Crowdsourcing In The Design Industry

Crowdsourcing has been widely accepted as a method of using the web to organize everyday people to help complete a large task, or to generate ideas and solutions to a problem. This has been effective in many ways; the iconic example is Wikipedia, which is now the most prominent educational reference site. Crowdsourcing has also been used to conduct research and development for Innocentive, and even to rally campaign supporters to call voters.

crowdSPRING is a site with a simple premise: anyone looking to have design work done for his or her business can post a creative project on the site and watch the submissions roll in. Once the posting expires, the person can then choose which design he or she likes best. Payment comes in the form of a lump sum that is specified at the beginning, winner takes all. At first glance, it looks like a great opportunity for young designers or businesses that don’t have a lot of money to spare on design, but many designers have decried the site because the practice of “speculative work”, which asks designers to design for a client before actually signing a contract, arguably cheapens the deal in many ways.

The criticism is that designers are basically being asked to do most of their creative and intellectual work at the beginning with no guarantee of being paid, which results in lower quality work and no real client-contractor relationship. Andrew Hyde writes on his blog that this is a serious ethical problem and undermines the best practices of the industry.

Jeremiah Owyang responds to the criticism, pointing out that like it or not, crowdsourcing and spec work is here to stay. He suggests that sites like crowdSPRING actually serve the needs of the “long tail”, bringing together a community of amateur designers and freelancers who may not otherwise get these project opportunities as easily. Additionally, the site could foster dialogue and collaboration in the community, staying true to the spirit of social media.

While I’m sure this debate will rage on in the near future, I do agree with Owyang’s assessment that regardless of how the industry feels about crowdsourcing, it’s here to stay. This example from the design industry is particularly revealing because it shows that while we may have gotten used to social media concepts, they may not always fit seamlessly into existing practices in certain industries. Clearly, the objections voiced by Andrew Hyde show that there are professional ethics issues that have to be worked out before crowdsourcing design can be more readily accepted among designers. In the next few years, I expect to see a lot of these fascinating conflicts play out as online communities grow and try to find their place in the established business environment.

Posted by Gloria Huang on January 6, 2009 at 5:10 PM
in Ideas, Innovation, Internet, Social Media

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COMMENTS (9)

Yes, crowdsourcing is here to stay, and it rocks. Spec work is the evil that is being discussed, and will pass once the community sees the destructive and pointless manner of its practices.

There is a good and bad way to empower your audience, one respects them, the other uses them.

But crowdsourcing is not spec work.

Posted by: Andrew Hyde | January 6, 2009 at 7:13 PM

Hi Gloria,

Thanks so much for writing about crowdSPRING.

At this moment, we have over 11,400 creatives from 130+ countries working on crowdSPRING. Clients from nearly 40 countries have posted projects. And this is only during our first 7 months in business (we started May 2008!).

We understand that crowdSPRING isn’t for everyone, and we don’t shy away from discussing spec work. A designer who has their hands full with paid clients shouldn’t need to work on spec. Those who are looking for more clients often have few options. We saw a huge void in the marketplace (for both clients and designers) and founded crowdSPRING to fill that void.

Many experienced designers, including members of AIGA, work on crowdSPRING.

We recently engaged in an excellent discussion about spec work and how we approach it. http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1253-the-nospec-campaign-vs-crowdspring“. And as you saw, we actively participated in the discussions associated with Andrew Hyde’s blog post and Jeremiah Owyang’s post. While we disagree with Andrew, we certainly respect his passion about the subject and look forward to talking with him about it in person (perhaps at SXSW).

Thanks again,

Best,

Ross Kimbarovsky
co-Founder
http://www.crowdspring.com

Posted by: Ross Kimbarovsky | January 6, 2009 at 7:55 PM

Andrew -

I definitely should have made more of a distinction between crowdsourcing and spec work. However, I do think it’s very likely that as crowdsourcing gains popularity, sites that use it for spec work will be inevitable. The popularity of crowdSPRING shows that there are people out there (both clients and designers) who believe spec work is a legitimate way of doing business.

If anything, the crowdSPRING community is a group of like-minded people who use the site because it fits their beliefs about their business. Social media encourages people to find other with similar interests and fosters a lot of lively discussion, which you can definitely see on crowdSPRING’s community forums.

Thanks for offering your views on this - they are very persuasive and really show how complex this case can be!

Posted by: Gloria Huang | January 7, 2009 at 9:28 AM

Hi Gloria,

I left a comment last night - but it appears to be still in moderation. Do you need me to re-post it?

Best,

Ross

Posted by: Ross Kimbarovsky | January 7, 2009 at 10:13 AM

Ross - Thanks for the comment, and apologies for the delay in getting it up.

Like you mentioned, I did notice that people on both sides of this discussion feel very passionately about it. It’s made for a very interesting debate! After seeing how strongly the crowdSPRING staff feels about their vision for the site, I believe that this is an honest take on using web tools and community building capabilities to add something different to the design industry.

As I said in my post, this seems to be a case where a site operating on several social media concepts is conflicting with some more established industry practices. In a way, crowdSPRING is coming at the industry from a different angle so there are probably more discussions to take place in the near future.

Thanks again for the comments!

Posted by: Gloria Huang | January 7, 2009 at 10:37 AM

Gloria - As a matter of fact, we have a panel on this very subject (is spec evil?) as SXSW in March 2009! We’re very much looking forward to discussing further.

Posted by: Ross Kimbarovsky | January 7, 2009 at 10:51 AM

Would Design by Humans or springleap.com be examples of crowdsourcing?

Posted by: james | January 8, 2009 at 12:10 PM

James - Both of those sites seem to be great examples of crowdsourcing being used as a way to organize a community of creatives to make products for a larger audience. The sites harness the creative talent of a mass of people in a productive way. Thanks for pointing the sites out; I actually hadn’t heard of them before! However, they do seem similar to Threadless, one of my favorite sites.

Posted by: Gloria Huang | January 8, 2009 at 5:46 PM

@Gloria There is a reason that spec work has collapsed in every industry that has accepted it. Notice a sleazy buck is the only motivation to move this one forward. We can learn from others mistakes or just pretend everything is good and wonder why an implosion happens.

The founder of Threadless wrote a post on this topic, between the line of being lazy and crowd sourcing. http://callmejeffrey.com/entry/2008/12/28/The_fine_line_between_laziness_and_crowdsourcing

Posted by: Andrew Hyde | January 19, 2009 at 2:22 PM

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