Incorporate Crowdsourcing When Designing

“Crowdsourcing” refers to inviting a community of consumers to participate in completing a task for a sponsor. First use of the term is generally credited to technology journalist Jeff Howe, and perhaps the most successful use of crowdsourcing in ecommerce can be credited to T-shirt retailer Threadless. Amateur and professional artists submit T-shirt design ideas via threadless.com, consumers vote preferences there, and the company takes the preferences into account when producing new products.
     A recent Bloomberg Businessweek article describes how Threadless is collaborating with other companies to incorporate crowdsourcing into the design process. Dell features a dozen consumer-generated images, each of which can be etched onto the exterior of a notebook computer for $85. And Brazil’s Alpargatas selected six designs from the more than 600 submitted worldwide to Threadless for use on Havaianas sandals sold online.
     Retailers inviting consumers to submit design ideas isn’t limited to ecommerce. Successful brick-and-mortar stores welcome consumer-generated content for ads, suggestions for store layout, and ways to improve the selling process. But the social networking capabilities of Web 2.0 facilitate the voting process and interactive development of designs. This is what distinguishes crowdsourcing from traditional methods for consumer input.
     Business professionals have issued legal cautions about crowdsourcing. Some of these cautions are about non-disclosure agreements and rights to subsequent use of the designs.
     Here are two tips from a consumer psychology perspective:

• Conduct the project as a contest. If your acceptance of ideas is ongoing, declare winners regularly. Research finds that after a crowdsourcing competition, even the multitudes who didn't win are likely to build a kinship with the business, feeling they’re part of a community. For example, researchers at University of Colorado had amateurs design skins for MP3 players or mobile phones. When the task was presented from the first as competition against professional designers rather than as only an invitation to customize one’s own product, the amateurs were much more likely to feel pride in their participation.
• The contest builds excitement, and that increases the number of ideas you’ll get. Take account of this, but before the kickoff, be reasonably confident you’ll have enough ideas to select a high-quality winner. Research indicates that if you reject all the ideas, members of your target markets—both those who submitted ideas and those who did not submit ideas—will be irritated at you.

Click below for more:
Ask Customers What You Didn’t Have
Ask the Customer for Their Opinions of Items
Ask Customers & Staff for Ideas