ICED13_collaborative crowd

1

Implementing collaborative crowdsourcing in different design

problems

Gabelloni D., Montelisciani G., Fantoni G.

Department of Civil and Industrial EngineeringUniversity of Pisa (Italy)

2

• Introduction: what is crowdsourcing?

• LILIT crowdsourcing platform

• Case studies• Findings: which kind of problems can be solved

through crowdsourcing

• Conclusion and future works

Table of contents

International Conference on Engineering Design 2013

What is Crowdsourcing?

3

“Crowdsourcing is the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call”.

(Howe 2006)

Examples of crowdsourcing intiatives for NPD: Innocentive, Ninesigma, Atizo etc.


4

The main goal of this study is to propose which kind of product design problems can be solved through crowdsourcing

Goal of the paper


The other aim is to identify the main characteristics of crowdsourcing sessions for NPD and to show the effectiveness of crowdsourcing

for design problems

Crowdsourcing approach

BROADCASTING OF THE

PROBLEM

SUBMISSION OF THE IDEAS BY THE CROWD

EVALUATION AND

SELECTION OF THE BEST IDEA

REWARDING OF THE

WINNER

5

1 2 3 4


A new collaborative crowdsourcing platform

6

LILIT platform was designed with the aim of favoring motivation and creative participation among users. The main set of technologies and innovative tools developed to achieve such purpose are:

• advanced web forum• an IPR tracking tool to safeguard participants ideas• a semi-automatic team builder that analyzes

problems content and selects best solvers from the community

• A tool that provide a series of visual and ideal cues to boost imagination and suggests new uncharted horizons


7

Problem Description

Problem Description

Guided Team

Building

Guided Team

Building

Team

Rewarding and profiles updating

Rewarding and profiles updating

Prizes and Updated Profiles

Problem

Collaborative Session

Collaborative Session

IPR Tracking

IPR Tracking

Solution % Contributions

A new collaborative crowdsourcing platform


Problem classes and problem solving teams and methods

8

Fantoni et al. 2007


Case studies

9

Problem Title 1. Gripper for deformable thin objects handling

2. Can we look into products' life?

3. F.A.C.E. (Facial Automaton for Conveying Emotions)

Class B. Incremental innovation on an entire class of actual products

C. New Architecture for the next product generation

D. Next generation of needs within a field

Purpose Delineate a new concept of industrial gripper basing on precise technical requirements.

Identify strategies to raise food-companies transparency, honesty, as well as customers fidelization.

Discover new fields of application of an human android able to perform several different facial expressions.

Tasks To define an on-demand switchable adhesion technology that can rapidly pick up objects on one side, transport these and fast release them by reversing the adhesion/gripping effect.

To define:- Who is the target consumer;- What kind of product is more suitable with the "investigation";- How: specify means of collection, elaboration and communication to consumers.

To define the field of application and to indicate for which specific tasks the android could be used.


Case studies

10




Purpose Delineate a new concept of industrial gripper basing on precise technical requirements.

Identify strategies to raise food-companies transparency, honesty, as well as customers fidelization.

Discover new fields of application of an human android able to perform several different facial expressions.

Selection of four ideas related to medical,

entertainment, marketing and

security application for a research project

Design of a new gripper based on distributed micro

vacuum cups for the participation to a

financed research call

Definition of a bid concerning

Environmental impacts, Supply chain

transparency, User experience for a private

food company


Case studies

11




Teams size 6 solvers 8 solvers 13 solversSolvers skills Mechanics; Materials

science; RoboticsManagement; Mechanics;

Electronics; Logistics; Marketing

Management; Mechanics; Electronics; Logistics; Bio-Engineering; Innovation;

Marketing; Comp. Science

Session duration 4 days 7 days 17 daysSolvers contributions

19 30 52

Mean number of contributions per user

3 3,7 4

Moderator interventions (%)

20 (51%) 7 (19%) 5 (9%)

IPR Tracking results


12

NPD through crowdsourcing Face-to-face designPROS• access to a wide community of expertise that are not present within the companies • tracking of solvers ideas

• h24 accessible online service allowing the asynchronous participation of solvers•Centrality of the intrinsic incentives

• difficulties in the management of a very large design team

• Difficulties in tracking all the participants contributions• face to face meeting in a specific moment

LIMITS• NO graphic and CAD tools• NO support of prototype• NO chance of audio-visual interaction• For brainstorming sessions high number of ideas to manage• IPR issues

• Usage of graphic tools• Usage of proptotypes• Possibilities of face-to-face interaction

Highlights


Which kind of problems can be solved through crowdsourcing

13

Concept development

System-level design

Detail design

Testing and refinement

EFFECTIVNESS OF CROWDSOURCING

PROBLEM CLASS

D C B A

Average # of generated ideas

Monetary reward size

effectiveness of crowdsourcing

in different design phases


14

• Problems concerning less technical issues and needing very wide teams and heterogeneous expertise are the more suitable for collaborative crowdsourcing design sessions. • Criticalities related to crowdsourcing emerged and have been studied.

Future work will be focused on:• further tests with different problem classes to better

understand when crowdsourcing is effective. • strategies and tools can be used to overcome the identified

criticalities • the design of a new set of tools to improve the collaborative

design (e.g. a graphical virtual environment that enhances the collaborative design experience)

Conclusion and future work


15

Implementing collaborative crowdsourcing in different design

problems

AcknowledgementsThe financial support of Regione Toscana Project LILIT: I Living Labs per l’Industria Toscana (PAR FAS REGIONE TOSCANA Linea di Azione 1.1.a.3) is kindly acknowledged.

[email protected]

Websitehttp://lilit.itc.unipi.it/SitePages/Welcome.aspxhttp://www.leaninglab.org/

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

http://lilit.itc.unipi.it/SitePages/Welcome.aspx

http://www.leaninglab.org/

Technology

ICED13_collaborative crowd