The platform (as in one node in the network, as in the whole network)

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What can we “design” in a community?

We cannot think about designing the relationships and the complexity of a community (which are the features that make it a community). The disciplines that traditionally have been interested in communities (architecture, urban planning, web design) are not oriented to design the relationships but the characteristics that, once realized, enable and support the birth and the development of the relationships. The necessary infrastructure for the relations, their platform.

it is convenient to talk about a platform¹ as the object of the design process. It is possible to design and to supply those fundamental conditions that, shared inside the social networks of the participants, act as an infrastructure to the emergence of the community and its characteristic activity. A platform is present (and necessary) every time a community forms deriving from the interactions between a high number of agents. As it is part of the activty, the platform can therefore be described through the Activity Systems. The platform consists in a system of artifacts (materials, cognitive and communication ones), rules and division of labor, which make possible the development and practice of the collective activity. As it is shared between the participants, it has a reticular and dynamic nature.

The platform as a whole, the sum of the conditions shared in the network

If the platform is necessary for processes that demand an interaction between a high number of agents, then also the design methodology will demand a platform for being carried out. The platform exists previously to the design process, that has the goal of improving it in a determined direction, that comes from a design choice. It is therefore necessary, at the beginnig of the design process, to analyze the existing platform for the collective discussion; thanks to it is possible to establish a contact with the participants. The designers, in fact, enter in the wider design community of the plan: a community whose activity is an open and peer-to-peer design..

The platform as a whole, the sum of the conditions shared in the network

But how the designer’s role change when he/she enters in a wider design community?

(to be continued)

1. (2006) Menichinelli M., Reti collaborative. Il design per una auto-organizzazione Open Peer-to-Peer, Tesi di laurea, rel. Ezio Manzini, Politecnico di Milano, A.A. 2004/05 http://www.openp2pdesign.org [↸]

Tags: Activity Theory, Open P2P Communities, Platform