Resistance to crowdsourcing

What do a Thermomix, a cooking machine, and Fitbod, a fitness app, have in common? Apparently not very much, but if you look a bit closer...

Thermomix from Vorwerk: The best cooking machine ever made so far

Thermomix is a kitchen machine that goes far beyond a simple food-processor, first of all, because it weighs, cooks, chops, crushes, emulsifies, whips, mixes, steams, blends, kneads, grinds simmers, grates and mills. Furthermore and along the last decades this machine has transitioned from pure physical hardware to a digital one: A digital ecosystem allows the user to access a certain set of pre-conceived recipes. These recipes can be organized into collections and attributed to certain times. Another useful feature is the ability to create shopping lists.

The best fitness app on the market so far

Fitbod is a fitness app that runs on mobile devices. The user can access a given set of predefined exercises that have been thoroughly described in words and video. The advantageous features of this app are not only the storage of past exercises and the high grade of personalization but the algorithms based on sports science findings. These automatically calculate and render which exercises, the number of repetitions and sets that need to be accomplished in order to reach the goal that the user has formerly defined.

Both artifacts transform information (recipes and exercises) and material (comestibles and muscles) with the help of a digital internet-connected ecosystem. Both systems offer a certain grade of personalization but the initial information (recipes and exercises) is a non-modifiable set predefined by the companies running those systems.

Unfortunately, this curtailment is not aligned with our currently existing participatory economy. In a participatory economy, the consumer is increasingly desiring to have a say. Nowadays and thanks to the immediateness and directness of the internet, a democratic voice is not limited to politics but also extends to the design of consumer goods and services. Nevertheless and regarding this design, there is a tension observable between the desire for control by companies and the one for influence by the consumer. Apart from a few exceptions as for instance Local Motors or the City Council of Madrid, companies and public institutions rarely source information, be it ideas or other types of information, from crowds, even though it would be free of charge and most probably more beneficial.

So neither Thermomix nor Fitbod take advantage of the possibilities offered by crowdsourcing.