Cooks or cobblers?

Abstract

A sketch combination system is introduced and tested: a crowd of 1047 participated in an iterative process of design, evaluation and combination. Specifically, participants in a crowdsourcing marketplace sketched chairs for children. One crowd created a first generation of chairs, and then successive crowds created new generations by combining the chairs made by previous crowds. Other participants evaluated the chairs. The crowd judged the chairs from the third generation more creative than those from the first generation. An analysis of the design evolution shows that participants inherited and modified presented features, and also added new features. These findings suggest that crowd based design processes may be effective, and point the way toward computer-human interactions that might further encourage crowd creativity.