I spent a large chunk of my time at Stanford studying Product Design. I studied a combination of mechanical engineering, human-computer interaction, psychology, cognitive science, and computer sciences classes to develop an intradisciplinary program which suited me well for my first job: Product Design at Homestead.
Yet, despite a wide range of classes, I feel like my product design education is going to be made obsolete much quicker than I expected. Community design (epitomized at Threadless.com) is going to replace over-educated people like me.
I only learned about Threadless recently, but I have been a big fan since then. I recently gave my sister a gift certificate to Threadless for her birthday.
Also, because I work in venture capital, people often ask me what is the most interesting idea that I have seen. The Threadless model is usually the most interesting example I have to offer and the first one I describe.
Tim O’Reilly recently wrote about the implications that Threadless.com will have on the design of physical goods in the (near) future. I agree with Tim’s analysis of the implications; here’s a choice quote that really rang true:
Right now, threadless is just making t-shirts. But custom fabrication devices like laser-cutters, water-jets, and 3D printers are currently at about the price points of typesetting machines back when desktop publishing took off in the early 80’s. Even traditional manufacturing techniques can now be harnessed by small companies and individuals, who can hire overseas factories to make short runs of custom designs. How far off is a future in which the creative economy overflows the thin boundary that separates “information” from “stuff”?
My question in the context of Tim’s post is: will Threadless-style community design be a decentralized long tail play with a bunch of small Threadless-style sites cropping up in different verticals OR will Threadless (or CafePress, or some other well-positioned existing service) develop communities across verticals to become the defacto community design site? My guess is decentralization, but I see compelling reasons why both outcomes are possible.
I think the Threadless concept still plays on a nitch. You have to consider the complexity of the design requirements, the amount of relevant expertise that exists, and a sizable community of interest. If it were custom images smacked onto any commodity product, then I think Threadless has something going for them. The more complex the product, the less likely Threadless will work. Scaling from 2d to 3 dimensional products will be a huge leap. I think we’re very far from it. I can see why it might work and why it wouldn’t work. Critical issues would be product turnaround and selection size.
Michelle: I agree that there’s a level of uniqueness at threadless which goes beyond the product. Its the story you get to tell people when they say: “hey, cool shirt.” Whether or not that element of uniqueness can be replicated by other services remains to be seen. The Google Video/YouTube example you bring up does outline a difference in community, however, I believe that different was generated by subtle design choices (YouTube looks and feels like a social network whereas Google Video looks and feels like a faceless service with little-to-no community interaction). With better design, I suspect that Google Video could have gained more traction compared to YouTube.
Eric Ni: I think we’re talking about two different things here. You seem to be saying that complex mechanical engineering will never be replaced by crowdsourced design. I am saying that product design (the look-and-feel, the interaction, the packaging, the art design) will be replaced by crowdsourced design. Nonetheless, I can envision a world in which even MechEng is replaced by crowdsourcing, but that is a much more distant future.
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