “energy

walk shoes” appear in the application. These pictures

link to the Geox website. An additional functionality

are the “Geox tips”: how long to walk, what walking

styles are there, how the Geox shoe structure sup-‐

ports the stature etc..

FIG. 105-‐106: Storyboard scenes

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The “Interaction” phase is finished and the project

participants are invited to participate on creating the

interface and mockups for their concepts. Gabriella

and Matteo use the third tool -‐ Wire-‐framing tool -‐ for

making a wireframe of the interface. The modera-‐

tor comments on the contributions and reminds that

the interface should contain all the functionalities

described previously, as well as respect the brand

identity of Geox. Gabriella creates an interface with

a graphic tool which shows the daily progress of

eco-‐footprint of a user. On the side of the graphic

there are pictures of his most liked places and the

tips from Geox with the pictures of “Energy walker”

and “Snake shoe” collections. Under the graphic the

user can see the eco-‐footprint results of his friends.

Marco reviews the results and gives his advices.

Gabriella creates the layout out of the elements

present in the Mockup tool, and Matteo adds some

interactions to it, therefore creating an interactive

prototype with the wire-‐framing tool. They add some

comments explaining some functionalities. They

decide to develop the geo-‐localization functionality

later if the agency is interested in the project.

During the evaluation phase all the platform mem-‐

bers are invited to test the interactive mock-‐ups and

to vote and comment. This process brings many in-‐

sights about the functionality of the application to

the teams. They adjust their prototypes accordingly.

The company manager adds some comments too: he

would like to see the pictures of the new shoe col-‐

lection integrated in the “tips” section.

The idea “Geox personal eco-‐meter” by Marco, Mat-‐

teo and Gabriella gathers the most votes and is se-‐

lected at the end of the Design Part. Davide chooses

the selected concept and closes the project. After

closing the project he receives the project report

with the synthesis of the project process, the par-‐

ticipants, the amount of contributions, comments

and votes etc.

FIG. 107-‐109: Storyboard scenes

Project part

177

The participants are rewarded by the company

through Cobee as soon as the selected team mem-‐

bers transfer all the material produced during the

contest to the company manager. Cobee transfers to

the participants pay-‐pal account 70% of the reward

received from Davide. Every member receives one

third of the reward.

After the project ends, Davide is interested to con-‐

tinue the implementation phase of the project. He

speaks to the platform moderation as well as the

winning team and opens the “implementation”

phase. The “implementation” phase is only accessi-‐

ble to the selected team as well as Davide and Cobee

Manager. Davide makes an accordance with the team

on their wages and sets the implementation dura-‐

tion: 1 month.

Gabriella will work as interface designer, Matteo as

programmer and Marco as coordinator and program-‐

mer. They invite additionally a fourth participant from

the external Cobee network – a software develop-‐

ment firm – for developing purposes. The team de-‐

cides to implement the application for the Facebook

platform and use the php programming language for

the back-‐end, Javascript and Flash Actionscript for

the front-‐end. The code written for the facebook

front-‐end can be adapted to the smartphone with

the Titanium framework. The team uses the Code

Repository tool integrated on the Cobee platform for

developing the project.

The implementation takes 1.5 month. The app ap-‐

pears in the android app-‐market as well as on Face-‐

book. Davide congratulates with the team and com-‐

pletes the payment.

FIG. 110-‐112: Storyboard scenes

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FRONT-‐OFFICE

BACK-‐OFFICE

Posting a

challenge

Sending

information

to database

Receiving info

about new

member,

checking data

Reviewing

the results,

proposing to

organize groups

Registering

new information

in the DB

Sending

information

to DB

Sending

information

to DB

Sending

information

to DB

Sending

information

to DB

Sending

information

to DB

Sending

information

to DB

Retrieving

data of parti-‐

cipants from DB

Sending

information to

DB,

retrieving data

from DB

Money from

paypal account

sent to the winners’

account

Money received to

platform’s

paypal account

Retrieving

proposal data

Rregistering

updates, sending

updates to all

subscribed users

Rregistering

updates, sending

updates to all

subscribed users

Registering

proposals,

clustering them

Registering

information

about the

payment

Registering

information

about the

payment

Paying the

challenge fee

Receiving

proposals

Admin-‐team

Contest holder

Participant

Server

Pay-‐pal

Website Back-‐end

Choosing best

ideas, organizing

groups

Posting proposals

to the challenge

Forming groupsRegistering

(Freemium account)

Contacting

some participants

Receiving proposal to

continue the project

Choosing the

winners, closing

the project

Receiving the

concept material,

the report, paying

Receiving the reward

Commenting,

suggesting

improvements

Working on the

concept

Receiving

a notification

PROJECT DURATION: 20 DAYS

1

FIG. 113: The Front-‐ and Back-‐Office activity steps

Project part

1794.5. THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PLATFORM

INTERACTION SYSTEM DEFINITION

In the scenario above we showed how Cobee sys-‐

tem works. Further we would like to describe the

system more in detail. The platform has to support

the actions, that derive from user’s motivations: so-‐

cializing, learning, teaching, helping, curiosity etc.

From these motivations and from the service ob-‐

jectives the following main actions derive: register-‐

ing, formulating a challenge, accessing information,

contributing, communicating, sharing knowledge,

collaborating, getting rewarded. These actions will

be conducted differently by different participants

and there will be different combinations of actions,

however we describe the most fundamental ones.

The platform moderation is going to support the par-‐

ticipants throughout the process as well as the tools

provided on the platform support the mentioned ac-‐

tions.

1. Registration action consist in choosing a plan

(free or premium) and filling in sign-‐up form

by the participants. For the contest holder the

registration consist in choosing a plan (basic,

advanced, extra or Pro), filling in a form and

paying for the plan, as well as an eventual re-‐

quested assistance and consultation from the

platform admin is provided.

2. The challenge formulation consists in filling in

a form where the company manager describes

the project and the requirements. He can ask

for an eventual assistance from the platform

admin.

3. The information about the challenges can be

accessed through the challenge page; a blog is

provided where news about projects, commu-‐

nity activity and other are posted as well as the

“Wall” of announcement where the users can

announce about collaboration search or about

their projects.

4. The participants can contribute by voting on

challenges, contributions as well as comment-‐

ing. They can also choose to build on someones

project, which means to join and contribute.

This action has to be approved by the project

initiator. They can also start their own entries

by using the mind-‐mapping, drawing or wire-‐

framing tools.

5. Communication: only asynchronous communi-‐

cation tools are supported by the platform for

the reasons mentioned above. This permits the

participants to concentrate on the project and

makes the whole conversation over-‐viewable

for other people. In the Wall section the com-‐

munications of the members can be found, for

instance: “I am searching for a collaborator for

my project”, “I want to start a project about” etc.

6. Sharing knowledge action is connected to the

contribution action: by commenting and dis-‐

cussing participants share knowledge with each

other as well as by collaborating on a project.

The most active participants can be also invited

to post on the blog.

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COBEE SERVICE INTERACTION STEPSCOBEE SERVICE INTERACTION STEPSCOBEE SERVICE INTERACTION STEPSCOBEE SERVICE INTERACTION STEPSCOBEE SERVICE INTERACTION STEPSCOBEE SERVICE INTERACTION STEPSCOBEE SERVICE INTERACTION STEPSCOBEE SERVICE INTERACTION STEPSCOBEE SERVICE INTERACTION STEPS

registering challenge

formulation

accessing

information

contributing communicating sharing

knowledge

collaborating getting

rewarded

platform admin

actions

sending welcome

e-mail

helping to

formulate

challenge

stimulating

contribution

responding to

questions,

stimulating

discussion

checking posts stimulating

collaboration

participant signing terms

and conditions,

registering

account

reading

challenge,

browsing

challenge

archive, blog,

tutorials

creating new

entry for the

challenge,

building on

others' challenge,

commenting,

voting

communicating

with other

participants, with

the platform

admin, with the

contest holder

posting on the

blog, suggesting

refinements to

other participants

building on

others ideas,

suggesting

design

enhancements

Receiving the

payment on

Paypal account

company registering,

paying fees

formulating

challenge

phases, duration,

brief, question,

requirements

reading other

challenges, blog

communicating

with participants,

with admin

giving feedback

about entries,

editing the brief

suggesting

refinements

paying the

reward

tools registration form;

contact page

information

challenge posting

form

challenge

archive,

challenge search,

blog, tutorial

section

challenge page,

Mind-Mapping

tool, Drawing

tool, Wire-

framing, voting,

commenting tools

direct messaging

(only between

participants and

with admin),

commenting,

blog, commenting commenting

system,

"building-on-

idea" functionality

Paypal payment

management

integrated in the

"Account

dashboard"

FIG. 114: Cobee platform: interaction steps

Project part

181

7. Collaboration can happen by suggesting im-‐

provements and discussing through comment-‐

ing. The participants can also join others teams

by choosing “build” action. Participants can in-‐

vite other members to collaborate through the

“invite” action. They also can announce the re-‐

search for collaborators for the contest project

or their private projects on the announcement

“Wall”.

8. The contest winners get rewarded by the com-‐

pany through Cobee as soon as they deliver the

materials of the contest. They receive a mes-‐

sage about the money transfer to their pay-‐pal

account as well as a message in their messages

section in the “My Account” page.

The figure 114 on the left page summarizes the de-‐

scribed actions.

ARCHITECTURE OF THE PLATFORM

Further we are going to define the architecture of

the platform. The platform is conceived around the

mentioned main actions. The structure that can

be seen on the next page supports these actions.

The Platform contains seven sections: Challenges,

About, My Account, Community, Wall, Blog, Contact.

The first page that is opening is the challenges page,

so the informations concerning the challenges are

immediately presented. The participants can then

choose to “take the challenge” or read more about

it. “Take the challenge” action leads them to the page

where they can contribute by choosing among one of

the present tools: adding description, mind-‐mapping

tool, drawing tool, wire-‐framing tool or code reposi-‐

tory tool. The participants are usually automatically

led to the tool which is coherent with the current

project phase, for instance if the project is in the

phase of research, the mind-‐mapping tool is opened.

If the project is in “interface” phase, the wire-‐fram-‐

ing tool is opened. It is also possible just to read the

challenge and the entries as well as vote and com-‐

ment. The challenge contains the dashboard section

which is accessible to the company managers, where

they can change the brief, make additions, such as

requirements or uploading files. The company man-‐

ager can also browse through the entries, vote and

comment. He also can decide to change the duration

of the phase or close a phase (however changing the

duration of the phase may comport additions to the

cost of his plan).

The individual projects which the “Pro” participants

are working on are not public and don’t appear in

the challenge section. They are visible to the project

initiator when he is on the page “My Account”, where

he can access the project. The individual project has

the same structure like the Public Challenges: it has

the same phases and the same tools available. The

project initiator can invite other users to collaborate

on his project. He has the same dashboard tools

like the contest holder. When he finishes the project

he can eventually decide to make it public by post-‐

Pro

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HOME

0101010101

ABOUT MY ACCOUNT COMMUNITY

PLATFORM ARCHITECTURE

?

WALL BLOG CONTACTCHALLENGES

FILTER BY: POPULARITY OR

DURATION

NORMAL VIEWOR NETWORK VIEW

TAKE CHALLENGE

MIND-‐MAPPING TOOL

ADD AS CONTACT

ASK QUESTION

FORUM

SEND DIRECTMESSAGE

INVITE TOBUILD ON YOURPROJECT

BUILD

VOTE

COMMENT

DRAWING TOOL

WIREFRAMING TOOL

PHASESBRIEFPLAN

PARTICIPANTSENTRIES

COMMENTSVOTES

HOW IT WORKSSUCCESS STORIES

ABOUT US

self.redirect('/blog/')

elif which == 'list'

EDIT

MAP

DRAW

VERSION CONTROL

WIREFRAME

EDIT BRIEF

ENTRIES

ENTRIESMY CHALLENGES/PROJECTS

NEWSADS

PHASESBRIEF

PROFILEINFO

REWARD ADD ENTRY

COMMENT

VOTE

READ

DASHBOARD

COMMENT

VOTE

CONTEST HOLDER/ADMIN/PRO USER

ONLY PRO USERSAND IMPLEMENTERS

READ

COMMENT

COMMENT

VOTE

READ

COMMENT

VOTE

READ

MESSAGESCONTACTS PARTICIPANTS

FILTER BY: POPULARITY OR

DATE

SEND DIRECTMESSAGE

INVITE TOBUILD ON YOURPROJECT

FILTER BY: POPULARITY OR

DATE

TUTORIALS

COMMENT

READ

FIG. 115: Platform architecture visualization

Project part

183

contacted through direct messaging or added as a

contact. They also can be invited to collaborate on

a project.

The “Wall” section contains announcements of the

members about their projects or that their search for

collaborators.

The “Blog” section contains news about the projects,

the community and the platform’s activity as well as

tutorials and learning material.

ing a message about it in the Wall section, together

with a link. The other users can then comment, vote

this project as well as send direct messages to the

project initiator.

The “About” section contains informations about the

platform, pricing plans, tools and process descrip-‐

tion as well as the video “How it works”.

My account page is the dashboard of every partici-‐

pant, where he can see his messages, his challeng-‐

es/projects, entries, profile info and contacts.

The community page contains the information about

the community, which can be seen in two modes:

network structure or list. The network structure

option permits to see connections between mem-‐

bers at a glance, as well as their characteristics,

challenges and expertise. The participants can be

FIG. 116: Challenge list page

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184FIG. 117: Challenge detail page

The “Contact” section has the two options: to ask a

question or to post on the forum.

The platform is conceived around the challenges and

the community. Therefore all the on-‐going communi-‐

cation and activities are connected to the project ac-‐

tivity. The only communication tool that can be used

for other purposes is the direct messaging.

Wireframes: challenges page

When opening the website, the first page opening

is the Challenges page. Challenges page shows the

projects that the company managers placed. The

challenge list contains the few necessary informa-‐

tions for having an overview: the project name, a

brief description, the current project phase (for in-‐

stance research phase), the number of comments,

votes, entries, participants as well as the project

plan chosen by the company manager. The challenge

list page contains the presentation video and the re-‐

cent activity of the platform as well: the recent en-‐

tries, comments and new members. The challenges

can be filtered by their date (most recent) and by

their popularity (how many votes they got).

The Challenge Detail page contains a more detailed

description of the challenge as well as the recent

entries and comments. On this page the participant

can add comments, vote and add entries. It also con-‐

tains the “Synthesis” map, the same visualization

visible in the Dashboard of the contest holder, which

shows the process of the project in a timeline, with

the entries and participants, comments and votes.

This gives a quick overview about the project state.

Project part

185

THE LOGO AND THE GRAPHICAL ELEMENTS

The Logo of “Cobee” contains the type, for which

the font “ConduitITC” is used and the graphical sym-‐

bol of a network of people, which substitutes the

letter “O”. The name Cobee, as explained before,

combines the meaning of “co-‐design” and “bee” as

a symbol for collective intelligence. Therefore we

wanted to emphasize the meaning of “Co-‐design” as

a networked activity and the meaning of “Bee” as

an example of natural organizational structures like

the one of a beehive. We’ve chosen the combination

of two colors for the logo -‐ the intense green (sym-‐

bolizes the nature and inspires the feeling of calm-‐

ness) and the black. The type in the logo is filled with

striped pattern for giving it a dynamic appearance

(the stripes that go from down-‐left corner to up-‐right

corner contribute to the illusion of a movement). The

striped pattern refers to the pattern of the bees as

well. The logo is accompanied by the explanation:

“A crowdsourcing platform for interaction design”,

which summarizes the core of the service.

Graphical interface

We developed visual design elements of the user in-‐

terface in the same style like the logotype. It was

studied for being simple and light, for not distract-‐

ing the user from the main functionalities and for

evidencing the important elements of the interface.

Therefore we tried to reduce the amount of the con-‐

trols and other elements to the most necessary ones.

The layout was divided in the grid of two sub-‐areas

or columns, where the central area is always the

main “action” area, for instance the drawing area

or the area which contains the informations about

the challenge. The second column is always the

“side-‐column” where the additional informations

are placed, for instance the list of recent activities.

In the most cases only two-‐columns layout is used,

and only in a few of them the “three-‐column-‐grid”

is used, for instance in “My Account” page where in

addition to the main area and the side column there

is the area of personal informations.

The graphical solution of the user interface contains

the two above mentioned colors and additionally the

grey and the magenta color, used for emphasizing

important elements. The rule of the proportion of

contrasting colors (magenta-‐green) from the color

theory is used: the quantity of red has to be much

less than the quantity of green, for not overwhelming

the user. The quantity of grey and white elements is

much higher in the interface.

The controls -‐ buttons and links are mainly placed

on the sides of the interface layout, because they are

easily reachable then (the cursor stops naturally by

bouncing to the borders of the screen). The buttons

in inactive state are black with green text, while the

active ones are green with black text.

A CROWDSOURCING PLATFORM FOR INTERACTION DESIGN

FIG. 118: Cobee Logo

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FIG. 119: Logo specifications

A CROWDSOURCING PLATFORM FOR INTERACTION DESIGN

1X

1,4X

6 pt

52 pt

2X 2X

CONSTRUCTION

DIMENSIONS

BLACK-‐AND-‐WHITE COLORS

STANDARD DIMENSIONS: 50mmx18mm

MINIMUM DIMENSIONS: 30mmx8.5mm (The explanatory text is placed on the side)

200% OF THE STANDARD DIMENSIONS

FONT: CONDUIT ITC TT

CMYK (39, 0, 89, 0)RGB (181, 219, 42)

CMYK (17, 100, 53, 3)RGB (196, 0, 76)

CMYK (0, 0, 0, 100)RGB (0, 0, 0)

A CROWDSOURCING PLATFORM FOR INTERACTION DESIGN

A CROWDSOURCING PLATFORM FOR INTERACTION DESIGN

A CROWDSOURCING PLATFORM FOR INTERACTION DESIGN

A CROWDSOURCING PLATFORM FOR INTERACTION DESIGN

A CROWDSOURCING PLATFORM FOR INTERACTION DESIGN

A CROWDSOURCING PLATFORM FOR INTERACTION DESIGN

Project part

187

FIG. 120: ”About” page

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188 4.6. THE PLAN FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENT

SOME FACTS ABOUT THE CURRENT MARKET

According to Forbes (www.forbes.com), in 2009

there were around 80.000 freelance designers in

USA alone, while the number of freelancers in the

whole world could reach 200.000. These numbers

are growing according to the research conducted

by Design Council, which counted 65000 freelance

designers in UK (in 2009), with an increase of 39%

since 2005. The amount of digital and multimedia

designers was also increasing: from 43% in 2005 to

49% in 2009139.

These numbers are also confirmed by the increas-‐

ing communities of crowdsourcing design platforms

like CrowdSpring, 99Designs and DesignCrowd (see

the graphic in the next page). To list an example, the

amount of CrowdSpring members increased from

6000 members in 2008 to 72.000 in 2010.

Additionally to these evidences the amount of free-‐

lancers using online marketplaces and intermediar-‐

NOTES

[139] http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/Documents/Documents/

Publications/Research/DesignIndustryResearch2010/

[140] http://blog.limeexchange.com/wp-‐content/

uploads/Freelancingsurveyresults.pdf

[141] McKinsey Quarterly conducted a Survey with

2847 executives worldwide in 2007, source: https://

www.mckinseyquarterly.com/How_businesses_are_

using_Web_20_A_McKinsey_Global_Survey_1913

ies for finding a job increased as well. According to

the survey conducted by LimeExchange140 in 2009, in

which thousands (the exact number is not indicated)

of freelancers worldwide took part, 31% of freelanc-‐

ers are doing web development, 19% software de-‐

velopment and 29% graphic design and graphic arts.

A very substantial number of freelancers is choos-‐

ing an online marketplace when searching for a job:

freelance marketplaces are used by 27% of them for

finding freelance projects.

According to the previous survey, the companies

(mainy SMBs) prefer using such marketplaces for

finding designers, because of the following factors:

they prefer outsourcing for cutting cost and reduce

staff 57%, for not having someone with suitable

skills 22%, need for a recognized expert 11%.

The listed facts show a growing market opportunity

for crowdsourcing platforms: the increasing amount

of freelance designers and developers from one side

and the increasing demand for boundary-‐less (no

geographical boundaries), easily accessible work-‐

force on the other side. This is a suitable situation

for a two-‐sided platform like Cobee.

In addition to this, there is going to be a growing de-‐

mand for social web applications as well, according

to the survey conducted by McKinsey Quarterly141,

mentioned in the beginning of this chapter: a very

high number of surveyed executives (80%) world-‐

wide are going to use or invest in the use of web

2.0 technologies for their businesses, 70% of them

already using the technologies for interfacing with

their customers, for acquiring new markets and for

managing customer requests. The number of com-‐

panies that need web 2.0 and especially social web

application tools might therefore increase in the next

years.

Project part

189

200000WORLDUSAESTIMATED NUMBER OFFREELANCE DESIGNERSIN 2009 (FORBES.COM):

2008 2009

Research data from: Forbes.com; TechCrunch; LimeExchange; CrowdSpring; DesignCrowd; 99Designs

2010

20,748568,471$20,74820,748

DESIGNCROWD300071,329$

6000

16,542

100.000DESIGNERS

90.000

80.000

70.000

60.000

50.000

40.000

30.000

20.000

10.000

36,00071,329$

82,00055,000

55,0009647

72,00015,253170 +

00DESIGNCROWD

36,00099DESIGNS

3000DESIGNCROWD

82,00099DESIGNS

6000CROWDSPRING

6000

16,54299DESIGNS

72,000CROWDSPRING

71,329$

55,000CROWDSPRING

FIG. 121: Visualization of the current state of

the design crowdsourcing market

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190

The main two target groups of the platform are the

experts/professionals from design and software/

web engineering disciplines. One of the ways to

gain their attention is through the alumni sites of

universities. Other communication channels would

be forums for interaction design, programming, and

design in general. The job ad portals would also be

the target of this communication. Commenting on

blogs specialized in different design topics. Visits

to universities and presenting the platforms activ-‐

ity, as well as organizing workshops. The first target

group -‐ the affirmed experts/professionals should

be attracted also by contacting them personally and

convincing them to participate. There is a need for

at least 15 core leaders for a community of 200-‐300

users for keeping the “health” of the community (this

was shown by the studies of open source commu-‐

nities). Therefore a beginning number of about 15

leaders should be achieved for ensuring the func-‐

tioning of the community and attracting other more

passive members.

The Ways to find and attract B2C sector companies:

The companies could be attracted by a direct con-‐

tact, through forums and blogs, specialized in the

mentioned topics (apparel, consumer electronics,

marketing sites), e-‐mail advertisement, as well as

specialized meetings, conferences, through the In-‐

teraction Design Associations..

The Cobee service should be advertised through the

communication platforms of its partners (software/

web development companies and the providers of

software tools for the platform).

HOW TO ACCESS THE TWO-‐SIDED MARKET?

Project part

191

THE FURTHER DEVELOPEMENT

NOTES

[142] http://www.kickstarter.com/

The plan for the future development of the service

is the following: creating a functioning web-‐based

prototype of the platform, that contains the most im-‐

portant aspects of the service and launch it in the

internet under www.cobee.net. The following step

would be to conduct a market test during which to

find out if there would be many potential innovators

participating in the service as well as companies,

which would use the service. A presentation movie

about the platform will be distributed over YouTube,

Vimeo and other content-‐sharing platforms. An ad-‐

ditional advertisement (in form of a description, a

link and an image) will be distributed over forums

and discussion groups as well as groups in social

networks specialized in design topics. The adver-‐

tisement campaign will be prevalently below the

line, targeted to a small group of people, contacted

directly by e-‐mail, through conferences and other

events connected to design. The growth of the com-‐

munity is expected due to the word-‐of-‐mouth, invita-‐

tions of friends etc.

If the market test will result to a sufficient number

of potential customers of the service -‐ participants

and companies, we are going to contact investors

through start-‐up events as well as platforms for

crowdfunding like KickStarter142 and similar. After

attracting a sufficient investment Cobee platform is

going to be developed and launched in an approxi-‐

mate time of three months with the conditions indi-‐

cated in the business model part of this thesis.

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192 4.7. CONCLUSIONS

The Cobee project was an attempt to create a

crowdsourcing service for interaction design of so-‐

cial web applications, which would permit people

passionate about interaction design get together,

collaborate, work on real-‐life projects, learn and

socialize. The thesis attempts to answer the ques-‐

tion: what is the possible model of crowdsourcing in

social web application design projects and how this

model can bring benefits to the companies and the

participants. We believe that crowdsourcing doesn’t

threat the established design professions, it can pro-‐

vide new opportunities for co-‐design. The important

issue in this case is to find a good balance of the

traditional design methods with the new ones. The

case studies that we analyzed confirm the need for

this balance and show that the combination of en-‐

terprise production and crowd production can work

in the reality. In the Project Part we used the pre-‐

vious findings for proposing a new service as well

as a platform supporting the activities of the service

customers -‐ the innovators and the companies. We

tried to demonstrate the value of the service and the

benefits it would bring to its customers (companies

and participants). We followed the framework of

crowdsourcing platform aspects that we delineated

in the case study analysis. In addition to this we cre-‐

ated a concept of the web platform as a tool tailored

to interaction design activities as well as community

building activities.

STRONG AND WEAK POINTS

Cobee platform occupies a niche in the market from

the point of view of its service as well as the plat-‐

form as a tool itself. It offers a design environment

for interaction design of web applications, an emerg-‐

ing discipline that is on the interstice between differ-‐

ent areas and where different specialists are needed

for solving multi-‐disciplinary problematics. Despite

that, there can be encountered a big separation be-‐

tween programmers and design specialists in such

projects. Cobee platform attempts to provide a serv-‐

ice which brings the two professions together under

one “roof”. Open source software development was

usually populated by programming “nerds”, while the

designers could have the possibility to express their

abilities in design contests and crowdsourcing plat-‐

forms for logo and web-‐design. Cobee aims to pro-‐

Project part

193

vide a platform which combines the multidisciplinary

knowledge of designers, programmers and maybe

other professions in web application projects. It of-‐

fers a collaboration space and suitable tools for this

purpose as well as a learning environment with blog

posts and tutorials about interaction design. In addi-‐

tion to that Cobee introduces the companies, which

bring their challenges and harness the creativity of

the Cobee community for solving those challenges.

The analysis of the existing crowdsourcing platforms

showed very different approaches of platforms like

Cambrian House, which combined the knowledge of

different people but failed in their business model,

and the service like CrowdSpring, which offers a

quite superficial and limited view on web design,

where the participants are included in only one spe-‐

cific part of the project. The first model is the agent

model, where the platform represents the commu-‐

nity, while the second model is a pure broker. As

mentioned above, nowadays the simple brokering/

intermediation is not enough, the companies expect

consultancy services and customized solutions for

every case. Cobee aims to place its business model

between the agent and the broker models, by provid-‐

ing assistance to the community and by consulting/

advicing the companies and helping them to create

a project framework adapted to their specific case.

Cobee also combines the aspects of the crowd-‐

sourcing and the traditional design models: in the

first project part, where “idea jam” takes place the

crowdsourcing model is adopted, while in the sec-‐

ond and third parts – the “Design” and “Implementa-‐

tion” parts – the company works with the selected

groups in a traditional way and pays them wages for

their freelance service.

By doing this Cobee aims to avoid the mistakes of the

mentioned examples and take the strong aspects of

their service: the strong participant involvement in

Cambrian House and the strong aspects of the inter-‐

mediary business model of CrowdSpring.

In addition to the service aspects, Cobee provides a

unique crowdsourcing environment with tools, which

support the design process. It combines the qualities

of a project management platform, a crowdsourcing

platform and a social network. The activities of the

participants of the projects are therefore supported

by this framework of the platform, which structures

and guides the project process, creates project

documentation and analysis as well as provides in-‐

tegrated tools for design and for communication. In

this aspect Cobee competes with other crowdsourc-‐

ing environments which don’t provide such a support

to their communities of participants.

An additional strong point of the platform is that its

implementation (of the web platform) would require

only a reduced starting capital, because it would be

built on the basis of an existing social networking

software integrated with software-‐as-‐a-‐service

tools from other providers. This technological aspect

reduces the cost of development and maintenance of

the platform.

A potentially weak aspect of the platform is the un-‐

predictability of the process of the community-‐build-‐

ing. This is an aspect that should be find out during

a market test: would there be a large enough number

of potential innovators-‐participants and companies

interested in this service.

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194 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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http://it.wikisource.org/wiki/

Perchèl%27%22OpenSource%22_

manca_l%27obiettivo_del_Software_Libero

Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_innovation

http://www.openp2pdesign.org/blog/

http://www.wired.com/wired/ar-‐

chive/11.11/opensource.html

www.adciv.org/Open_collaborative_design

www.crowdsourcing.com

http://www.wired.com/wired/ar-‐

chive/11.11/opensource.html

www.time.com/time/magazine/arti-‐

cle/0,9171,1931665,00.html?xid=rss-‐topstories

www.developmentgateway.org

WEBSITES

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flower-‐crowdsources-‐mundane-‐labor-‐to-‐the-‐cloud/

Www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0330/048-‐

you-‐know-‐it.html

Http://www.squid-‐labs.com/about/

Www.no-‐spec.com/

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

http://web.mit.edu/is/isnews/v17/n03/170301.html

http://www.openp2pdesign.org/2010/open-‐p2p-‐

design/digimag-‐magazine-‐interview-‐may-‐2010/

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/con-‐

tent/jul2006/id20060713_755844.htm

http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/06/four-‐

crowdsourcing-‐lessons-‐from-‐the-‐guardians-‐

spectacular-‐expenses-‐scandal-‐experiment/

http://steffenroth.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/ib-‐

susj_open-‐innovationacrossthe-‐prosperity-‐gap.pdf

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/

news/2007/07/crowd_captain?currentPage=all

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/com-‐

ment/story/0,6903,1572869,00.html

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ers_summary/SandersSummary.html

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els/models.html#Infomediary

http://www.comminit.com/en/node/201237/3083

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Revolution OS -‐ http://video.google.com/vid

eoplay?docid=7707585592627775409#

A Shift: a documentary on FabLab in The

Netherlands http://vimeo.com/11088966

The code -‐ http://video.google.com/

videoplay?docid=-‐3498228245415745977&hl=en#

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Anderson_Atoms_Are_the_New_Bits

http://www.wired.com/maga-‐

zine/2010/01/ff_newrevolution

Project part

201

Cobee -‐ a crowdsourcing platform for interaction design

of social web applications

By: Ana Rink

Tutor: Cabirio Cautela

Co-‐Tutor: Massimo Menichinelli

2010 © Ana Rink