393 User Participation in Design - Volume 1 - eCAADe 30 | INTRODUCTION In recent years the term ‘collective intelligence’ and its potential relationship to ‘collective design’ has ap- peared widely over a broad spectrum of scientifc, sociological and design studies. In order to adapt the culture of design to emerging models of social networking as a potential medium for collectively creation of design solutions there is a need to ex- plore and understand the potential of ‘crowdsourc- ing’ to function as a social medium for design. The following paper makes an attempt to defne the the- oretical and operative sources of concepts as well as the developmental issues that might promote crowdsourcing as the basis for collective design as an open-source design environment. CROWDSOURCING: THEORY, CONCEPTS, ISSUES Collective intelligence is one of the seminal founda- tional concepts of this emerging feld. It has been described as ‘universally distributed intelligence’ and as the ‘universality of intelligence’ (Lévy, 1997). In ‘team-based collective intelligence groups’ the participants usually focus on achieving a predict- able and well-defned outcome. The efectiveness of such team-based groups in distributed space is usu- ally related to the limitation of the number of par- ticipants and the strategies of interaction. New prin- ciples were later introduced in order to overcome such limitations; the provision of command and control structures were established and supported by standards, norms and shared language to sup- port the ‘interoperability’ of collective knowledge. Crowdsourcing Theoretical framework, computational environments and design scenarios Rivka Oxman 1 , Ning Gu 2 1 Technion, Israel, 2 The University of Newcastle, Australia 1 rivkao@gmail.com, 2 ning.gu@newcastle.edu.au Abstract. Crowdsourcing is a new concept for breaking with the traditional hierarchical model of collaborative design. Crowdsourcing is based on web-based contributions of individuals in a decentralized digital environment that supports the sharing of opinions and creative ideas. This article develops the concepts and issues associated with the possibility of crowdsourcing design as well as discussing its relationship to prior developments of media environments for collaborative design. Three scenarios for crowdsourcing in architectural design are developed as a basis for considering the requirements for the design and function of crowdsourcing media environments in architectural design. Keywords. Digital design; social network; creative design; collaborative design; crowdsourcing; crowdsourcing design.