Who are your design heroes? Exploring user roles in a co-creation community

Abstract

Co-creation with users in online communities proved to be a powerful means for product innovation. Crowdsourcing ideas in a contest setting within a community represents an effective method to gather a variety of ideas within a short time and with reasonable financial investment. Users benefit as well. They can be part of industrial value creation, enjoy interacting with a company and socializing with other users, and win a prize. Interestingly, many users not only compete for prizes, but also collaborate with others by giving feedback and exchanging ideas. Thus, we find high heterogeneity among users which asks for adequate community management (incentives, facilitation, communication etc.). In this study, we explore user roles and communication patterns in an industrial design contest community by applying cluster analysis based on network measures and content analysis. Four user roles were found that differ in communication and contribution behavior.