Here here!
Sent from my iPhone
On Nov 1, 2008, at 6:10 PM, Elizabeth Bacon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
Dear heavens.
OK, guys, if we're going to "out" ourselves...I will reveal that I
fundamentally don't believe a crowdsourcing model for DESIGN is even
possible, much less advisable.
I believe that crowdsourcing can be helpful to garner ideas (e.g.
that wepc thing at the top of this thread), identify requirements or
brainstorm features (e.g. as Will did on the list the other day),
and settle on shared definitions (e.g. wikipedia).
To me, however, crowdsourcing seems utterly antithetical to the act
of designing. Design involves acts of conscious intention coupled
with creative insight to bring coherence and order to a system. I
strongly believe that design projects must have a strong lead to
succeed, both at the design helm and the project management helm.
Nowhere in the modern world can I think of any example of a group-
mind, a crowd, moving towards greater systemic coherence and order
without a strong individual or individuals at the helm guiding the
crowd's thoughts and intentions.
Now in case you think I'm some "genius design" practitioner, bear in
mind that my core IxD practices were forged at Cooper, a design
consultancy that pioneered the use of personas and two-person teams
to achieve design solutions. I am highly team-oriented, take pains
to remove ego yet retain ingenuity in the design process, and
believe that IxD benefits greatly from collaboration with other
skilled practitioners as well as across disciplines.
That said, working on design problems and delivering solutions as a
small team is not crowdsourcing.
Now, we may have a less radical disagreement here than I fear. Nasir
wrote:
"I like the idea of crowdsourcing the design of this puppy.
Suggestions on how to manage the process? Two challenges I see:
# Of all projects with a self-referential design element, this one
kinda takes the cake :-).
# The temptation/risk of falling into a design-by-committee trap is
high
# Being designers, we could iterate and iterate until, like, the end
of days
If we went with a crowdsourced model for the design, I'd propose
going with the curated-crowdsourcing that Mozilla adopts. They have
a public free-for-all tree, but the features that make it into
Firefox, etc. have been cherry-picked by an architect and integrated
into the codebase."
What Nasir is proposing is NOT crowdsourcing the IxD of the next-
generation IxDA infrastructure, but crowdsourcing feature
definitions and perhaps also brainstorming the way those features
manifest in their form & behavior. And note that he also invokes the
importance of having a lead designer to bring order to the system.
But here's my HUGE concern if we were to pursue this route. I
strongly believe that IxDA.org needs some serious new infrastructure
YESTERDAY. Our local groups began exploding in March, right after
our first conference, and we haven't done jack squat for them except
open up Basecamp projects and talk about things. Local group
websites are now being developed piecemeal -- and they're all quite
wonderful, but totally disconnected from each other & IxDA Global.
Our general membership has also increased radically this year, and
there's extremely little visibility that anybody has into or across
this deep, valuable pool of individuals except for a freaking
Mailman query the list administrators can do of how many subscribers
we have!
Given that the board has already done requirements and feature
definition over the last four months for the IxDA.org features that
we want to deliver in very short order (namely again: 1) richer
member profiles; 2) an event/calendar system; 3) local group micro-
sites; 4) tools to help local group leaders) we'd be throwing
ourselves back to the starting line. Furthermore, I'm quite sure
that it would take a least a year from now for us to arrive at some
group-mind agreement, much less achieve the *development and
delivery* of whatever it is we conceived.
Therefore, I'm highly averse to pursuing a crowdsourcing effort on
these areas from a scheduling perspective.
I want our organization to get serious about following through on
its intentions by hiring professional development resources to meet
our needs. Presently we are not closed to the option of purchasing a
hosted solution, but are leaning towards an open-source CMS so that
IxDA can really own the platform and give community members ways to
further enhance the user experience. I aim to publish an RFP on
these features in November, and we want to be able to launch
solutions by the Interaction 09 conference. Can anyone seriously
argue that these schedule targets are achievable if we were to
pursue a crowdsourcing effort or seek pro-bono development support
from within the open source community?
Please understand that I am confident that crowdsourcing ideas,
requirements and feature definitions from within this amazing
community of ours could provide us with some extremely innovative
and powerful design concepts. So, let me make a suggestion. Perhaps
a more appropriate design target to harness the great grassroots
energy starting to be exhibited here is around the next generation
of our DISCUSSION features. At the IxDA board retreat, the board
identified this important area as nevertheless secondary to serving
the local group and membership-oriented needs listed above. The
infrastructure team also has given far less attention thus far on to
how to bring IxDA.org up to speed in this arena. This design space
would also include providing better tools for members to dynamically
share perspectives & information and self-generate resources for the
betterment of the community.
So how does that scope sound, Nasir, Dave, Will, al.? Please, do not
derail our current effort.
Writing in pure agony at envisioning near-term delays,
yours truly,
Liz
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Vice-President, IxDA / www.ixda.org
CDO, Devise / www.devise.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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