Guidelines for Successful Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is defined as the process of taking a project or business, in need of investment, and asking a large group of people to supply this investment. This phenomena has exponentially increased in popularity over the last few years and, as a consequence, is now presented as a viable method of funding for designers. Regardless of its new-found popularity, however, statistics show that the vast majority of crowdfunding campaigns dramatically fail with 81% of failed campaigns reaching less than 20% of their funding goal. This poses two questions; how can designers ensure crowdfunding success and can engineers design their products to prepare for crowdfunding? In order to answer the second question, the authors have decided to answer the first with an in-depth study of crowdfunding campaigns that is presented in this paper. Previous attempts to decipher the key to crowdfunding success has left many opportunities for further research. For example, this paper seeks to use both qualitative as well as quantitative methods, it seeks to determine crowdfunding success from both the perspective of the project creator and the funder, and it seeks to consider smaller crowdfunding platforms based in both the UK and abroad. Finally, this paper is unique among other academic explorations of crowdfunding since it translates academic research into a user-friendly guidance tool for practical application. The paper closes by discussing the implications of crowdfunding on the design process and how designing for crowdfunding fits into an overall development of a design framework for the 21st century.