In this post I’d like to suggest you a Creative Commons-licensed reading, to announce you an event I’m going to participate to and start an open discussion about their common subject: what will probably be the future of Industrial Design and Manufacturing, and how we can draw a map of it?

First, I suggest you reading this publication, Future of Making Map, published by Institute for the Future here: http://iftf.org/node/1766.

Two future forces, one mostly social, one mostly technological, are intersecting to transform how goods, services, and experiences— the “stuff” of our world—will be designed, manufactured, and distributed over the next decade. An emerging do-it-yourself culture of “makers” is boldly voiding warranties to tweak, hack, and customize the products they buy. And what they can’t purchase, they build from scratch. Meanwhile, flexible manufacturing technologies on the horizon will change fabrication from massive and centralized to lightweight and ad hoc. These trends sit atop a platform of grassroots economics—new market structures developing online that embody a shift from stores and sales to communities and connections.

[...]

There is much to be learned from the maker mindset of collaboration, creativity, and open access. Yet the maker culture will not replace traditional industry. In the future, traditional manufacturers and maverick makers will be closely linked— sometimes cooperating, sometimes competing, but frequently blurring the boundaries that separate them. Success will occur when the two cultures are woven together in new and interesting ways.

via | core77

It’s a very interesting map that points out the

• Drivers
• Trends
• Signals
• Suggestions (Make the Future)

that could lead to a scenario of distributed design and manufacturing systems. It shows the social and technological phenomena driving (drivers) these trends (contrasting where we are in 2008 with where we will be in 2018), signals (a company, network, project, product, idea, or innovation) and suggestions for using the map for travelling or, better, going to where it’s heading to.

And then I’d like to announce you that I’m very honoured to participate at the I Realize 09 event in Turin on June 9-10, as a co-facilitator for the Post-Industrial Design Workshop with the Turin-based Design Studio ToDo (Thanks Giorgio for inviting me!).

And as you can see on the workshop page, we are going to study and draw a map about the future of Post-Industrial Design, starting from Generative Design, Open Processes and Projects, Fabbing, Open P2P Marketplaces…

Tags: Business/Service, Design, Enabler, Fabbing, Generative system, Maps, Open Design, Product Design

The Story of Co-Design from thinkpublic on Vimeo.

A short and sweet animation illustrating the “Co-Design” process.

Tags: Co-Design, Design Methodology, Public Services, Service Design

01. Net-Map: a social network analysis toolbox

Net-Map is a visualization and facilitation tool developed by Eva Schiffer that can be very useful for design processes for/with Community/Locality Systems.

Net-Map is an interview-based mapping tool that helps people understand, visualize, discuss, and improve situations in which many different actors influence outcomes. By creating Influence Network Maps, individuals and groups can clarify their own view of a situation, foster discussion, and develop a strategic approach to their networking activities. More specifically, Net-Map helps players to determine

• what actors are involved in a given network,
• how they are linked,
• how influential they are, and
• what their goals are.

Determining linkages, levels of influence, and goals allows users to be more strategic about how they act in these complex situations. It helps users to answer questions such as: Do you need to strengthen the links to an influential potential supporter (high influence, same goals)? Do you have to be aware of an influential actor who doesn’t share your goals? Can increased networking help empower your dis-empowered beneficiaries?

Basically, Net-Map is low-tech tool for developing social network analysis within communities. It is a tool that:

Tags: Community, Design Methodology, Locality, Low-tech, Social Network, Social Network Analysis, Tool, Visualization

After some months of designing and prototyping, I am so happy to annouce you that the openp2pdesign.org store page on Lulu.com is now finally open at http://lulu.com/openp2pdesign.
You will find there all the print version of the books published within the openp2pdesign.org project.

The first book you can already find there is the print version of openp2pdesign.org_1.1, which I already published online in September 2008. Three versions are available: one in English, one in Italian and one in Spanish. I had to work further on it in order to print it correctly using Lulu.com’s print service experimenting both with Scribus (I used Scribus 1.3.4 unstable but more advanced version, and it was really unstable and with some bugs) and Lulu.com (I encountered some problems with bleeding and after some prototypes I decided to avoid any elements close to the page margins, due to strange cutting problems with Lulu.com). And after all this experimentation, I decided to publish it only in black and white (but with CMYK cover) because otherwise it would cost too much.
And after this period of experimentation, my knowledge of book designing, printing and publishing has grown very much, and from this moment it will be easier for me to publish a book in the openp2pdesign.org project: expect more books coming in the future!

Tags: Business/Service, Design Methodology, Web 2.0

C.STEM 2008 explores a scenario where the designer ability of writing custom software becomes the tool to connect the potential of digital fabrication to an ever growing demand of mass customized goods. Infinite variations, generated by open projects/processes, enquire the role and creative thinking of post-industrial designers.

The event featured an exhibition and two days of conferences presenting new forms, technologies and design processes.

Exhibition presented projects and works by:
Ammar Eloueini, Ebru Kurbak & Mahir Yavuz, Adrian Bowyer, Nervous System, Michael Meredith, Cait Reas, FLUID FORMS, Susanne Stauch, THEVERYMANY.

C.STEM 2008 – BREEDING OBJECTS – September 2008, Torino, Italy from todo.to.it on Vimeo.

Tags: Design, Fabbing, Generative system, Manufacturing

A quick announcement: Michel Bauwens, Belgian philosopher and Peer-to-Peer theorist, founder of the P2P Foundation, is going to be in Milan in these days and he’s going to give two lectures.

Here’s the first one:

Date: Thursday, March 19, 2009
Time: 5:00pm – 7:00pm
Location: Aula 12, Scienze Politiche, Università di Milano
Street: via Conservatorio 7
City/Town: Milano, Italy

And here is the second one:

Date: Friday, March 20, 2009
Time: 5:00pm – 7:00pm
Location: Politecnico di Milano
Street: Piazza Leonardo Da Vinci, 32. Ala Nord, Chiostro Edificio N.
City/Town: Milan, Italy

I’m going to attend the second one, I hope to see you there… And if you cannot be there, remember that you can watch the second lecture in streaming online here: http://live.laureaonline.it/intlessons/ where you can also ask questions and chat with Michel Bauwens.

And here’s the abstract of the lectures:

TITLE: Peer to Peer as an economic and ethical revolution

Abstract:
A long-standing historical problem with social alternatives has been that none have them have been more productive than the for-profit alternatives, or at least not, in the context of the existing balance of power. However, a combination of technical and social trends has produced a historically novel situation that challenges this state of affairs. Internet-based tecnical infrastructures have made it possible to scale small-group dynamics to the level of global coordination of highly complex social artefacts that produce common value for self-aggregating peer producers; deep changes in ways of being, knowing and feeling have produced a new set of open and free, participatory, and commons-oriented paradigms that are changing the structure of desire of emerging generations.
Remarkably, the new set of social practices, i.e. peer production, peer governance, and peer property, are both strengthening the current political economy, (much as emerging capitalism did for the flagging feudal system from the 16th century onwards), but also undermining it through a systemic crisis of value, while also pointing to post-capitalist alternatives that may want day supplant the core of the current system.
This lecture by the founder of the P2P Foundation will examine the impact of peer production as a challenge to the current political economy and present different scenarios for the future of social change, especially in the context of the current meltdown.

Tags: Crisis, Economy, Peer-to-Peer, University

via | Network Weaving

Tags: Complex Systems, Emergence, Science, Self-Organization, Swarm / Flock / Crowd