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

Creative entrepreneurs rely on online platforms to build community and overcome isolated work conditions. However, because of frequent attempts by larger brands to use their work without permission, creative entrepreneurs constrain their use of social platforms to safeguard their intellectual property. In this paper, we describe a multi-year partnership with a feminist makerspace to build a social platform, called Peerdea, that centered creative entrepreneurs' needs such that online feedback, information exchange, 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 Peerdea's design with the makerspace's community of practice, Peerdea leveraged the relationship and trust building that occurs more readily in person for entrepreneurs. In addition, we highlight the role of a community leader who actively managed the relationships between researchers and entrepreneurs, surfaced research failures and championed successes, and provided critical mediation for co-design when participants' livelihoods were implicated.