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Mass-Produced Design
12 Jan, 2012 By: Heather LivingstonTrendy crowdsourcing is fueling product innovation — and the disapproval of some professionals.
Editor's Note: This article was originally published in the Winter 2012 issue of Cadalyst magazine.
Let's assume you're a CAD operator working in an engineering office, harboring enthusiasm for the all-American automobile. Maybe you've tried to break into the automotive design field, but found it difficult to do so — not to mention risky, given the still-questionable health of U.S. car manufacturers. Still, your dream of designing a car persists, and you often find yourself absentmindedly doodling on a napkin. If you had the opportunity to be part of a community that offers design input on a new car — on your own time and without the promise of any compensation — would you participate? For many, the answer is a resounding, "Yes!"
This act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to an unrefined large group of people or community is called crowdsourcing, according to the definition on Wikipedia (which, by the way, likely is the most widely used crowdsourced product in existence). Typically accomplished through an open call for participation, crowdsourcing is becoming increasingly popular in the design world thanks to the Internet and easily accessible CAD technologies.
By the Masses
One U.S. company is going all-in on the crowdsourcing trend. Local Motors, based in Chandler, Arizona, is said to be the first car company to crowdsource all aspects of its design process. The company relies on an open community of contributors — mostly designers, engineers, and car enthusiasts — to create its products and components through competitions on its web site. Its first vehicle in production is a Baja racer called the Rally Fighter. Although street legal, the car is designed for off-road and desert racing in the American Southwest. 
Local Motors relied on crowdsourced design to create the Rally Fighter off-road race car in 18 months' time and at a production cost of "a couple million dollars." Image courtesy of Local Motors.
The brainchild of Jay Rogers and Jeff Jones (who no longer is with the company), Local Motors was created in 2007 to design higher-quality vehicles for niche markets more quickly and cheaply than a traditional car manufacturer by engaging a community of enthusiasts in the development process. At first glance, crowdsourcing auto design might seem like a great way to kill a car company. In Detroit, after all, automakers stay competitive in part by keeping new models and body styles close to the vest.
But what does that strategy ultimately yield? Mike Pisani, senior engineer and builder trainer at Local Motors, explains that in the traditional auto design paradigm, the design side of the brand spends years and millions of dollars creating a new or updated body style with bold, sleek lines, then promotes it as a concept car at an auto show. Once the oohs and aahs have subsided, the body styling gets passed over to the engineers who have to make sure that the car is manufacturable, street-legal, and safe. When the highly touted new vehicle appears on the road 18–24 months later, it often is a watered-down interpretation of the original concept.
"What we do in [the Local Motors] process is avoid those pitfalls early on by keeping both the engineer and designer plugged in, but also — more importantly — the enthusiast," Pisani says. Alexis Fiechter, senior engineer and engineering community development, further explains that by pulling together representatives from design, engineering, and the community at large, Local Motors has created a design process that revolutionizes the opposing design and fabrication processes so that they work in concert. As a result, what takes Detroit multiple years and hundreds of millions of dollars to accomplish, Local Motors did with its crowdsourced Rally Fighter in 18 months at a production cost of "a couple million dollars." 
To illustrate the Rally Fighter's interior, Aurélien François, community liaison and design at Local Motors, used Photoshop to draw on top of a photograph. Image courtesy of Local Motors.
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About the Author: Heather Livingston
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