Crowdsourced Design

Refers to websites that allow participants to design their own products, then produce it for them.

Discussion

"Open design research: frogMob, developed by frog design, is a tool for crowdsourced design research, based on the idea that everyone can be a researcher for a day, just by paying a little more attention to the world around them. frogMob uses guerilla photography and stories to take a quick pulse on global trends, behaviors, and artifacts. Launched internally first – tapping into frog’s eight global studios – we are now expanding frogMob to a broader public. Through frogMob, we are able to “mobilize” not only our internal network around a specific assignment but also external contributors on an ad hoc basis, in a short amount of time (like a Flash Mob). frogMob allows us to provide lightweight, rapid design research for clients who ask for a “trend scrape” that identifies patterns and offers unexpected inspiration. The key here is to tap into existing knowledge flows - in a nimble way that does not require too much commitment from the participants and eliminates bureaucratic hurdles." (http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/openness-or-how-do-you-design-for-the-loss-of-control.html-0)

Examples

1. see our case study on Threadless
2. Spreadshirt

More Information

Our entries on Crowdsourcing and Desktop Manufacturing

the crowdsourcing blog