Has anyone checked out this kluster.com? you should probably see a link/banner above.
Any general thoughts, on design by committee, or design by computer program?
I was having a peek at it yesterday. Went as far as signing up. But I never got my confirmation email telling me that I have signed up.
Its an intriguing idea. I think the concept can/will work for certain industries. The design-by-comittee could seriously hamstring some products/programs though.
…Is Kluster advertising on Core77 or did Google see the Kluster in the page content and put the ad on up on this page? There is a Kluster ad in the upper right corner as I type this…creeeepy
yeah, its like the computer can read our minds… I thought that was strange also.
Signed up and poked around for maybe 30 minutes. There aren’t a lot of meaningful projects yet, so it’s hard to see how well it would work. I couldn’t quite get my head around their system of “sparks” and “amps” and “watts,” or how the money gets spread around. I figure it’s kind of a bad sign if it’s not intuitively obvious how it all works. I was considering throwing a project up there just to see if anything good would come back, but I wasn’t clear on whether I would have to actually distribute the money I put up, even on bad ideas, and also how much money would be required to encourage participation. I’ll wait until I understand the system better.
saw the ad the other day, before this thread, so they must be advertising directly with core.
The system seems interesting enough, not so much a piece of software for designing products and services, but a way to use emergence as content generation.
Their stance on IP seems quite naive. They don’t support or participate in IP documentation or protection with the idea that everything is transparent and therefore all the people involved in the process become your built in defenders?!?
Somehow all the people that can take the ideas and designs and exploit them (we all know it takes a lot of investment to get a product launched) simply go away? They say that the ideas that are posted retain some sort of rights, but who enforces it? We’ve all seen how worthless patents are without the means to pursue them.
speaking of advertising…is it just me, or is it odd that there is such a push towards free? I always get weirded out when I see an ad on a free service for another free service or site.
on the other hand…could this be a source of activity and revenue for designers in the future? It does become a little bit of a constant contest, which sort of sucks, but if you are a good designer, your ideas should rise to the top.
also. whats the point of public development? someone needs to pick it up and launch it, yes? if its public and there is no IP protection, why would a producer or manufacturer have any need to reward the project sponsor?
Oh, I agree with a lot of what youve mentioned. I began forming opinions almost immediately but was interested to see what people are thinking.
I like your constant contest comment, and though they have an algorithm that is supposed to give more weight to people with past successes, and possibly credentials?, is this like those companies that hold design contests to get us to all work for free? Does anyone feel that kluster might attempt to de-commoditize this field (thats totally not a real word is it?). Not that we should all get up in arms over it, but just for conversations sake…
Another issue is the design by committee? does that really work?