P4A Environmental Scan

Owned by Sepideh Shahi
Last updated: Mar 19, 2015
2 min read

Overview:

This page aims to conduct a quick “environmental scan” to find other platforms that may have similar functionalists as P4A. The main objective of this quick investigation is to find out what has been done to date, where these services fall short, how they do or don’t address edge use cases and diverse needs.

Platforms:

Open IDEO:

Open IDEO is a design and innovation platform that uses a human-centered, collaborative approach to solving complex challenges. OpenIDEO enables people everywhere to collaborate in developing innovative solutions to pressing social and environmental challenges.

Backend Process (Between IDEO and Business Partners):
  • Challenges are created
  • Evaluators are found
  • Project is announced and people are invited to participate

  • Progress is documented

  • Realization of the final solution

Frontend Process (Between IDEO and Participants)
  • Participants sign up for challenges
  • Preliminarily information/research provided by IDEO
  • Share ideas and collaborate with other members
  • Voting for ideas
  • Finalize an idea
  • See the final idea in production
  • Get feedback from users and see the product's impact in the field
ProsCons
  • Projects are curated, so they all have financial backers, evaluators and people who have dedicated their time and energy to work on them.
  • Open collaboration space to share ideas and get feedback from a variety of stakeholders and users
  • Project management tools showing the level of completion in each phase, and next steps to be completed
  • Users can't create projects.
  • Projects are large scale and address larger populations rather than individuals

Go Fund Me:

It's a crowdfunding platform for creating fundraising campaigns and sharing them in social networks to fund a personal project.

Backend Process:
  • Provide tools to help users manage their transactions
  • Provide tools to introduce a campaign on different platforms
  • Provide tools to help users manage and track their campaign
Frontend Process:
  • People create challenges and projects and share with friends and family
  • Backers start funding a project
  • Progress is shown
ProsCons
  • Open to any user.
  • Projects can vary in size, scale, required funding, type, purpose. So, any user can participate and create a project
  • Not all the projects receive the required funding
  • Sometimes projects get buried in a large number of projects

Quirky:

Quirky is an invention company. The company allows inventors to submit their ideas, while also assisting them in the development process.

Backend Process:
  • Evaluate submitted Ideas
  • Vote to select an idea
  • Provide funding for production
  • Provide backend design and engineering expertise
  • Production
Frontend Process:
  • Users submit an idea
  • Users are asked to participate in the voting process
  • Showcasing the final product on the website
  • Help users price their products
ProsCons
  • Gives people a space to present their ideas
  • The ideas that are not voted still remain on the site for design and engineering feedback
  • Users' feedback is integrated in the Quircky's evaluation process
  • Not every submitted idea gets to be built
  • It's mostly related to tangible products and not services

Kickstarter:

It's a crowdfunding platform that helps bring creative projects to life. People who back Kickstarter projects are offered tangible rewards and one of a kind experiences in exchange for their pledges.

Backend Process:
  • Provide tools to help people create projects
  • Handling transactions
  • Tracking project progress
  • Logistics
Frontend Process:
  • Users create a project
  • Showcasing projects on the site
  • Showing campaign progress
  • Sending the rewards to backers
ProsCons
  • Creating a community around a project
  • Offering resources like the creator handbook to help user build a better project and increase their chance of success
  • Projects can vary from small to large and can be in any field