Open Design definition by authors:
p15 - Introduction - Marleen Stikker - Open design is part of a growing possibilitarian movement. Rooted in information and communication technology, it gives us all the instruments to become one-man factory, the world plater operating from a small back room.
p16- Possibilitarians engage in open design as a process, trusting their own abilities to guide that process. And as possibilitarians, they pursue strategies to be inclusive, to involve others, to build bridges between opposite positions: North-South, Old0young, traditional- experimental. Possibilitarians represent a
sharing culture which is at the core of open design.
As such, they trusty others to make their own contributions and to build upon what has been shared.
Trust, responsibility and reciprocity are important ingredients in a open, sharing culture... As with open data, open design will have to involve the
actual end users, not organizations, panels or marketers.
p17- (history) -Open design can be viewed as the latest in a long time of similar developments, starting with the first PCs, the Ataris, Amigas, Commodores and Sinclairs- the arrival of the internet, of mobile communication... people with that
hacker-artist-activist attitude. They (the pioneers) of our time are not taking the world at face value, as a given from outsider; rather, they see the world as something you can pry open, something you can
tinker with.
So they started to experiment.
p18- Examples of the opposite are emerging, and the connection between modern technology and craft traditions is sometimes aptly named
hyper-craft. The implications for
education are huge, and hyper-craft broadens the perspectives in education - not only for design, but for all crafts...Its focus is on the process of making itself and the responsibilities that makers take- for the monsters they may be creating, for the process of creating, and for the ingredients used.
When academic knowledge started to disappear behind the paywalls of large publishers. The open access movement created new ways to
make it accessible again for everybody.
Open Design definition by authors:
p25 - Orchestral Manoeuvres in Design - Paul Atkinson - Open design is the internet-enabled collaborative creative of artefacts by a dispersed group of otherwise unrelated individuals. As purely creative exercise, open design promotes the unprecedented sharing of knowledge between the professional and amateur designer, breaking down unnecessary barriers. When carried our for the common good rather than for capital gain or profit, open design allows the sharing of creative skills between developed and undeveloped nations for humanitarian benefits countering the ramifications of global product consumerism.
p30 - The professional designer will become an agent of design, with the audience of end users selecting which designer's system they wish to employ
p31 - Designers will have to learn to develop systems that will be used by others rather than trying to remain the sole author of their own work. And while it might seem daunting for the designer to be further removed from the end product they design, it is in fact a huge opportunity for the designer to become far more closely involved with the process of production than before, with all the associated knowledge and awareness of material quality and behaviour that implies.
Open Design definition by authors:
p35 - Redesigning Design - Jos de Mul - The open design movement seems to be part of a shift in the world of design from form via content to context, or from syntax via semantics to pragmatics, as my colleague Henk Oosterling expressed it in his Premsela Lecture last year.
p36- Like other fields influenced by the 'open movement' such as open source software, open science, and open technology, open design is closely connected with the rise of computers and internet. In view of this intrinsic association, the fundamental characteristics of the digital domain are worth examining further.
To develop the positive aspect of open design without falling prey to its pitfalls, the designer should not abandon his activities as a designer; rather, the designer should
redesign the activities themselves. The designer of the future has to become a database designer, a
meta-designer, not designing objects, but shaping a design space in which unskilled users can access user-friendly environments in which they can design their own objects (
template culture)
Open Design definition by authors:
p43- Into the Open - John Thackara - Openness is more than a commercial and cultural issue, it's a matter of
survival. Open design is one of the preconditions for the continuous, collaborative, social modes of enquiry and actions that are needed.
Open Design definition by authors:
p49- The Generative Bedrock of Open Design - Michel Avital
Open design signifies open -access digital blueprints that can be adapted at will to meet situational requirements, and can subsequently be used by consumers to fabricate products on demand by commercial, off-the-shelf production methods. The open design model diminishes the traditional vertical value chain that is formed by
designer-manufacturer-distributor-consumer relationships and offers an alternative.
open web of direct links between designers and consumers. The resulting short-spanned, transient and non-hierarchical relationships forge dynamic and flexible arrays of design blueprints that are not only user-centred but also
user-driven.
The discourse on open design encompasses a multitude of considerations: for example, design specification, fabrication, collaborative action, supply and value chain management, business models, legal aspects, technological infrastructure and normative values. The complexity of this ecology can be intangible to some extent by classifying the underlying issues of open design into 4 interdependent conceptual layers:
1.
Object layer:
refers to the
design blueprints that enables and constrains the specification of the design artefacts. This layer encompasses the design and distribution of open design objects, that is, configurative and extensible blueprints that are available under open access license in online public repositories
2.
Process layer:
refers to the
means of products that enables and constrains the fabrication of the design objects. This layer encompasses open design fabrication, that is, the application and operation of commercial, off-the-shelf machinery like printers, laser cutters or CNC machines tools to product customized products with no custom-built moulds or machines
3.
Practice layer:
refers to the
work practices that enable and constrains the conception of the design processes. This layer encompasses open design culture, that is, the related nomenclature, professional standards, craftsmanship, rules of the trade, code of conduct, rituals and normative values.
4.
Infrastructure layer:
refers to the
underlying institutional and technical foundation that enable and constrain the vitality of the design practices. This layer encompasses open design substructures that is, the related legal system, market structure and technical architecture that govern open design activities and future growth.
p54 - Generative design refers to the design considerations in developing an array of artefacts and interactions that support and enhance generative capacity- that is, the considerations in designing systems that are conducive to the ability of a person or group to produce new configurations and possibilities, to reframe the way we see and understand the world, and to challenge the normative status quo. People's generative capacity is a key source of innovation; by definition, generative design aims to encapsulate the design directives that enhance and complement that human capacity.
p57 -From Push to Pull
Open design paves the way to the next iteration in the massive shift from push to pull business models.
In general, push business models are based on top-down value chains where a line of a few mass-producted products is distributed broadly through value-driven downstream marketing techniques. In conrtast, pull business models are based on
bottom-up value chains where a line of customer-configured products are distributed individually through features-driven upstream marketing techniques.
Wheres push models are based on economies of scale and emphasize cost efficienty, pull models are based on flexible manufacturing and emphasize mass customization.
Open Design definition by authors:
p63- Authors and Owners - Andrew Katz - A design is an open design if it bears 4 freedoms.
1. The freedom to use the design, including making items based on it, for any purpose.
2. The freedom to study how to design works, and change it to make it do what you wish
3. The freedom to redistribute copies of the design so you can help your neighbour
4. The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions of the design to others so the whole community can benefit from your changes. Access to the design documents is a precondition from these freedoms.
p64 - The one-to-many broadcast distribution model distorted our perception of creativity. A key characteristic of one-to-many distribution is the role of the gatekeeper: the corporation which decides what we, the public, get to read, watch or listen to. The roles of creator and consumer are starkly defined and contrasted.
As the public grew accustomed to the idea of passive consumption. Creativity became increasingly marginalized, at least in those areas covered by copyright. (activism)
Creativity was perceived as capable of flourishing only through the patronage of the movie studios, the record companies or the TV stations.
The industrial technology behind printing, broadcasting and vinyl duplication is expensive. Copyright law grants a monopoly which enables the distributors of media to invest in the capital infrastructure requited for their packaging and distribution. These are the businesses which grew fat on the monopolies so granted, and they succeeded in
convincing the public that it was the corporations' role to provide, and the public's role to pay and consume.
p65- Thomas Jefferson
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it si the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no on possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, received instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, received light without darkening me... Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property"
Open Design definition by authors:
p77- Made in my Backyard - Bre Pettis - When I design something, O share it so that others can modify it, hack it, and use it however they like. That's open design.
Open Design definition by authors:
p87- Libraries of the Peer Production Era - Peter Troxler - Open design is a practice that borrows its operating principles from open source software and applies them in the domain of design. It conveys knowledge about its products transparently, communicating its nature within the products themselves. As a peer-oriented form of production, it makes production tools, methods and experience accessible to everybody as a common infrastructure; it gives people options for controlling their productivity. It is continually evolving, appearing and reappearing in various shapes, sometimes producing contradictory manifestation.
p88- The business, or rather, the benefits of commons-based peer-production are not uniquely monetary. The rewards includes indirect mechanisms, such as the positive effects of learning on
future earnings or enhanced reputation, which in turn can lead to future (paid) contracts for consultancy, customization maintenance or other services. The business also includes what economists call hedonic rewards: not consumption, but the act of creation gives pleasure to the prosumers. Peer recognition is another physiological reward, involving ego gratification. This part of the business is an exchange of production for consumption that does not rely on monetary means.
p89- Balka, Raasch and Herstatt "IN open design communities, tangible objects can be developed in very similar fashion to software, one could even say that people treat a design as source code to a physical object and change the object via changing the source... open parts strategies in open design are crafted at the component level, rather than that entire design... the degree of openness differs significantly between software and hardware components, in the sense that software is more transparent, accessible, and replicable than hardware (WYS=WYG). Indeed, despite the many academic discussions that support such a view, it is naive to believe that open source software practices could be copied to and applied the open design real, without any alteration, ignoring the constraints and opportunities that the materiality of design entails.
p 91- Yet many of these open source hardware components - Arduino and MakerBot being the most prominent examples - are providing open source ingredients to a peer production ecosystem at a price that outweighs the pain of sourcing all the parts, having to deal with manual assembly, or facing issues of incompatibility. As components, they can become building blocks of higher- order machines. In
that sense, they function as a platform for open source development. As far as the components themselves are concerned, they are open source in the sense that their internal structure and functioning are made transparent and potentially modifiable (blueprints)
As flat- packed, self-assembled, open source machines, they are the choices of many peer- producers and form an important basis for high decentralized - and highly customized - production. It becomes possible to own machines at the price of building them rather than the price of buying them pre-assembled. (Downloadable design) and their open source nature makes it easier to adapt them to specific requirements or even repurpose them in novel ways.
p93- TechShops, Hackerspaces and Fab Labs are all providing facilities and knowledge as apart or rather as a basis of a commons. The environment in which TechShops operate is strictly commercial. Peer production might happen by accident, but there seem to be no incentives to support it. As as ' incubator for the atomic age', they remain safely in the market arena, yet they are effectively creating opportunities for decentralized prototyping and production.
In contrast., Hackerspaces live up to their name, definition and history by building on non-market, sometimes even anti-market (manifestos) commons-based principles. Their core focus is doing personal and collective projects. And Hackerspaces are far from exclusive; they frequently include casual users who might spend a lot of time in hackerspaces. Nick Farr even speculates that those casual users are "perhaps making more significant contributions that regular members, but decline to officially join for many reasons.
The Fab Labs' commitment to a commons is clear from how they are structured. Fab Labs subscribe to a charter which, among other things, stipulates open access, establishes peer learning as a core feature and requires that "designs and processes developed in fab labs must remain available for individual use" in the sam clause, however, the charter also allows for intellectual property to be protected "however you choose". Underlining this point, it explicitly continues that "commercial activities can be incubated in fab labs", which cautioning against potential conflict with open access, and encouraging business activity to grow beyond the lab and to give back to the inventors, labs and networks that contributed to their success. Fab Labs incorporated an interesting mix of characteristics that might seem contradictory at first, but might well be considered the best practical approximation of Benkler's networked information economy (trend: network society)
p93- The business proposals of open source hardware and the carious fabbing initiatives are not equally straightforward in every case... Common-based peer production has found ways to generate monetary returns by selling open source products, charging memberships fees in open source communities, or providing paid education and manufacturing services. To some extent, the strong appeal of commons-based peer production can probably be attributed in part to its hedonic rewards: the pleasure of being creative, the pride of recognition by peers, the feeling of achievement and status. However, there are no clear examples of indirect mechanism deriving tangible benefits from these hedonic rewards, such as makers getting corporate development assignments or contracts as product managers thanks to their reputation in open hardware design...
Open Design definition by authors:
p99 - No more Bestsellers - Joost Smiers - the appropriate term is notopen design, but the open designer. The open designer does not spend any time suing other designers. Originality? Any image has been inspired by many other images.
p100- we have to seriously question whether or not we really need to have intellectual property rights. My main concern, in the context of copyright for artists, entertainers and designers, was that they should have the change to make a living. There can be no doubt that the present copyright system is extremely beneficial for a few best-selling artists, and fails almost entirely to beenfit the majority of creative professionals. How can the market be improved to include a better financial situation for most of the artists and designers? Moreover, can we achieve that goal by keeping the sources of our knowledge and creativity in common hands instead of privatizing them?
p101- What if we should abandon copyright?
- many more artists should be able to earn a reasonable income from their work
- the resources of production, distribution and promotion should have numerous owners and access should be given more liberally
- en extensive database of knowledge and artistic creativity should exist in the public domain, freely available to all
- audiences should not be overwhelmed by PR efforts aimed at marketing a small number of top stars. Instead people should be freely exposed to a wide variety of cultural expressions, from which they can make their own choices.
Ho might all this be achieved?... cultural entrepreneur. This individual could be the artist or designer himself, or someone who represents him or her, or a producer, publisher or commissioning client.
p104- Possible without copyright laws
- 'Prime mover' effect. The original publisher or producer is the first in the market, which gives him an advantage. Naturally, with digitization, that prime over effect can diminish to a few minutes, but that's not an insurmountable problem in itself. Most artistic work is not famous enough for free-riders to fall on it like hawks.
- Artists and related entrepreneurs add a specific value to their work that no one else can imitate. Building up a reputation may not be half the work, but it is a significant factor. (assuming that there are no longer any dominant parties in the market. There are no longer any big companies to think they could easily 'steal' a recently published and well-received work because, for example, they control the distribution and promotion channels
- There can now be no question of theft; still, free-rider behaviour is an undesirable occurrence. In fact, there are twenty, thirty , forty, or innumerable other companies that could come up with the same idea. With this reality in mind, it becomes less likely, even very unlikely, that another company will put the money and effort into remarketing a work that has already been released... Investments go hopelessly up in smoke when numerous parties are willing to take a free-rider gamble. In that case, the first creator almost certainly remind the only one to continue exploiting the work; no one benefits from trying to take it over.
Abolishing copyright should not be an isolated action. It has to be accompanies by the application of competition or anti-trust law and market regulation in favour of diversity of cultural ownership and content.
best sellers --> well sellers
Open Design definition by authors:
p109- The Beginning of a Beginning of the Beginning of a Trend - Peter Troxler
Open Design aims to transform industrial design to become relevant in a globally networked information society. For him, Open design is based on two preconditions: An Open Design is CAD information published online under a Creative Commons license to be downloaded, produced, copied and modified. An Open Design is produced directly from file by CNC machines and without special tooling. These preconditions infer that all technically conforming Open Designs and their derivatives are continuously available for production, in any number, with no tooling investment, anywhere and by anyone.
p112- "Open Design is not an intellectual property trap. It is not something I do to get money out of suing companies. I consider my audience to be designers and makers and anyone who is interested in creating. The intellectual property rights, the Creative Commons license I publish it under, these are just a legal framework that supports my work, but they are not ar the centre, The centre is creativity through designing objects."
"Copyright protection gives you the big guns, but can you afford the ammunition? You can register your intellectual property, but you don't usually have the money to defend it. This is life; the big fish eat the little fish."
p113 - Open Design and that anybody else could copy it and build it, so there is an interesting conflict between the rarity of an object and the fact that anybody can copy it. Even so, they got the prototype. There is no real difference between the prototype and a copy. So putting yourself in that situation is an interesting concept. I wanted to do it that way, displaying things in a gallery.It takes Open Design and the concomitant legal copying of an object and brings about a confrontation with the collector's situation, collecting rare things or limited editions. The limited edition is exactly the same as any other copy to be produced anywhere by anybody, legally. This is an interesting intellectual puzzle.
p115 - "The presence of the designs on the web gives a large number of designers, producers and entrepreneurs access to creative content to experiment with. It can be considered as a business opportunity, on a 'try before you buy' basis. It also creates space for new business practices that are unknown in 'normal' circumstances". Ronen writes in his 2009 Open Design primer.
At a fairly low cost, a designer can select suitable producers and sell products at a price he or she thinks it appropriate.
"I have to find a ways to ensure that my creativity will not stop at the producer's front door. I will be independent in pursuing that goal."
Open Design definition by authors:
p119 - Joris Laarman's experiments with Open Source Design - Gabrielle Kennedy
Open Design as "a complex theme that has not yet revealed all its twists and turns Essentially, open design offers a new economic model for design that distributes power among creative professionals and local manufacturers, rather than concentrating it in centralized industrial brands."
p120- "I am not necessary against how design is now... but I do think the internet can provide a more honest way to design, make, distribute and sell things." Not modernism, what's needed is a new-ism.
p121- Open source design has the capacity to conserve culture and decoration as well as traditional skills by utilizing new technology. Digital production makes mass customization possible. Open source makes information and knowledge public; in addition, it has low entry costs, quality control takes place in the form of peer review by the public, and revenues are divided between craft and creativity. Also, because the products of open source design can be produced locally, transportation costs are drastically reduced.
- What open source design does it redistribute knowledge and the means of production. It has the potential to change everything that we know about design, from manufacturing to education.
- Open source design is anti-elitist insofar as it can create fairer and more honest prices. It is democratic and helps to create self-determination in an individual's immediate environment.
- Ultimately, it takes power away from the multinationals and production hubs like China and hands it back to craftspeople - those individuals rendered irrelevant by industrialization.
p123,124- Open source design and local digital fabrication could also revolutionize education, which has mostly become outdated and irrelevant. "We could tie the platform into trade schools,.. Education has fallen behind and kids are not being taught what i needed. Digital manufacturing should be taught in schools, especially at the vocational school level."
These developments are slow, however, because open source design remains the great unknown, with many unanswered quandaries. The new, innovative nature of the ideas works both for and against them instead of inspiring images of a world less controlled by branding and regulations, open source design ends up sounding chaotic, with too much choice and an over-abundance of experimentation and waste. Issues of copyright and profit-sharing scare off many, leaving a lot of earliest experimental platforms looking unprofessional and insecure (manifesto)
But the problem for most of the current websites selling open source design is they lack professional participation. What's needed is more of the best and most visionary design minds debating and devising ways to make it all work. "What is happening so dat isn't really making a difference, but ut does show that there is huge potential." Laarman says.
p125- What limits the scope of open source at this point goes beyond legal concerns. For it to work, a whole new economic model would need to be devised and accepted. Under the current system, a design takes his or her design to a manufacturer, who makes it and then it it to a shop that sells it. "If he is lucky, the designer get 3% ex factory...the brands adds 300% and the shop doubles that again. It's ridiculous how little of the cut a designer gets. If we used digital tools and changed the way stores work, the ratio would be able to favour creativity and the craftsman."
However, test-driving a new model will require a platform like Make-Me.com. It has to be large scale and it will need to attract big-name designers and brands so that people can see it working. It's a touch chicken-and-egg situation: unless designers feel that their financial income and copyright dues are guaranteed, they are not going to take the risk- and without enough designers taking the risk, it will be virtually impossible to erect the solid infrastructure to ensure smooth, safe and legal operations. It will take a coordinated leap of faith from educational facilities, designers and craftspeople for anything like this to work.
Interestingly, the same arguments being used against the phenomenon now are the very same arguments that were once used against the introduction of
democracy.
Open Design definition by authors:
p129 - Do it with Droog - Roel Klaassen & Peter Troxler
Renny Ramakers - "Open design means that you're open towards the user, that you open yourself to the user. Not by conducting market research and so on, but by being open to people, by giving people something to do, by interacting, by not planning everything right down to the last detail."
p130 -
- We wanted to eliminate some of the many steps between design and production, so the products becomes cheaper, similar in a sense to what IKEA has done. Compressing the process is an important reason. We know from our experience wth producing designs that it may take up to two years before a finished product reaches the shops. TWo years is a tremendous long time, so it's interesting to explore whether designers would be able to design products without this second part of the process. It could be a very interesting development
- If you product locally, you cur down on the need for transport. Reducing transport adds an ecological benefit.
- Local production on demand means that you don't need to have your products in stock. This constitutes an economic advantage.
However, a high level of design isn't available to most end users; our products are just too expensive for the people who read those magazines. As a result, people end up going to stores like IKEA. We think that Downloadable Design will make it possible for us to bring our products within reach for people who would not otherwise be able to afford them. All these end users would have to do is assemble the product themselves.
This leads me to another aspect: do it yourself, or DIY. There are countless DIY shoes on TV;DIY is everywhere..what if we not only made design products cheaper, but also introduced more variety. How many times have you found almost the perfect table, but it's only 80cm wise and you need a table that's 90cm or 120cm wide to fit in your living room? In so many cases, your house is too small or too big for the standard sizes. What if you could adapt all these measurements to suit your space? That would e hugely practical, much more functional. Or you could choose your own colour, to make it your own thing. Downloadable Design is also a form of co-creation.
p131- we asked them (the designers) to be creative and think of completely different ways for consumers to interact with the design. We also challenged the designers to consider how they would make money on their design. We asked them to be creative in what they should offer for free and what they could be offering for an added fee. What if there could be laters in a design? For example, a product could be more expensive if it bears the designer's signature. The business model requires creativity, too, and it is the most challenging part.... our focus is not limited to digital technology; we also want to revitalize craftsmanship.
p132- Imagine you could change all the parameters...Wouldn't people rather go to a shop and simply buy a cupboard?
It may have to do with lack of confidence. Also, not everyone is an expert in interior design. That's also why standard furniture exists. Not everyone starts out with an empty floor plan. All those consultants and home decoration centres are there to help people define their interior design preferences. This is a separate issue from the presumed lack of confidence; you could call it 'assisted design literacy': how to design your own world
Designers have always wanted to work for the general public. In the 1920s and 30s, it was products for the masses that they wanted to design. Designers gave directions for how to make things that were good for the masses, and the belief was that the masses needed to be educated. Then, in the 1960s, there was an emancipation of the masses. The re-industrialization led to incredible market segmentation, so the masses had more choices and could buy more. As a result, designers started to follow the preferences of the masses When the market is saturated, it becomes segmented;; it's a logical progression.
p133- Designers are becoming entrepreneurs. By telling them to create thwir own way to make money, we relate to their sense of entrepreneurship. However, the concept of finding their own innovative ways to earn a profit has not yet been developed. This is a real challenge; they really have to make that mental shift towards entrepreneurship design.
p136- Imagine that somebody opened a cinema simply because they had a projector.
On the one hand, I am fascinated to see what those people are actually going to o. On the other hand. I am interested in how we are blurring the boundaries between public and private; essentially, we are asking people to fulfil a public role in their private home. Accepting that involvement could even have an influence on the architecture of these people's homes. What will houses look like if suburbs develop in that direction? If everybody, or at least a significant part of the population, becomes entrepreneurs, then their homes will look differently. Their private residence will include a public section.
That's exactly why I do these things. I always return to the challenge of inventing a system, a method of Downloadable Design, innovating the designer, upcycling dead stock, working within the local context, whatever... All these initiatives are born from the same motivation: a sense of curiosity about the user, and a drive to bring innovation to design in a different way, by developing fresh methods while never forgetting that design is also fun.
Open Design definition by authors:
p141- Creation & Co: User participation in Design - Pieter Jan Stappers & Co * Froukje Sleeswijk Visser & Sandra Kistemaker
Open design promises to bridge the gap between designers and end-users, and where possible to reduce the industrial detour of centralized fabrication, distribution, sales and marketing
p143- It is important to define the distinction between co-creation and co-design; co-creation indicates a collaborative creative effort, either large or small, and often localized, while co-design refers to co-creation used in the course of the design process, preferably from beginning to end. ..we focus on contexmapping, a specific aspect of co-design, in which end users are assigned the role of expert informant, and are supported in that role through access to dedicated tools for observations, reflection and expression. The production of these tools and facilitation of the process have become design research activities which are carried out by professionals with background in design and/or research.
p144- The traditional view in transformation
- The designer- client relationhip is no longer as simple as a brief stating a clearly defined problem and the concept design proposing a single solution. In the Dashboard user Guide, Stevens & Watson distinguish 5 degrees of how the client is served by the designer, ranging from prescribing (on concept to deliver on the brief), through menu (several concepts to choose from), co-creation )collaboration as equals), and assistance (the client receiving design coaching and help), to DIY (the client does the design while the designer observes and interjects comments as needed)
- The client-user relationship is opening up in open design and meta-design
- In open design, manufacturing options are becoming widespread and widely accessible, and the resources for sharing design ideas are available (open movement).
- in meta-design, products are made with sufficient adaptability to leave a number of final design choices to the user
- The designer-user relationship is opening up strongly throughout the entire design process. In several industries, competition on technology and price has saturated the market, and clients are taking a closer look at the user experiences and contexts of use in order to improve their products. Elsewhere we called this the "contextual push", a force in product development that complements the classic forces of "technology push " and "market pull". Users are being involved increasingly early in the design process, not just in the post-conceptualisation phases (e.g. usability testing and concept testing), but also in the fuzzy front end of strategic planning, information gathering, and conceptualising. The challenge here is not only the timing of when different players are involved, but also the responsibilities and powers granted to them. Frequently, users can participate in informing design, providing ideas for solutions, or evaluating proposed concepts; however, at this stage, they are rarely involved in deciding what will be made (as would be the case in fully fledged participatory design.)
p145- Contextmapping: informing design
4 main principles
- users are involved as the experts non their own experience
- the user's expertise can be coaxed into expression by applying appropriate techniques, which typically involve self-observation and reflection
- the information gather on the context of use should be like a map: it should provide multifaceted, rich, and supportive leads for the design team to explore the experiential context. This requires both empathy with the users (a concrete, holistic feel for the context) an understanding of the context (an abstract overview of what could be generalized to other users, other situations and future developments)
- Facilitating this process requires a mixture of design competencies and research skills
p147- Client (or providers, from a user's perspective) need to become aware of what is possible, and consider how they can become more flexible to accommodate the new design paradigms.
The paradox here is that this may be more difficult for the larger industries, which already include user participation in their research budgets, than it is for smaller companies, who have much smaller budgets, but often build a stronger relationship with their users.
In large companies, different phases of the design process are often split up, connected only through formal documents that are too limited to convey the full richness of user contexts. These overly structured transitions cause valuable insights to be lost because they are not handed over effectively to the new team. On the other hand, smaller companies, who have a longer-standing relationship with users are often not aware that their users' expertise can be brought to bear more effectively with the aid of appropriate methods
The role of designers is becoming more varied: part creator, part researcher, part facilitator, part process manager. We see graduates of design schools specializing in these roles to varying extents. Users' roles are also changing. A side effect of co-creation which we often observed is that the participating users do not lose their awareness of their own expertise once it has been identified; indeed, they are eager to develop it further. In our own experience, we find that participants are eager to return months after their initial participation, having continued to develop the expertise that was awakened in the study.
Open Design definition by authors:
p153- Design Literacy: Organizing self-organization - Dick Rijken
Open design as "the process of sharing design documents (drawing, models, specifications, flowcharts, manufacturing instructions, etc.) so that others can use and/or modify these designs and republish modified versions of them in such a way that the designs are publicly accessible, free of charge, and come with legal (copyright) clauses that enable all these kinds of use and re-use.
p154- This article deals with the changing position of knowledge and expertise in open networks.
Digital tools and media are generic infrastructures for creating, sharing, transforming information. They enable and facilitate personal learning on a massive scale. Anything that can be converted into a digital format can also be stored, shared, and used by anyone, anywhere. This changes everything that has anything to do with ideas- and therefore also changes design. It changes how we design, it changes what we design, it changes how we think about design, and it changes how we learn and teach design. Ultimately, it will also change who designs.
Web 2.0, with the concept of user-generated content at its core, will not leave the design discipline untouched.
We feel a need to stand out in a crowd, but we are nothing if not connected.
This makes the network society an essentially cultural place. This is true not just in the anthropological sense that everything we learn is seen as "culture", but in a very instrumental sense as well: activities like "expression" and "reflection" that are at the core of art and related cultural activities give form to the networked life of an individual. And this brings us to the second paradox, the paradox of choice. We are the designers of our own lives through the choices we make, and there are more choices open to us now than ever before. At the same time, this freedom has a dark side to it: we
must choose, whether we like it or not (mass customization). The freedom of choice that we have is also an inescapable obligation. With choice come responsibility. The ability to reflect and give form to our lives within given constraints is just as important for an individual as reading, writing or arithmetic.
In this context, we move from "design as culture" to a "culture of design, where design is part of our natural mode of being.
p156-
Traditional DIY stores know this very well. They don't just sell basic construction materials anymore, but increasingly also offer ready-made lifestyle products: lamps, furniture, various semi-manufactured products, and so on. What's more, they know that they need to help amateurs when it comes to making choices. Most websites for DIY stores feature some form of assistance. Besides tips and suggestions from famous designers, there are online tools that help buyers figure our their personal preferences for interior decoration. For people who feel completely adrift in the sea of choices, there are style coaches to help buyers find out who they are and what choices to make.
Design literacy
when it comes to more innovative or comples designs, inspiration and imagination are just as crucial as production technologies. This holds true for seasoned pros and enthusiastic amateurs. When motivated prosumers want to express their identities, they need different kinds of knowledge and skills, which together make up what can call "design literacy"
p157-
Online environments prove that well designed infrastructures can facilitate personal expression on a mind-boggling scale, but they have one thing in common:
simplicity
Tactical choices
The formulation of a design can be facilitated by the same high-quality examples, when they are published in ways that allow for inspection, modification and sharing. Open design plays a crucial role in this. Online environments that feature collections of high-quality examples that can be analysed, used, modified, discussed and re-published hold immense potential. Users need to be able to inspect the internal structure of a design, and then modify and share it. Designers can produce these examples and share their methods and insights in interviews or debates, and design teachers can develop new pedagogical methods and formats. In the world of digital media, users make mashups (
remix), devising new combinations of chunks of information found elsewhere to create coherent new constructs. Open design allows for a similar approach to 3D objects, physical equivalents to mashups that can also be shared and discussed with others.
p158- Design into the Future
The STEIM story (lab in Amsterdam) below illustrates a shift in the focus of skilled professionals: from high-quality production to high-quality coaching and education in order to facilitate expression and reflection in a larger community of passionate amateurs. Such a significant shift does not happen out of the blue; it is a deliberate choice and it takes real work, based on an informed awareness of how our world is changing (
revolution).
Open Design definition by authors:
p163- Teaching Attitudes, Skills, Approaches, Structure and Tools 0 Caroline Hummels
Open design is a specific approach to design, in which a group of intrinsically motivated people from various backgrounds develop design opportunities and solutions together in an open community, based on respect for each other's skills and expertise. Open design requires a flexible and open platform that assumes open access, sharing, active participation, responsibility, commitment to do good work for its own sake, respect, change, learning and ever evolving knowledge and skills"
(continue form def)
p164- Consequently, open design emerges from the New Science paradigm of quantum physics, relativity and self-organizing structures, developed by such scientists as Einstein, Bohr and Prigogine. Where Newton's classical-scientific view is essentially simple and closed - it can be modelled through time-reversible laws and all complexities can be reduced to simplicities - Prigogine's reality is multiple, temporal and complex. It is open and admissible to change.
Design education based on a New Science paradigm requires a transformative curriculum, according to Doll
(Doll,w. "Prigogine: A new Sense of Order. A New Curriculum" in Theory into Practice. Beyond the Measured Curriculum 25(1), 1986, p10-16). In such a transformative curriculum, teachers discard the God's-eye view, uniform curricula and tests that are considered objective and predictive. On the contrary, they emphasize and support a variety of positions, procedures and interpretations. Design education for open design could benefit from theories like
Constructivism, where learning is the learner's active construction of meaning in context.
Open design is based on a libertarian relationship between designers and potential users, and not on a rational one in which the designer is seen as superior.
Learning the Attitudes and Skills for Open Design
In his book
The Craftsman, Richard Sennett describes the importance of a craftman's intrinsic motivation,, commitment to doing good work for its own sake, and an ongoing pursuit of mastery in his or her craft. This attitude is the basis for the success of open communities like Linux, where the reward system is based on the quality of the outcome, social appraisal within the group (peer review) and the personal development of the contributors.
p165
I therefore consider it essential that
design education focus on formatting self-directed and life0long learners, who are intrinsically motivated and who take responsibility for developing their own competencies and delivering high-quality work. Design students should learn to trust their senses and their intuition, and to embrace ambiguity, open-endedness and experimentation, as explained in the next section on approaches to open design. Moreover, design students should develop the attitude geared towards collaboration (
co-creation), preferably supported by methods, tools and structures that foster collaboration. It is not only designers who are participating in open design; in principle, everyone can participate. They key aspect is that everyone contributes their own expertise, while respecting and building on the expertise of others. This is especially true when addressing larger societal questions and designing systems where expertise is needed from a range of fields, including design, social sciences and engineering.
I consider it essential for current design education to teach students to cooperate with other experts, respecting their expertise and simultaneously reflecting on their own competencies. This means, for example, that design students need to learn to work as part of the multi-disciplinary teams, collaborating with students from other departments and schools, both on the same level and on different levels, e.g. students from a regional training centre, a university of applied sciences and a university of technology working together on projects. Moreover, design students need to learn to collaborate intensively with potential users, not as objective researchers that perform one or several user studies, not merely as facilitators that run co-design sessions, but also as subjective participants in an intensive process in which they themselves are part of the solution.
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Open Design definition by authors:
p171- Learning by Doing - Mushon Zer-Aviv
Design is a top-down visionary practice attempting to define systems. Hacking is a bottom-up visionary practice attempting to introduce rapture and creative disturbance into these designed systems. Open design is a journey to discover the best of both worlds
Teaching vs learning
Like many other
design educators, teaching is one of the ways that I can stay up to date. I am required to constantly keep myself informed, constantly learning and make sure I actually understand new subjects enough to teach them. That is also a benefit of being involved in open source initiatives. The professional exchange between coders facilitates a sustainable peer-to-peer learning environment - and one that extends beyond the structures of institutional education. To extrapolate, if I learn by teaching students and geeks learn by teaching each other, maybe my students can learn that way too.
Students are required to create a (non-digital) tutorial on something that already know how to do, preferably a topic that others might not be familiar with.
Art and design schools still nurture the image of the genius, Originality is rewarded as a higher standard than communication, and copying is considered a sin.
Open Design definition by authors:
p179 - Open Design for Government - Bert Mulder
Open design is the design of products, systems or services through the use of publicly shared design information and processes. The philosophy is similar to open source
p180- The importance of Design
The first reason to consider open design for government is the increasing importance of design across the board. Tis increase is occurring because our increasingly complex society requires more design (
trend) . Where supermarkets in the 1960s stocked 1000 products, today's supermarkets carry between 20,000 and 40,000 items. All these products need to be created, produced, marketed, bought and used. This process is why design has grown from "nice to have" to "need to have": we need to create more products and services to sustain our society, and to present them in a way that is meaningful to us.
p183- Public administration works for the public good. Accordingly, open design for government will have to balance the wants and needs of many different citizens while dealing with power, politics and the manufacture of consent. That is why open design does not mean designing individual solutions for individual cases; rather, the process will have to take into account the balance of power between different stakeholders. One of the important elements in that process is fair representation: open design for government cannot be a process taken on solely by the strong and able; it must also involve the weak and underrepresented (
social design)
Open Design definition by authors:
p191- From Best Design to Just Design - Tommi Laito
Open design is a tool to solve problems that arise from systemic moral bankruptcy, building stronger communities along the way
p193- However, in order to share their ideas and resources, people need to feel comfortable and safe. This poses a tremendous challenge, especially in societies where people are most affected by global injustice. When people are struggling to meet their most basic day-to-day needs, the motivation to search for solutions together is small. The same applies to marginalized groups, even in developed societies. When people consider themselves victims of circumstance, opening up to others rakes several preparatory steps. Equality, good public spaces and education are fundamental preconditions for open design. The same applies to open design for public services = and equal societies are both happier and more cost - efficient.
Open design is part of
a shift from "Wow design" to "We design"
The new diving line is the underlying motives of the people involved: whether things are done for benefit (altruistic motives) or for profit (selfish motives). Legislation and
education play a key role in the ongoing change.
Open Design definition by authors:
p203 - Critical Making - Matt Ratto
Open design is a shorthand term for a shift in the institutions, practices and tools of design, a shift that is indicative of a redemocratization of making as a key human activity. The main value of open design is not just that more people are able to be engaged in constructive material activity, but that by being thus engaged, the wider population potentially develops critical material literacies that encourage greater insight into the social and environmental values of built objects.
p205 - Critical making
highlight the reconnection of 2 modes of engagement with the world that are typically held separate: critical thinking (traditionally understood as conceptually and linguistically based) and physical 'making (goal-based material work). O see this as a necessary integration for a variety of reasons:
- as a way of overcoming the 'brittle' and overly structural sense of technologies that often exists in critical social science literature
- as a way of creating shared experiences with technologies that provide joint resources for transforming the socio-technical imagination; and
- as a site for overcoming problematic disciplinary divides with technoscience
Tony Dunne: Critical design is related to haute couture, concept cars, design propaganda, and visions of the future, but its purpose is not to present the dreams of industry, attract new business, anticipate new trends or test the market. Its purpose is to simulate discussion and debate amongst designers, industry and the public about the aesthetic quality of our electronically mediated existence
Critical making... is less about the aesthetics (aesthetics : 2D) and politics of design work, and focuses instead on making practices themselves as processes of material and conceptual exploration. The ultimate goal of critical making experiences is not the evocative or pedagogical object intended to be experienced by others, but rather the creation of novel understandings by the makers themselves. Neither objects nor services are the currency of critical making. For me, it is the making experience that must be shared. Therefore, critical making is dependent on open design technologies and processes that allow the distribution and sharing of technical work and its results. In this way, critical making relies on a constructionist methodology that emphasizes the materiality of knowledge making and sharing. The 'objects' of critical making are intended to be shared making experiences, curated through both material and textual instructions. Such curated 'making experiences ' have long been the domain of technical and scientific education; any toy store can provide myriad examples, and electronic 'kits' are currently experiencing a renewed enthusiasm (DIY). What differentiates critical making is its attention to the interwoven social and technical aspects of modern life - what theorists call the socio-technical - rather than being primarily about technical expertise of functional knowledge about the natural world.
p208- rather than replacing professional design expertise and skill, our sense is that by encouraging and supporting design methodologies for non-traditional design ends- such as the socio-technical critique that is the main goal of critical making - open design helps bring about a kind of socio-technical literacy that is necessary to reconnect materiality and morality. This, ultimate, may be the most important consequence of open design.
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Cases
p214
Co-Working - Designing for Collaborative Consumption - Michelle Thorne
Here's another example: the common household drill. Do you own a drill? If so, can you even remember the last time you used it? Did you know that on average, a household drill is used a total of just 5-10 min its entire lifetime? That gives you what, like 20 holes max? Is that really an efficient object to purchase, maintain, and care for? What if instead of all that time it spent idling on the shel, it could be generating value, either by renting it out for bah or just helping out a neighbour?
p220 - Form Follows User
Participatory Design, The Open Form and Art Education - Denna Herst
Where users have traditionally been guided by physical forms created by the designer (e.g. reading a book), in ' open works' they now share responsibility for the design (e.g. co-creating a chair), in a process directly by the designer. Within the context of participatory design, the concept of 'user follows form' appears to have been supplanted by the opposite approach: 'form follows user'. In this scenario, the designer creates a framework that encourages the user to complete the form or product. What are the ramifications of this role-shifting for art and design education?
The 'form follows user' paradigm represents a shift towards the classical (modernist) notion of artistic authorship, traditionally defined by the 'genius' of the artist/design. This perspective is especially relevant in art and design education, where authorship is legitimized from an artistic point of view and students are trained to become 'authors' by developing their individual aesthetics and signature. Within the context of participatory design, the challenge for art academies if to find and develop new ways to define the artistic signature in participatory authorship and to implement these methods within the educational program. Which areas need to be explored for graphics designers, product designers and other design professions?
p223 - Ikea Hackers: The Lampan
Opportunities for 'New' designers bring the Challenges for 'Old' Designers - Tom Hulme
The challenge for the industrial designer will thus be in metadesign: designing for the 'new designer: the empowered end user. Traditional designers will design the tools and techniques to support end users, as the designers and makers of the products they need, want and desire.
p224 Instructables Restaurant: Open Design in a Restaurant Setting- Arne Hendriks
The Instructables Restaurant is the world's first open source restaurant. If you like the food, the restaurant gives you the recipe. And if you love the chair, or any of its other products, the restaurant provides the instructions for how to make it yourself
The complete menu and interior are based exclusively on the open access recipes and instructions available online, which are shared by members (community) of instructables.com, a web-based platform for users to create and share detailed instruction for their own DIY projects, known as 'instructables;. Nothing in the restaurant has been designed by its proprietor or its chef; they just make what they find online.
The restaurant not only appropriates this information to create its content, decor and atmosphere, it also showcases it and passes it on. Everything you eat or use in the restaurant comes with full instructions on how to make it yourself. The members who originally uploaded the instructables that were chose for use in the restaurant are credited on posters and flyers hanging in the restaurant, providing publicity for their instructable.
p229
Open standards
Design for Adaptation: A New Design Vocabulary
Thomas Lommee
Despite the obvious advantages that these common standards and design protools bring, there is considerable scepticism among designers to adopt and embrace them - probably because, until recently, a seemingly infinite amount of resources indicated little need for more flexible and open systems, and the hierarchical, top-down monologue of mass communication offered few opportunities for exchange, In addition, these open models also raise questions of accountability, profitability and formal expression. ow do we credit the contributors How do we generate money? Last but not least, how do we balance openness and protection, freedom and restriction? Since every standard by definition imposes a restriction, it limits our choices and obstructs our freedom to design and shape, and it disrupt our independent position as designers.
Nevertheless, the more we continue to share and exchange, the more the need for common platforms will surface within all aspects of our culture. This doesn't mean that one system will replace the other. Sometimes the commons will do a better job; other time the classical systems will prevail. Both open and closed systems will continue to exist, but it is the evolution of both in relation to the emergence of a networked society as well as the growing range of hybrids (closed systems with open components) that need to be closely observed and tried out
p237
(Un)limited design Contest
Experimenting with Open Design
Signature
But looking at the entries in the design contest, only three products were submitted in the 'fusion' category: It's a category that provides incentives for the re-use and re-interpretation of designs that had already been submitted (remix). Sylvie and Goof both expect that this has to do with the importance of the designer's signature style, especially in a contest. Sylvie: " There is a difference between what you use from other designs as an inspiration for your own design, and basing your design entirely on somebody else's. Originality is important to a designer, and designers aren't used to explicitly recognizing others for contributing to their design. This makes us choose the safe way by inventing something new.' Goof: " It's strange that we don't consider improving somebody else's product a challenge, because I would really like to take a few designs in hand in my surroundings. I do know several designs that I think could be done better." Sylvie thinks that education has an important role in forming this attitude. Sylvie: " At the academy, we were encouraged to be original by creating work that is unique and distinguished (designers). I never saw anyone literally taking an existing design as a starting point for a personal interpretation or addition. Maybe we still consider ourselves too good to do that."
p238
Studioludens.com
Semdesign.nl
goofvanbeek.nl
