I sat down with Stacey from LILO Life, where she is overseeing the design of their inverted water bottle. We’ve been working with them for several months and one of the bottle necks has been getting a refined, workable design based on the parameters they have already set. They have already worked with some great designers but due to time or budget things haven’t moved as quickly as they would have liked. So they tried a different approach using a site called Upwork.com
Upwork allows you to put your project needs out to bid from designers and developers from around the world. You set project guidelines, milestones and budgets and in LILO’s case, industrial designers from the US, Germany, Serbia, Canada and more expressed interest in the project.
Instead of working with 1 designer, Stacey decided to hire multiple designers to show concept drawings first, and they could use those concepts to inform and choose the final design. It allowed for rapid ideation from multiple outside perspectives. Check out the video to learn more and to see some early concepts.
We’re living in time where the entire planet is a talent pool-and with some research, good communication and verification, you can tap expertise in a cost effective way from around the globe. One of the challenges that many entrepreneurs face if they don’t live in a major metropolitan area is being able to find people who are experts in the fields they need on their team. While it’s not a substitute for finding and building a good team, utilizing these worldwide freelance networks are a way to quickly move your project forward so that you can get your project or service to market, and get opinions from experts from around the world.
