#crowdsourced design

10 days ago, I began using crowdsource design to create my logo, and I decided to use two competing services, DesignCrowd and 99designs.  I created identical contests, put up equivalent prize money on each site, and dedicated equal time and effort to both sites.  My goal was to see which one gave me the better result, and to evaluate the user experience and services of each site.

My full-time job is being a product owner at a technology company.  That said, I work with designers and developers every day, and I felt very compelled to see how these two design sites operate.  My design contests will end tonight on both sites, and in the upcoming week I will pick a final design from each site and blog about my experiences using each service.

The main areas in which I will compare the two sites are:

Contest setup

Design reviewing process

Customer service

Final design

Earlier this week, Google announced that they completed their selection of the Glass Explorers and that they would be contacting winners over the following few days.  In the same post, they also mentioned that they received a lof of applications from businesses, and that they decided not to grant any of them into the Explorer program.  I think that effectively rules out my application since I claimed that I would use it to live-blog and document the creation of my startup.

But, the overall process was fun.  Even though my Glass application wasn't very clear and my video was amateurish, I learned a ton and enjoyed myself along the way.

Up next: the selection of my logo for SoundQuest.  It took a little longer than expected to define my business principles, but I've got them now and I've begun using crowd source design.  I'll blog the details in the next post.