How We Work

Problem · Shape · Make

The 8 phases

Every product on ID Projects moves through the same open framework, tracked with a live “Phase X of 8” marker from the day the problem is posted. Below: each phase, and what actually gets published at it.

Phases 01–08 · worked example

See it live on ID001 ☉

Who does what

The community proposes problems, votes and pre-commits on what’s worth pursuing, tests prototypes before they’re finished, and tells us plainly when something’s wrong. That’s real influence over what gets made.

Design and manufacturing decisions — and the execution behind them — stay with the ID Projects team. That includes the unglamorous work: bill of materials, supplier sourcing, quality control, production logistics. It’s the part that sinks a lot of crowdfunded projects when a creator has to learn manufacturing on a deadline. We already do it for a living, so it stays off the community’s plate.

In short: the community shapes and vets. It doesn’t build.

Why ID Projects instead of crowdfunding

Crowdfunding validates an idea and takes a payment — the creator handles everything else, which is why fulfillment complaints are so common there. ID Projects keeps building and iterating happening on the platform itself: proposing, concepting, prototyping, and testing all take place here, in the open, before you’re ever asked to commit money.

Crowdfunding can’t easily bolt this on. Platform-neutrality is core to what it does — it hosts creation for millions of unrelated projects. Retained curation, where one team makes the design and manufacturing calls across every product, is a different posture: it means being one opinionated product company, not neutral infrastructure. That’s a structural difference, not just a missing feature.

Can I get the same product again later?

Each production run is sized to what actually got committed during the Commitment phase — not a speculative guess, and not open-ended restocking. We can’t promise the same product comes back around for a second run.

What we can promise: the platform doesn’t stop at delivery. There’s always a next problem in the queue, and the same community process starts again.

What happens to problems that don’t get picked?

Most ideas people have about a product that’s missing, or badly done, get shelved — not because they’re bad ideas, but because turning one into an actual product isn’t something any one person knows how to do alone. Bringing it to ID Projects doesn’t guarantee it becomes a product. It does guarantee it goes through a real process — posted, discussed, and either taken forward or turned down with a stated reason. “Why we said no” write-ups are part of the documentation, same as everything else.