Peerdea: Co-Designing a Peer Support System with Creative Entrepreneurs

DOI

Creative entrepreneurs join makerspaces to build relationships with vetted and trustful peers over time. Yet, as makerspaces increasingly use social technologies to connect members online, such technological adoption is often incongruent with the unique needs of creative entrepreneurs such as safeguarding their reputation and intellectual property. In this paper, we describe a multi-year partnership with a local feminist makerspace to design a social platform, called Peerdea, which centered creative entrepreneurs' needs such that online feedback and information exchange, and goal setting and accountability were more readily available to them. Through an iterative, community-collaborative approach with 46 creative entrepreneurs, we report on the kinds of peer support entrepreneurs sought on Peerdea such as feedback on in-progress and unpolished work. We argue that by aligning the platform's design with the makerspace's community of practice, Peerdea leveraged the relationship and trust building which occurs more readily in-person for entrepreneurs. In addition, we highlight the role of a community mediator who actively managed the relationships between researchers and entrepreneurs, surfaced failures and championed successes, and overall provided a critical link for co-design when participants' livelihoods were implicated.