Content Analysis of Online Co-Design Community Interactions: A Case Study of Crowd-Sourced Threadless

Abstract

Abstract The purpose of this research is to understand the nature, size, and lifecycle of online co-design community interactions through a focused case study of a real business with an aim to provide actionable strategies for co-design service innovation and advancement, and help to forecast future trends in crowd-sourced co-design. Crowd-sourced, socially-empowered design environments not only reduce the cost of design sourcing and production, but also address individual user's needs for experience sharing, entertainment, and relationship building in the virtual world. Although a great body of research has been established in both co-design (Hoftijzer, J., 2009; Piller, 2008; Relph-Knight, L., 2008; Piller et al, 2005, 2004; Ives, and Piccoli, 2003) and social network analysis (Mehler, and Skiena, 2009; Lin et al., 2009; Agichtein, and Liu, 2009; Ko et al., 2006; Wu, and Huberman 2004; Suh, and Kim, 2002; Park, and Choi, 2001), they often appear to be in two separate fields. Our study aims to better und...