Crowdsourcing! Yes or no?

This article talks about the advantages and disadvantages of crowdsourcing your designs.

What is crowd-sourcing?

According to Wikipedia (which is a good example of crowd-sourced sites) outsourcing is “Crowdsourcing is a sourcing model in which individuals or organizations obtain goods or services, including ideas, voting, micro-tasks, and finances, from a large, relatively open and often rapidly-evolving group of participants. As of 2021, crowdsourcing typically involves using the internet to attract and divide work between participants to achieve a cumulative result. The word “crowdsourcing” itself — a portmanteau of “crowd” and “outsourcing” — was allegedly coined in 2005. Crowdsourcing is not necessarily an “online” activity; it existed before Internet access became a household commodity.”

Simply outlined, crowdsourcing represents the act of a corporation or establishment taking an operation once performed by workers And outsourcing it to an indefinable (and typically large) network of individuals within the style of an open decision. this could take the shape of peer production (when the work is performed collaboratively), however is additionally usually undertaken by sole people. The crucial necessity is that the use of the open decision format and therefore the massive network of potential laborers.

What are the advantages of Crowd-Sourcing?

Crowd Sourcing is a great way to practice and work on real projects for beginners or people looking for freelance. It includes projects to include in your portfolio or website. You get to learn from others and their work. It helps you specialize in a particular topic you’re good at. Now, that work-from-home seems prevalent projects can be taken on besides full-time position. This allows for more passive income. Crowd Sourcing will help you to gain potential clients and get recognition for your work which might not be possible while working for someone. In the last article, we talked about how senior and junior designer titles exist due to hierarchy in the corporate structure instead of defined parameters. Crowdsourcing helps to level the playing field for designers from all backgrounds. Quick setup time and fast results are other advantages of crowd-sourcing. It's cheaper than hiring a senior designer or entire agency and has a wider range of submissions from various demographics.

Disadvantages? Maybe!

While enjoying various perks of crowd-sourcing, you should also keep in mind the various disadvantages. Not all clients can communicate well. Some great designs can get overlooked because of certain prejudices. Easy to feel sad during the process and disheartened if the works seem to lag with no end. Crowd-sourcing websites do not have enough measures to discourage cheaters or plagiarised content. For a designer, a client could steal an idea without paying for it as they could be anywhere in the world. One of the major concerns is no guarantee for the payment for work. For clients, these troubles don’t seem to disappear. Quality is not guaranteed, amateur designers might pretend to be senior designers. Lack of security can result in a breach of NDA’s.

Final Thoughts…

In conclusion, we would like to say crowd-sourcing is a personal choice which will obviously help you or could prove to be a huge waste of time. It's like a dating app, maybe you’ll find someone special or just a catfish!

Stay tuned for more articles from Up Studio!