More on Crowdsourcing and Design

The other day, Daniel, a reader of Zen and the Art of Innovation, asked a very interesting question about the potentially negative impact of crowdsourcing on the design industry. Rather than respond in the comments section, I decided to do a blog post.

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I can certainly see how crowdsourcing can be perceived as undermining the design industry and the client. As a means of sourcing new design ideas, crowdsourcing can potentially lead to a lot of quantity, at the expense of quality, relevance, or a more complete design solution.

But let me offer the glass half full perspective. To me, crowdsourcing:

1. Encourages design activity to be more strategic. To source great design effectively, whether by traditional or non-traditional means, client companies will have to strengthen their understanding of their underlying brand foundations, design principles, and business goals. Without these anchoring criteria, the client has no way of judging whether a design is relevant to the job at hand. What the client then potentially ends up with is a Tropicana-like disaster, and that costs more than $500.
   
   
2. Enables people to become knowledgeable about design. A lot of people still think design equals “make it pretty”, assuming they know what design is at all. Until this changes, design work will always be undervalued and designers will continue to be underpaid relative to their counterparts in engineering, marketing, and finance. Crowdsourcing provides business people exposure to the value of design and hopefully whets their appetite for different types of design work (e.g. industrial, interaction, design thinking).
   
   
3. Allows less-established designers to find companies (and vice versa). One of the great things about crowdsourcing is the marketmaking nature of the model. Young designers, just getting started or in-between jobs, can find projects that help pay the bills and build their portfolios. Entrepreneurial companies with limited marketing budgets can still obtain some design work. Basically, crowdsourcing is a disruptive innovation that targets non-consumption, just like Southwest Airlines.
   

Ultimately, crowdsourcing is enabling an eBay-like model for design; right now, what’s missing are the standards that ensure quality, fair pricing, and value for both the buyer and the seller. There’s a business model idea somewhere in that statement.

That said, I do believe that a lot of basic design work will be outsourced overseas in the near future. The discrepancy in labor costs and the growing cadre of design talent in places like India and China suggest that the shifts we have seen in other disciplines (e.g. computer programming, customer contact centers, manufacturing) is likely to occur in the design world. Sadly, a designer in mid-town Manhattan will soon be competing with a girl sitting in a shared office in Austin, TX, plus some random guy in Bangalore on a regular basis. This would be true even if crowdsourcing didn't exist.

In the long run, I hope my work—which often lies at the intersection of design and business—will encourage a dialogue and common understanding between MBA-trained and design-trained professionals about what strategic, impactful design can enable. For a case example of the value of design being elevated in a corporation, check out this month’s Fast Company, which has a great feature article on David Butler, VP of Design at Coca-Cola, and how his work has transformed the brands and innovations at that company.