“Crowd sourcing” design?
I’ve put off talking about this topic for a while because it’s another one I don’t like, but it has been making more noise in various places, and it’s really grating me. I was contacted this past summer by a guy from the website Cadooku. If you try to visit now, you get the message that the model exchange is closed. No surprise to me, I guess. The fellow who contacted me wanted me to build a model of a football helmet for $60. Work at the time was slow, and it wasn’t a hard model, but he didn’t give me any real idea of the detail that he needed or the purpose for the model. I told him I’d do the work, which took me an afternoon. My normal rate is $75/hr, and this job took about 3-4 hours. In the end I never got paid. I never even heard back. I just sent my model away into the ether, and it was gone, along with my afternoon.
This is maybe not a typical “crowd source” experience. You probably won’t get someone approaching you directly asking you to model something, but one part of it was probably pretty typical – you might not get paid, and if you do get paid, it will be a lot less than you might normally get for the same kind of work. The parameters of the job may also be poorly defined.
The people who wind up doing this work aren’t going to be you or me. It’s going to be students and people from countries where the going wage is way below what it is in the US. There is no way to guarantee the skills, background or education of the person doing the work, or the originality of the work (could be copied from somewhere). There is also no way to verify that the software used is a legal copy. The quality of work that the customer receives is not guaranteed, and in fact, there may not be any way for the end customer to even contact the CAD jockey. In short, this is fly-by-night CAD work (I would hesitate to call it design, and it is certainly not real engineering).
In a time when unemployment is so high, and there are certainly plenty of engineers available out there, there is no reason to try to get design work done in this way. It disrespects the source of the work, and the design itself. It may turn out that there are some people willing to be disrespected to get the chance at being severely underpaid, but if it becomes widespread, it will lower standards so that anyone with any sort of graphics software becomes an “engineer”. When Obama “crowd sourced” the design of a campaign poster through a contest, it meant that a lot of people were going to do the work, and only one was going to get paid for it. That’s what we have to look forward to with this system.
I’ve heard people respond to critics by saying “well, it’s not for you, then”. You’re damned right. This is not good for engineering, manufacturing, or any related profession. You can come up with any sort of bad idea, slap a 21st century sounding name on it, call it “the future”, and people are supposed to automatically bow down and worship it. It makes a nice experiment, but that’s about it.
95% of the contests on websites like designcrowd are ridiculous. they’re either run by the same person (designer & contest holder), they’re fake – the winner is set before the contest starts, the contest holder has no idea about design and like he’s trying to pick the worst design on offer for whatever reason or the winner is selected because the designer that sent the design won the most money until then. no one cares about design being good.
it’s all about money, presence, reputation and persuasion. since day 1 i’ve witnessed bad designs winning most of the time. it’s been over a month since i became a member and i won’t be doing it anymore. i’d say 2 out of 150 contests picked a design that was brilliant, the best on offer, it was one of many variations, it got feedback from beginning to the last design, and it was completely in order with the brief. that’s a bullshit ratio.
even if sites like these were working, like they should in theory, you still have people with either little or no understanding of design or are incredibly stubborn. or both. the whole approach damages real, good designers. it makes “design” cheap, available, dull, boring and bad.
anyone that cares about their company and wants serious, one on one approach to design go with the old fashioned way and get one made just for you. crowd sourcing is awful.
GrabCAD, one of the groups that was trying to use social media to link engineers with projects, appears to be throwing in the towel on that particular activity. http://blog.grabcad.com/2012/01/step-for-better-and-more-open-future-in-engineering/
It was a pretty iffy way to get CAD work done. A site that specializes in free crap is not where I would go to get professional level work done. They are still giving away free crap, which is I guess ok. When I need free crap, I might go there. I might also do better to just make the free crap myself, and be able to change it, and understand its strengths and limitations.
@Matt – no problem – this is a good dialog!
Agree 100% that product liability is a key issue for physical products developed by the crowd – but it also is an issue for information products. Maybe not wordpress – but Apache and mySQL are in control of some pretty serious (maybe even life or death) applications. However, they were incorporated by folks that knew what they were doing. I think the same is true for physical products – the way to mitigate the liability is to look to the crowd for ideas and inspiration – but still do the real testing and evaluation for safety, form, fit, etc with paid / certified engineers.
I think it can go a bit beyond graphics – but in the end the farthest it can probably go is ‘design ideas’. I remember Mazda held a competition on Facebook a number of years ago to design the new Mazda 3. You ‘designed’ it by leaving a comment on their page and the comments that got the most likes got to work with a real designer to see their words turned into sketches. The sketches were then voted on and the sketch with the most votes was turned into a clay (or foam?) model for SEMA. I think firms like LM can short circuit all of that and put tools in the hands of users that let them shape what they think the products they buy should look like – and then have those ideas feed into the design teams that take them over the finish line.
@Chris
Chris, thanks for the comment. All the examples you mention are free things. I give away free information. There’s nothing wrong with that. Where I take issue is where the quality of the information has value, and where someone is making a profit by taking a reckless shortcut. If WordPress is wrong, no one dies. You might lose some data, but if you’re using WordPress, you’re in the business of giving away data anyway.
The more I look at this Local Motors deal, the less I think they are actually crowd sourcing engineering. They are crowd sourcing graphics. It looks like they really have engineers on the payroll who do real work. They also seem to be using aftermarket or off-the-shelf stuff (except for the frame and body). I haven’t seen all there is to see of all the publicity they have out, but what I’ve seen is that the contests are for Illustrator and Photoshop data, not for frame fabrication drawings. I might be annoyed if I were a graphic arts guy, or an industrial designer, but this is “work” that frustrated pizza delivery guys, amateurs and wannabes can do without hurting anyone.
It looks to me (http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/11/local-motors-crowdsourcing-the-american-car.php?page=3) that the “crowd sourcing” term is something other people have imposed on the company. Jay Rogers doesn’t use that phrase.
They even have you assemble your own car, but have a pro there to basically do it for you. At $75k a pop, these are really custom kits where you provide your own graphics. Cool cars, and a cool spin on a custom dune buggy idea, but I don’t see any crowd sourced engineering here.
A couple comments:
1. Crowd sourcing probably works better for style, e.g. T-shirt designs, car styling. Note that Local Motor’s Rally Fight mostly uses non-crowd source parts such as the engine.
2. I think a lot of the “crowd sourcing” is more about generating publicity than getting results. A hip, crowd-sourced campaign poster is, to our wonderful “news” organizations, newsworthy; a campaign poster done the old way isn’t. Of course, this only works for the first few; the tenth crowd-sourced poster isn’t newsworthy.
3. Many successful open source software projects are run by one or a few individuals with strong views, and the majority have commercial backing (e.g. Apache from IBM and others, mySQL from Sun/Oracle, WordPress from automattic). For unpaid contributors, there can be payback in getting something that’s useful to you, and, at times, reputation and job offers.
Matt – good analysis. I agree with your points about how it values the engineering profession – looking for it for free isn’t good for engineers. Two things to think about:
1 – this model has been applied in software development for years (witness Apache, mySQL, and even the blog platform you use – WordPress) and hasn’t seemed to be detrimental to the software development / engineering profession. What do ascribe that to?
2 – I PROMISE I’m not going all ‘hippie’ on you but don’t you think there are other considerations for folks that contribute to crowdsourced projects BESIDES the all powerful dollar? The software engineers I’ve interviewed that contribute to open source software projects do it because they appreciate the meritocracy based approach to having their ideas considered, the ability to do things that they can’t do at work and the pride they get in having their idea win out. I know you can’t eat any of those things…but surely they are ‘worth’ something?
(BTW – This is Chris from Siemens PLM…but these comments are my own, so that’s why I am using my personal email address and website)
Rick, I think the rally fighter was developed using crowd sourcing.
http://www.rallyfighter.com/
Is there any product that is good that was designed by crowd sourcing?
I gotta say business prices are simply unaffordable for individuals/inventors. That’s just the way it is, it’s not charity, it’s reality.
@kman
Kman, I wasn’t familiar with the practice at that time, plus I had some time open. I assumed it was a legitimate request. Plus, I think I was lead to believe that the part was going into a store where other people could buy the same model. So “if” I got paid that $60 several times, it would make it worth my time. But the whole speculation thing seems to hinge on the word “if”.
I would have been annoyed even if I had gotten paid, because the amount was so small. I’ve done “charity” work in the past, but I usually know the person I’m doing the work for, and there is some reason for the charity.
It stinks you didn’t get paid. But I wonder how the slant would change had you gotten paid. A guy contacts you…. – you did the very thing you are blasting, no? So did you “disrespect the source of the work” (yourself!), “lower your standards” etc? Or was this a noble experiment to save the rest of us? I am a bit confused. And also not a fan of crowdsourcing.
@asdf
Yeah, send me $60 and I’ll be glad to.
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
can you post the model here, matt?
@Harold
Harold, You’re right, there’s a difference between the Obama poster and what I’m talking about, but the poster was a very public example of the same sort of concept. Professional graphic arts folks were pretty worked up about it. They look at it as looking for a professional result and not paying a fair amount for the work. I’m mostly against companies using this as a business model, not against one offs.
@Bruce Buck
I agree, especially about the “sustainable” bit. We don’t want the engineering to be done by the lawyers.
The US needs to start producing stuff again to balance trade. If you want me to buy a refrigerator or car you made then you are going to have to land it here in NZ for about what I can buy it from S Korea or where ever. I know you have the smarts to make a quality item but you can’t charge what you like because you consider you deserve it. The US is collectively broke and kept ticking over by borrowing and printing. Times are going to get even tougher. There are still 8 million home foreclosures to come in the next 5 years. Whilst some people are going to go through this crisis hardly affected others are going to have considerable hardship for a decade or more. This is unfair but there are uncomfortable consequences to be born.
The best thing to do is for the US to take the hit and start being competitive again and slowly work its way back. I would suggest 30/hr is where engineers are going to end up regardless of whether the dollar is devalued or wages fall to get there. If you demand 75/hr regardless you may not find much work at all going forward. Sorry if this upsets or annoys some readers but what I am saying and I am saying to be helpful is put aside how things have been and be realistic about what needs to happen now. The sooner you prune your expectations to the circumstance the sooner you will move forward. It doesn’t mean things will always be like this.
Crowd sourcing is obviously undesireable because it reduces skilled labour to an almost gladitorial
level of competition. It feeds off people who have little choice and are isolated in their need. In the absence of good people getting organised together to improve their lot and asserting minimum standards of decency these exploitive things can go on. It is in the interests of all American workers to both face the challenge of making do with less, producing more, and reestablish a value system less focused on self interest than it has been IMHO.
When I think of crowd sourcing, and even worse, the word “delegation”, I think of Amway. In the end… somebody’s got to sell the soap!!!
In all these situations, someone’s got to do the dirty work. Someone has to put in the blood, sweat, and yes even tears of getting the job done right. That is, if you WANT it done right.
The problem I see is that more and more companies and even customers, don’t really care about quality anymore. This goes for technical as well as artistic industries. As long as it’s “good enough”. There are many instances where this may be true, but it can’t be sustainable. Yeah, good enough, until someone gets injured or killed. Then the poo hits the fan and people are scrambling to CYA and point the finger and scold because someone else isn’t doing a thorough enough job.
I could go on but I better stop…
There’s a pretty significant difference between what the Obama campaign did with the poster and what you are talking about as I understand it. I would say the poster campaign was no different than the model sharing agreement that SW has for users where the hope is to get your work on the splash screen or the box. Basically it’s self promotion as much as contribution of work in the hopes of compensation. You can’t really expect to get more than notoriety from the effort and anything more is a bonus.
Bummer you didn’t get paid for your work. As a consulting company we had been burned a few times early on but have since changed our payment / delivery arrangements to cover our, um, invested time…. The crowd sourcing model just wouldn’t make it through the quoting process.
Crowd Sourcing is a bad idea and a fad that will soon go away (I hope).
By participating in crowd sourcing you;
Turn your job into a non-paying hobby.
Expose yourself to liability.
Risk losing your liability insurance.
Lower the value of work performed by engineers & designers.
I have questions about Product Liability Insurance, Risk Management, & Engineering Calcs for crowd sourcing projects, i.e. there isn’t any.
The people promoting crowd sourcing projects “Don’t even know what they don’t know” about Product Liability Insurance, Risk Management, Intellectual Property, Patents, R & D, Testing, Design History, Factors Of Safety, Engineering Calcs, etc.
Devon Sowell
The math for doing serious design/engineering work really ads up at $15.- an hour or less.
All you need to get started is a computer worth a couple thousand dollars, several software packages at about $10,000.- total. Software maintenance at several thousand dollars per year. If you look at it like this you just know that the people who perform work at these or lower rates made the $20,000 upfront investment as well as the thousands annually. (all purple in case you didn’t get it)
@CharlesCulp
Thanks for the link, Charles. I’m glad that cleared up the “spec” thing as “speculation” instead of “specification”.
@Steve
Steve, yeah, I’m not too concerned about contests. I run contests here sometimes, but I don’t use the results as production data. The X Prize stuff is a little different, too. It involves organizations that either have funding or do fund raising of some sort to support the thrill of development of that kind of stuff.
What I’m complaining about is when a company thinks this is a way to do business. I think it’s bad for everyone, and is extremely short sighted.
@HoffY
Yeah, like an engineer who uses Photoshop badly is a danger to your income. :]) I’m one worse, I’m an engineer who uses Gimp badly (Gimp = free open source Photoshop).
This is called “spec work” in the visual communications fields (graphic design).
http://www.no-spec.com/about/
Everyone should be conscious of what spec work is and why you should be careful not to participate in spec work in a professional capacity.
Matt, you mean to say i’ve got even more of what i already have to look forward to? And i thought we were already over-run by “engineers” and “draftsman” simply because they have a “copy” of “photoshop”. 🙁
no thanx
This type of thing has it’s place and people who understand the value of time (most people over the age of about 18) would know when to take it seriously and when to ignore it. Croud Sourcing is really just an advertisers hype name for a competition, wouldn’t you agree? Whether or not this type of thing is bad for us, well, I for one wouldn’t suggest any of the people taking part in the Google Lunar X Prize competition are bad for any of the related professions!