Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or servicesincluding ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and financesfor payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digital platforms to attract and divide work between participants to achieve a cumulative result. Crowdsourcing is not limited to online activity, however, and there are various historical examples of crowdsourcing. The word crowdsourcing is a portmanteau of "crowd" and "outsourcing". In contrast to outsourcing, crowdsourcing usually involves less specific and more public groups of participants.Advantages of using crowdsourcing include lowered costs, improved speed, improved quality, increased flexibility, and/or increased scalability of the work, as well as promoting diversity. Crowdsourcing methods include competitions, virtual labor markets, open online collaboration and data donation. Some forms of crowdsourcing, such as in "idea competitions" or "innovation contests" provide ways for organizations to learn beyond the "base of minds" provided by their employees (e.g. Lego Ideas). Commercial platforms, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, match microtasks submitted by requesters to workers who perform them. Crowdsourcing is also used by nonprofit organizations to develop common goods, such as Wikipedia.
Community Based Design, at its core, represents a paradigm shift in how we approach problem-solving and creation within societal contexts. It moves away from the traditional top-down approach, where experts or authorities dictate solutions, towards a collaborative model.
Such details provide a deeper understanding and appreciation for Community-Based Design.
Furthermore, visual representations like the one above help us fully grasp the concept of Community-Based Design.
