Designer role identification based on ecological niche theory

Abstract

The new product design paradigm has arisen as online design communities focus on virtual collaboration. The growth of design communities such as Zhubajie has hastened the shift from traditional design to digital design. These communities are digital ecosystems that include designers, users, managers, and design environments. Understanding the role of designers and the variety of their design performances is necessary to provide individualized incentives for diverse designers. Traditional research, on the other hand, has largely investigated role heterogeneity from the standpoint of user interaction and has rarely differentiated designer variation from an ecological perspective. In this exploratory article, we present an ecological niche theory-based discriminative model of designers and evaluate it using design data from Zhubajie, China's largest design community. We identify four sorts of designers: beginners, imitators, pioneers, and leaders, utilizing design niche and cluster analysis. These four types of designers differ even more in terms of staffing ratios and design performance. At the theoretical level, our research sheds light on differentiating the functions of designers and explaining their various ecological performances. On a practical level, the study instructs participants on how to engage in design tasks in an effective and structured manner.