Citizen Product Design

In today's New York Times, How to Improve It? Ask Those Who Use It., exhorts the notion of user-driven innovation for being able to come up with ideas that product manufacturers never dream of. Examples of citizen product design cited in the article include Burton Snowboards, which evolved from modifications that Jake burton Carpenter made to the Snurfer.

The author points to Denmark with its focus on "janteloven," a particularly Danish philosophy of social equality, as a possible hub for the rise of user-innovation. He also notes a current cultural resurgence of D.I.Y. mentality (see review of D.I.Y. - Design It Yourself) as one of the forces driving the adaptation of democratic design.