A couple of weeks ago I was part of the 2011 edition of DMY Berlin, together with the Open Helsinki group inside the MakerLab. This event was part of World Design Capital Helsinki 2012. Even if I was there only for the last two days (and it’s always difficult to get attention in a Design Festival, especially in such a noisy place), there was a good feedback from the visitors, especially on the last day.
I gave two lectures twice and helped few visitors understand and develop open processes and businesses, see below for the details, the presentations and the toolkit for designing open processes.
You can see more pictures from the event from Miska Knapek‘s Flickr account.

DMY Opening from robertanderson on Vimeo.

Open P2P Design

Open P2P Design brings open source and peer-to-peer dynamics inside a community-centered design process, in order to have real co-design projects with people and their communities. We can use Open P2P Design for co-designing Open Design processes or commercial or public services with open and peer-to-peer dynamics, starting from communities and involving them inside the design process. We can also use it for analyzing an existing business and opening to collaboration some of its activities, or design new ones in order to start a collaboration with a community of users.

Markets and business models for Open and DIY projects

Which are the possible business models for Open projects like Open Design and Open Hardware? And what about running a Fab Lab or a similar place? Which strategies can we adopt in order to have successful DIY Craft projects? People that want to organize collaborative spaces or companies need to think about how to run their business in a
sustainable way, but even single or groups of Open Designers could get more insights for their project if they discover the possible business models. Let’s have a look at the existing markets, the common business models and the possible future scenarios.
(more…)

After a very long work, openp2pdesign.org version 1.1 is ready, both in its website form and in its book form!
Starting in February of 2007 with the initial idea to publish my master degree thesis and further study these subjects, we reached now a first milestone.

openp2pdesig.org version 1.1

In the past one year and half my skills as a webdesigner improved a lot and it was time now to redesign and reorganize the whole website.
The website has been redesigned starting with the Fervens – A theme created by Design Disease and distributed by Smashing Magazine. Some details still need to be refined but it is working now! For any suggestion or question just leave a comment in this post.

openp2pdesign.org_1.1: the book

After a very long work, my master degree thesis has been resumed in three languages (English, Italian, Spanish) and published under a Creative Commons license in a pdf file using open source software like OpenOffice, Inkscape, Gimp, Scribus on Ubuntu Linux.

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« Intro.01 « Intro.02 « Intro.03 « Intro.04 « Intro.05 « Intro.06 « Intro.07

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.

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..

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

(to be continued)

Notes:

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 [↩]

I suggest you to read this article (altough it is in Italian) about Service Design and Activity Theory, included in this magazine.

Dal design dei servizi al design dei sistemi d’attività
Stefano Maffei
Daniela Sangiorgi

DDD_INTERFACCE
Rivista trimestrale Disegno e Design Digitale
anno_2 numero_7 lug/set 2003

La progressiva transizione tra un’economia basata solamente sui prodotti ad un’economia basata sui servizi sta trasformando i contesti d’azione quotidiana e gli strumenti (i device) con cui noi interagiamo con essi: se consideriamo il servizio e il momento dell’incontro (service encounter) tra erogatore e fruitore come un processo d’interazione sociale e comunicativa, la valutazione di questo momento d’incontro deve coinvolgere allo stesso modo sia gli artefatti, che i soggetti, che le regole e i compiti che definiscono il loro sistema d’attività. Per valutare la qualità interattiva di un servizio e dei suoi artefatti di madiazione (interfacce) è necessario perciò mettere a punto un modello concettuale di verifica che ne garantisca l’efficacia comunicazionale e d’azione e integri nella valutazione il controllo sistemico della complessità contestuale.

It’s about the vision of service encounter and activity theory as critical point in the design of systems of interface. The article can be downloaded here: http://www.mediadigitali.polimi.it/ddd/ddd_007/numero/w_articoli/articolo_04.htm.

Direct link to the file, low resolution: (744 Kb, in Italian)
Direct link to the file, high resolution: (5.9 Mb, in Italian)

« Intro.01 « Intro.02 « Intro.03 « Intro.04 « Intro.05 « Intro.06

How can we design for a community based on a collaborative activity?

In few words: through the the process of co-design of its activity (and the characteristics that allow it) like a complex collective service.

1. Activity of a community and Activity System

In order to completely understand the characteristics shared by the Open Peer-to-Peer Communities, it is possible to use a theory developed for the study of the human activities: the Activity Theory. Once we understand the activities carried out by the Open Peer-to-Peer Communities, we can understand how the develop and behave, and the characteristics that generate them, since they form from the development of one or more activity.
The Activity Theory emphasizes the situated nature of the human action, evidencing that the objectives and the development of the action, within the general scope of the activity, are continuously constructed and negotiated according to the local conditions. The social mediation that lays at the base of the activity translates itself in a continuous process of learning and creation of knowledge.

In the Activity Theory, the Activity System represents the unit of analysis for the study of the human behavior, leading to a “conceptual map” that evidences the main places around which the human cognition is distributed and through which the human action is mediated. The model of the Activity System, the unit of the dynamic analysis of the human activity, describes the main elements through which the human action is mediated, i.e. the artifacts (the instrumental mediation) and the community (social mediation) with which the subject, an individual or a collective one, interacts according to rules, implicit or explicit ones, and a division of labor, i.e. the organization of roles and tasks.

The Activity System is an instrument useful to describe human actions, and can be used at different scales: the activity of one single person, the one of a group, the one of a community, the one of a society. Moreover, the single human action is not perceived like a discreet and isolated unit, but it receives a meaning from being part of a collective Activity System socially and historically generated; in its turn the individual action contributes in a bottom-up way to the continuous creation and reproduction of the Activity System.

The Activity System represents then a systemic instrument of analysis of the complexity of the human activities. It is not a static truth, but it is in continuous movement and transformation as the single elements evolve and as the activity is negotiated over time.
These transformations are due to the fact that the activities are not isolated units, but are more like nodes inside networks formed of other interconnected Activity Systems. In fact, an Activity System is not isolated, but interacts with a network of other Activity Systems.

2. Activity and the structure of the Open Peer-to-Peer Communities

Therefore the Activity Theory, through the model of the Activity System, can be used in order to analyze and to describe the behavior of the Open Peer-to-Peer Communities. Given the particular nature of these Communities, we should add the description of the structure of the community to this model. The Open Peer-to-Peer Communities in fact are not characterized by hierarchies, but that does not mean that there are no strong positions. But as an hierarchy relies on power (a top-down relationship), an Open Peer-to-Peer Community relies on reputation (a bottom-up relationship), that show the direction and the actions that could be more interesting to the community, giving place to an horizontal network-based layered structure.
Many researcher¹ have noted that the Open Source Communities (and therefore also the Open Peer-to-Peer Communities) organize themselves with an horizontal structure characterized by a gravitational center around which there is a “gravitational force” that moves the participants towards the center or outside the community: this force is reputation² and not power. We have then an horizontal (not a hierarchy) network-based organizational form, similar to the one found by Lave and Wenger³ in the Communities of Practice and called Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP).

Therefore, the Open Peer-to-Peer Communities have a radial structure, where there are different levels, characterized by a different amount of reputation and engagement. A determined role can correspond to a determined level (one role can be accessed only if in possession of one determined amount of reputation), or a same role can be seen with a centripetal structure based on the reputation (there are several levels of reputation inside of the role, characterized by different amount of engagement and different duties).
It is therefore useful to reason in terms of reputation and engagement levels: going towards the center the participants increase their reputation and engagement. They move towards the center as their engagement increases their reputation, and they increase their engagement in order to maintain or to increase their own reputation. In this way we have a positive feedback that pushes the participants to engage with crescent intensity.

3. Open Peer-to-Peer Communities described with an Activity System

Using an Activity System (and integrating it with a description of the reputations levels found in the community) it is possible therefore to describe one Open Peer-to-Peer Community; here we have an example:

2. Activity Systems and Service Design

The main importance of the activity, in an Open Peer-to-Peer Community, can give a useful role to the designer, thanks to some reflections carried out in the service design field, based around the study of the services as interactions before and the study of the services as interactions between Activity Systems then.

A service in fact can be seen in many ways: like a performance, a process and an interaction, visions that bring to light its nature of human action and therefore of intangibility. If we look at them as interactions, their design therefore becomes traditionally the design of the interactions that occur between a customer and the company, subdivided in front office (the part of the agency with which the customer interacts) and back office (with which the customer does not interact).
Interactions therefore as the place of encounter between the customer and the company, the fundamental point in order to understand the quality of the service (service encounter), and where therefore the designer should address its attention⁴.

According to Pacenti, the most important thing in the strategic design of a service is in fact the “platform of interaction” between the service and the customer. The platform of the interaction is the context (the architecture of the system) where the interaction between service and customers finds its place. In the construction of the platform we have the values proposed from the company, (materialized in its offer), and the co-production of such values by the customer, that participates with his engagement, knowledge and resources. The platform of interaction is the place where the offer of the service and the participation of the customers meet within a shared context of values.

Considering services as interactions, we can find another study that can be really useful for designing for an Open Peer-to-Peer Community: Daniela Sangiorgi⁵ has connected service design with the Activity Theory, resolving a lack of an interpretation model of the service that holds in consideration its main elements that influence the perception and the behavior of the participants to the interaction. An interpretation model that can be used to consider high social complexity that characterizes a service.

Therefore, a service can be described as an activity formed of a sequence of service encounters (or interactions), that can be described as systems of situated actions co-produced in the encounter between the customer’s Activity System and the enterprise’s Activity System (or, more in general terms, between all the participants of the service). The activity, therefore, can be seen like a network of interactions between participants, and can be considered as a service, and as such can be designed. In fact a service is made of a network of interactions between several participants, which assume the roles deriving from the division of labor.
For service design, therefore, the design object coincides with the same Activity System, that becomes the object of the project, but also an analysis and a design tool.

We may think therefore that we can “design” the Open Peer-to-Peer Communities “designing” their activity. In reality it is still necessary to consider two aspects before we are able to reach an appropriated methodology, holding corretly in consideration the complexity of a community and of a project directed to it.

Is it possible “to design” a community? Which of its characteristics can we design?

(to be continued)

Notes:

1. Crowston K., Howison J., (2005), The social structure of Free and Open Source software development, First Monday, volume 10, n. 2, http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_2/crowston/index.html;
   Madanmohan T.R., (2002), Roles and Knowledge Management in Online Technology Communities: An Ethnography Study, Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore, Digital, http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/madanmohan2.pdf Madanmohan2.pdf;
   Nakakoji K., Yamamoto Y., Nishinaka Y., Kishida K., Ye Y., (2002), Evolution Patterns of Open-Source Software Systems and Communities, Proceedings of International Workshop on Principles of Software Evolution, ACM Press, New York, http://www.kid.rcast.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~kumiyo/mypapers/IWPSE2002.pdf [↩]
2. Watson A., (2005), Reputation in Open Source Software, College of Business Administration Northeastern University Working paper, http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/watson.pdf [↩]
3. Lave J., Wenger E., (1991), Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge [↩]
4. Pacenti E., (1992/93), Il design dei servizi, Tesi di laurea, rel. Ezio Manzini ; co-rel. Emmanuele Villani, Politecnico di Milano
   Pacenti E., (1998), Il progetto dell’interazione dei servizi: un contributo al tema della progettazione dei servizi, Tesi di dottorato, tutor: Ezio Manzini ; contro-tutor: Giovanni Anceschi, Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di disegno industriale e tecnologia dell’architettura [↩]
5. Sangiorgi D., (2004), Design dei servizi come design dei sistemi di attività : la teoria dell’attività applicata alla progettazione dei servizi, Tesi di dottorato di ricerca in Disegno Industriale, XV ciclo [↩]