Lessons We’ve Learned About Engaging Crowds – The Betacup Project
9th June 10
Posted in 20% project, Sustainability, collaboration, crowdsourcing
As many of you know, I’m involved with a mass collaboration effort (more on collaboration vs. crowd sourcing here) to rethink the portable / disposable coffee drinking experience. You see, the vast majority of to-go coffee cups aren’t recyclable, and it turns out we really like our coffee. Tens of billions of energy-inefficient cups end up in landfills every year. This post isn’t about the issue, but if you’re interested, please visit thebetacup.com (there’s still time to vote, rate, and improve upon on the ideas submitted, which is critical to identifying a solution).
This post is about 3 key lessons I’ve learned regarding the engagement of crowds over the course of this process.
1. Money is … well, money.
Money is a wonderful incentive. We heard from a number of people solely motivated by cash. It broadened the audience beyond the group that would have turned up only for the purpose of environmental altruism. However, when money’s at stake, the group is broader, but less collaborative. Some people would accuse others of stealing their ideas; others would respond within minutes to a new idea posted claiming it was too similar to something they’d submitted. I’ve been a part of a number of efforts like this now and money has always been a core incentive. But tying it to a cause illustrated how it can actually work against collaboration on occasion. Specifically, it undermined the bucket brigade reward system we hoped would occur through our community management.
I’m not saying money always has a negative impact, but understanding its limitations is critical in retrospect. It was great for the first part of the process (number of ideas, effort put into submissions, pass-along), but it was potentially detrimental to the second half (refining unpopular but high potential ideas, collaboration across related ideas, gaming of the system).
2. Employ a boring governing body.
Our friend @faris has regularly made the comment that crowds aren’t inherently wise regardless of book titles that have infiltrated innovations culture, which I couldn’t agree with more. In fact, as someone who has tried to wrangle a crowd on multiple occasions, I’ve always assumed there was a dangerous herd mentality I had to police against. In the case of Betacup, I was determined to not let the crowd’s opinion keep me from reading every single submission as a jury member. However, the crowd actually did an incredible job bubbling up the best / freshest / most effective ideas. Startlingly so, in fact. However, the few times I deviated in opinion from the crowd’s most influential members were on ideas that were, well, boring.
Crowds tend to collectively take a “wow me” approach (explains the current state of news media, no?). That works really well at encouraging new types of thought on an ongoing issue like this one, but it actually does some ideas a disservice. Some simple, boring ideas were actually very effective at solving parts of this complex issue (for example, a collection bin shaped like a tube to reduce the probability that other junk or recyclables would be placed in it). Yet these boring ideas were ignored, generating few views, comments, or ratings. My lesson here was of the importance of bringing in a governing group that has a bias of their own, in the other direction. People who value simplicity and boring effectiveness. That combination can yield powerful results to solve problems.
3. Don’t prescribe formats.
We made a bold choice when deciding what form Betacup submissions should take: any. It was why the highly flexible and open Jovoto platform worked beautifully for the type of problem-solving we needed. The coffee cup issue sounds like a design one on the surface: invent a design that’s recyclable but still fits in a cup holder, is cheap, can handle heat, and feels natural on the lips. But it’s actually quite layered. This problem is as much about human behavior and access to manufacturing and disposal resources as it is about engineering. By opening up the submission format, Betacup became accessible to people of all disciplines. When the problem is as ubiquitous yet unknown as disposable cups, it’s critical we have experts from diverse fields weigh in. Without it, we wouldn’t have had any intersectional innovation, and this problem demands it.
What’s impressive about crowds when they’re given opportunities like this is that individuals don’t introduce themselves as engineers, or designers, or marketers. They just solve a problem. And when you look at what they accomplished, you know different disciplines had to be involved, but the lines are too blurry to see where or how.
As I look back on the submission and collaboration process, I think we got a lot of things right, and certainly some things wrong. The lessons above were the most valuable for me as someone interested in such things. They may apply to a very specific collaboration environment: problem solving & innovation (not necessarily design or creative services), but they’ve changed the way I think about crowds. Now I just hope the 300+ ideas change the way we collectively think about our coffee habits.
thebetacup: 60 Seconds To Save The World from the betacup on Vimeo.
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To see, rate and comment on the submissions, visit the contest page. To follow our journey toward a solution, follow @thebetacup.
nicely articulated. I really like the bucket brigade concept.
while there is a formal jury, most of the ratings and feedback have come from the community. however, a key challenge has been the “popularity contest” problem you describe.
it goes beyond the highly polished and well presented ideas, to include a range of promotional tactics to garner more support and ultimately favorable ratings.
this is all fine and well, but comments and feedback and quickly devolve into a less useful/thoughtful if they are indeed just for the sake of getting some attention back to your idea.
the folks at jovoto have hosted a pretty lengthly discussion just around rating behavior in which some really interesting ideas were posted from randomizing ideas for review (to reduce re-enforcement of ratings on good ideas and neglect of the more boring ideas) to requiring certain amounts of participation before being being able to do things like rating (i.e. placing a hight bar and value on the rating aspect).
as you point out, we’ve managed to encourage some fantastic submissions, but personally, I think we can do much better and giving feedback and evaluating. this is where we’ll be spending some time working with the current community, going forward.
anyway
Well put. Thanks, Saneel. It’s been great crowdsourcing with you.
Interacting with a vast amount of diverse talent driven by various personal and professional motivations it is no wonder that such a task is heavily driven by and of course sometimes troubled by the dynamics this clash of talent, perspectives and understanding rely upon.
In an open environment focused primarily on ideation, resting upon a sustainable partnership between talent and businesses it is nice to see that people stick around and enjoy the social aspects of it. This of course enables a certain, lets say community-enabled behavior such as supporting your friends by rating for their submissions or commenting in a rather dull and cheering way.
As in this case it is a pleasure to work with such an experienced jury, to make sure that change actually gets the best possible chance by making the right decisions from an inter-mediating point of view.
In terms of the “popularity”- aspects a look into the database actually derives pretty interesting insight and within a few weeks the system is tweaked so that it actually benefits of “popularity” without affecting the collective decision made by the overall community.
Anyways, great to have you on board and thanks for your thoughts – would love to share some of these insights and discuss the tweaks at some point.
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Great post, Saneel.
Perhaps an additional lesson may be to have someone as a point person for the community to communicate with and who takes an active role in the reverse — communicating with the community. Did you find that was necessary and integral to the Beta Cup project?
Thanks so much for your time and comments James. The short answer is absolutely yes. The Jovoto platform offered a set of community managers, one of which was dedicated entirely to Betacup. She did everything from getting contributors to think differently to asking clarifying questions to policing disputes. Most important of all, she ensured we were gracious and committed hosts. She was key to our “communication scaffolding.”
Nice! That’s exactly what we’ve found is the key too — having a warm voice to guide and support the community.
It’s amazing what a little human contact can do!
And it’s essential to have the experience of that tacit knowledge inform the strategic direction. Well done.