While reading some of my favourite blogs, I stumbled upon two examples of Web 2.0 services that enable people to redesign products or, way better, that crowdsource the redesign process. The first one is RedesignMe.com: Open Innovation in Product Creation

RedesignMe aims to improve the products and services around us by collectively rethinking bad products into better products and good ideas into great ideas

RedesignMe was the first Web 2.0 initiative focusing on co-creation between companies and their customers. Users of the site do not only comment on their experience with everyday products, but are actively proposing better designs.

The website has two sections: Design Critique and RDM Challenges.

With Design Critique, RedesignMe collects the best product improvements based on the users input and communicates that back to the original product designers & producers. RedesignMe contacts the companies behind the products in question to show them the feedback and encourages them to reply directly to the users and eventually fix the problems. RedesignMe also encourages the companies to work more closely with their end-users by setting up RDM Challenges.

RDM Challenges are conceptual or design-driven challenges initiated by companies that want to involve their customers more closely into their product development process. In this way companies pay a fee to RedesignMe, which is the main source of income. RDM Challenges clearly describe a (design) problem and the users, the Redesigners, are rewarded for their feedback through the service’s RDM system. There is no reputation system in the service that moves the users; they redesign products in order to improve them and then to collect points (RDMs) which they can later convert into prizes in the RDM Shop.
The users’ feedback can be in form of a comment, sketch, set of pictures, mood-board, movie, prototype or total redesign. Here’s an example of the tools with which the user can redesign the products:

RDM Challenges enable the companies to receive feedback from their customers while they are preparing for or are in the middle of the development process of a new product or service. Through RedesignMe’s system and network a company can easily encourage its customers to share information about their wishes, preferences, thoughts and ideas, in order to create products that closely match the expectations of the end-users. RDM Challenges can be set to have restrictive access, be on invitation only or completely open, all depending on the level of open-innovation desired.
Through the “RedesignMe Extensible Platform” RedesignMe.com can deliver the functionality of its website also to companies’ websites or intra/extranet, where they conserve their own brand-identity while making use of RedesignMe’s user base, idea and product database and core functionality.

Every user can participate in a RDM Challenges in this way:

1. carefully reading the RDM Challenge Description;
2. creating and uploading his/her Redesign;
3. his/her Redesign is rated by the Company & the Community (or Crowd);
4. top rated Redesigns make RDMs;

This is the case of an Open P2P Community that shows a marketplace participation: a marketplace where different companies and their users meet in order to redesign products and services. Note that its platform has been designed in order to being deployed even to the companies’ websites: in this way the marketplace can be divided and distributed.

via | Ponoko

Tags: Crowdsourcing, Design, Web 2.0