FrogMob

http://frogmob.frogdesign.com/

I’m curious as to what you guys and gals think about this idea. I have my own reservations on how successful such an endeavor to crowdsource product design research would be because of the type of people they hope to attract to participate. I mean for me, as an ID student, I’m not sure what the incentive is for me to give a company my ideas if it’s simply for research use and I won’t have any real participation (at least with a brief glance on the website, it seems like all it consists of is me taking pictures with no dialogue).

I do think crowdsourcing research and the generation of novel ideas could be really powerful. But unless there is more of an incentive for active participation and dialogue between the masses and the company designers, I have a feeling not many people will want to participate (maybe tens of thousands of people do participate but I would have no idea).

There’s several of these:

OpenIDEO
Quirky

And they work pretty well. I don’t participate, but lots of people do.

Is there more interaction between the companies and the participants in OpenIDEO and Quirky besides this one way communication that seems to be the case at FrogMob?

yes. OpenIDEO and Quirky actually work between company and crowd through the design process. Quirky actually ends up selling the created products, and gives commission to the guy who originally came up with the idea.