IDEO CoLab Ventures: Creative Residency

Design Research, Communications, Web3

This residency began as an exploration of web3 social media, but my interests quickly led me to research how new creative frontiers allow creators to build and monetize their work alone and with collaborators. These inquiries led to research in demand driven production, new financial models in creator economies, connected goods, iterative physical production, and fractal ownership.

Rather than just interviewing actors and writing about this emerging space, I, and partners at Crowdmuse, a permissionless marketplace that transforms supply chains and creative production, worked together to run a design competition to explore themes around the adoption of 3D design, genAI, and digital tools that help creators showcase and sell digital versions of physical products. These systems allow for both reduced waste and more flexible demand-driven production models.

Creators submitted their designs to Crowdmuse and then we hosted a community vote on JokeRace. This competition not only allowed us to explore the mechanics of the new creator economy, but also our assumptions around onchain social hierarchies, onchain voting tools, and how individuals can leverage community engagement and support for social commerce and the distribution.

In the articles below you can find my musings as well as our competition retrospective.