With this post (and two following ones) I’m going to explain why I think that Open Design is going mainstream now (here I’m talking about Open Design on broad terms). With these posts I don’t want to say that it is now considered popular and no more controversial, but that it is not underground anymore: it is now finding its place inside the collective imagination.
Since I started researching Open and Collaborative Design practices in 2005, things have changed a lot: there are no more isolated projects but a whole ecosystem is emerging through the weaving of collaborative networks. And since the past year, few signs have been showing clearly that more and more institutional or famous organizations and people are interested in Open Design (or at least in bringing collaboration and crowdsourcing in the design process). If it’s not really mainstream yet, it’s not underground anymore for sure.

01. A novel: Makers

The first sign is clearly the publishing of Cory Doctorow‘s novel Makers: a science-fiction novel about the Maker subculture and the rise (and fall and rise again) of Open Designers through 3D Printing, User-generated Exhibitions and financial fights with big corporations like Walt Disney. And it is an important book also because it tries to show how Open Design could develop with possible business models and scenarios (trying to learn from the dot-com bubble of the ’90s).
You can download it in different formats here, or read it here below (and you can also read a great review by our friend Adam Arvidsson here).

02. IDEO and FrogDesign

02.01 OpenIDEO.com

Introduction to OpenIDEO / OpenIDEO.com from IDEO on Vimeo.

OpenIDEO is a project launched in August 2010 by IDEO, one of the most famous design and innovation consultancies. OpenIDEO can be regarded as an hybrid between Crowdsourcing and Open Design, since they launch challenges to the online crowd, but later the process is collaborative. We must note however that the paradigm here is more Web 2.0 than Open Source: collaboration on OpenIDEO is only about voting, commenting and talking about the projects, in order to refine them and discard the less interesting, so that one winner will be chosen in the end. There is no actual collaborative design with an Open Source process.
All concepts generated are shareable, remix-able, and reusable in a similar way to Creative Commons (though this means they’re not using Creative Commons), since participants own the concepts but grant a non-exclusive license to the Challenge Host for possible publication. Beyond that, organizations that partner with OpenIDEO on challenges may choose to implement the top ideas.
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Back in March 2010, I was invited at a seminar organized by Ricerca Urbana Milano, in order to explain openp2pdesign.org with other interesting projects from Italy. The seminar took place at the Universitá Statale di Milano, Faculty of Political Science. A nice overview of the event can be read in Italian here.

Il mondo sta cambiando sotto i nostri occhi. Dopo il web 2.0 e il free software, vediamo svilupparsi l’Open Design, l’ Open Hardware e persino l’Open Biotech. Possiamo intravedere nuove relazioni di produzione, nuovi modelli business, nuove forme di organizzazione economica e sociale. Le grandi imprese si adattano e stanno nascendo nuove forme ibride, fra impresa sociale e Open Business. Questo evento intende cominciare ad esaminare la portata di questo fenomeno. Quali sono le tendenze in atto? Cosa succede in Italia? Quali sono i nuovi modelli organizzativi? Cosa bisogna fare per cambiare il mondo?

01.Openwear.org

The event started with Zoe Romano and Bertram Niessen showing the EDUfashion / openwear.org european project.

EDUfashion is a two-year project financed with the support of the European Commission for the development of a collaborative platform for fashion creation and continuous education emphasizing skill-sharing and ethical branding. EDUfashion developed Openwear.org, an online community created for sharing values, accessing to knowledge and practice of collaborative and distributed work. Openwear.org is where makers, fashion producers, small local enterprises, educational institutions can network to participating in the production of a new vision of fashion based on micro-communities and sustainability. They even created their own license for the brand and a brand manual.

We are experiencing a twin trend diffusing across the fashion sector. On the one hand consumer demand is being increasingly oriented toward “ethical” fashion items, meaning no sweatshop, ecologically sustainable, locally produced, and fairly traded apparel. On the other side, we’re witnessing the emergence of self-organized employment focusing on independent, socially engaged, critical and multitasking creative production driven more by communal needs than market imperatives or consumer fads. We think that here lies a new perspective on fashion that can be translated into reality by exploring the forces that are behind these consumer and producer trends.
[...]
EDUfashion project’s main objective is to foster community, collaboration and innovation to provide a new vision and practice for fashion. Our main goal is to support the dissemination of knowledge, skills and practices so to empower a self-managed workforce, in order to create an alternative learning environment for sustainable garment crafting and selling. Itʼll connect various individuals and groups, to enable them to act as small, sustainable enterprises, which will gather under a single open-source participatory brand whose benefits will be shared.

Forward to Basics – Openwear Collaborative Collection Workshop from Openwear on Vimeo.

Openwear Brand Tutorial from Openwear on Vimeo.

02. openp2pdesign.org

I then presented openp2pdesign.org with this presentation (in Italian): (more…)

The second date of the November 2009 tour was in Helsinki, at the Open 2009 Symposium organized within the Media Lab Helsinki of the Aalto University School of Art and Design.
It was a great advance for me, as I was invited there as a keynote speaker for the second day!
Unfortunately I could stay in Helsinki for very little time (less than two days), and I was still a bit ill for the flu of the previous days, but people from Media Lab Helsinki were very nice and friendly. I really hope that we will collaborate in the future!

One of the most surprising things about the Open 2009 was that there were almost no hackers / coders there. It’s the first Open Everything event with no hackers I’ve ever seen! This is an interesting fact that shows how the Open culture or at least the interest for it is spreading and advancing in the society (or at least in the Finnish society!). This idea is supported by the fact that also during the afternoon panel (which I participated in) the discussion quickly shifted from the state of the art in supporting Open Systems to using Open Culture, Open Systems and Open Processes as a way to change and improve society.
About this issue, I think that we should proceed on two directions at the same time. On one side we should research how to develop proper Open Tools, Open Methodologies and Open Processes for enabling Open Systems that really works and fosters collaboration. On the other side, we should also study independently what changes and what initiatives we should take in a collaborative way in order to change and improve society (and all its related issues about social, economic and environmental sustainability). Tools and Strategies have the same importance and should be mixed wisely (too many times I see open source projects that seems to me almost useless or a waste of time in terms of social impact). Tools are important because they change the processes and the outcomes we get, and strategies are important in order to use the tools properly (this is my comment to the last tweets and the last part of the panel discussion when someone proposed to forget tools and to create a movement instead).
And note that Open Source proved to be useful and interesting not trying to change the whole society at once but by proceeding step by step with a strong focus on single projects and tools.

Here’s my presentation.

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I’m very happy to say that a Design Research Initiative that influenced me very much during the development of my thesis has been selected among the finalist projects for the most important Italian Design Award.

EMUDE (Emerging User Demands for Sustainable Solutions) was a programme of activities funded by the European Commission, the aim of which was to explore the potential of social innovation as a driver for technological and production innovation, in view of sustainability. To this end it seeks to shed more light on cases where subjects and communities use existing resources in an original way to bring about system innovation. From here, it intends to pinpoint the demand for products, services and solutions that such cases and communities express, and point to research lines that could lead to improved efficiency, accessibility and diffusion.

As we can see here, has been selected among the finalist projects for the Compasso d’Oro.
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During the last six months I have been honoured to work as the administrator of the website, newsletter and blog of the Changing the Change conference, which will be held in Turin on 10th-11th-12th of July 2008:

http://www.changingthechange.org

This conference will be an international social event dedicated to study how design (and especially design research) could help society change its direction towards a sustainable one. During these months a newsletter has been preparing the path towards the conference, and it can be read now in the main website and commented on the blog.

Here are the direct link to the newsletters:

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A very short report from Sci(bzaar)net, one week later.

First of all, thanks to Gian for this opportunity offered me. Participating in the organization process (even if only online, building the event’s website) and at the event was an opportunity to learn a lot about how we can make room for an open dialogue between very different personalities (researchers, bloggers, designers, creatives, psychologists, journalists, programmers)… such knowledge I hope I can put it into practice when I will be the facilitator of one of the working groups of UrbanLabs.

The event was held in the Model Lab of the Scuola Politecnica di Design, and although I had not studied there but at the Politecnico di Milano, I rediscovered the university atmosphere and especially the climate of activation and of laying the foundations for collective projects that only a Model Lab (with all its tools and work desks) could exemplify so well.

Here are the event pictures taken by me and the other participants, on Flickr:

For those who could not attend, the videos were published on the website; you can find the final text of the brainstorming here (and here the related videos). Finally, I recommend you to read the Bonaria Biancu’s post that summarize very well all the interventions placing them within a coherent overall speech.
All the videos and posts regarding individual authors can be consulted on the official website of Sci(bzaar)net, which will remain as a platform for collective discussion about the relationships between Internet, Scientific Research, Dissemination Scientific and Open Culture.

It was certainly a success and an important event: the specific organizational form (halfway between a BarCamp and more traditional conference) and the heterogeneity of the components have shown that they can give an added value to the meeting and the discussion. Rarely we can attend such meetings on these issues and it’s always a pleasure to know other bloggers or persons behind new experiments in person.

I’d like now to summarize my contribution and some brief reflections resulting from the brainstorming. As you can imagine, I have participated as an “Open Culture expert” and not about scientific research/publication. The main idea that I wanted to share with the participants is that we should think about Open Culture not as a simple set of publication practices ( “to publish a specific content with a specific license”) but as a real philosophy based on enabling complex systems. Open Culture is not just use a Creative Commons license: it means to facilitate a system that shares and reuses the information self-organizing independently. Thinking about Open initiatives in a reductionist way, just like the use of a specific license, can only lead to failure.

We can then study how to enable complex systems that follow Open Peer-to-Peer dynamics and imagine what activities of scientific research and dissemination (definition of hypothesis, definition of research, data collection, data analysis, compilation of results, publication, etc.. ) can be opened to these systems.

One of the concerns expressed most frequently during Sci(bzaar)net regards the opportunity to share the research results (under Open Access): why we should do that, when other people could take all the economic benefits and increase problems for those who carry out researches? Certainly it is true, if we consider scientific research and dissemination using pre-Open Culture parameters, that is as activities based on copyright as a means of appropriation of benefits from their information within a market economy. But now we know how Open Peer-to-Peer organisational forms range between market economies and gift economies, protection of intellectual property and information sharing. We can therefore imagine new forms of organisation capable of ensuring economic resources necessary to who performs scientific research.

In this direction, we can find countless opportunities and diversity of organizational forms: the first suggestion comes from Andrea Gaggioli who proposes a crowdfunding service for scientific research.
I hope that this direction will be studied further on the Sci(bzaar)net website.

Finally, here are my presentation and video (which are also available on the official website here):

« Intro.01 « Intro.02 « Intro.03 « Intro.04 « Intro.05 « Intro.06 « Intro.07 « Intro.08 « Intro.09 « Intro.10

These Open Peer-to-Peer design steps should be considered more as guidelines than a complete methodology: we should apply them, test them, study them more (as in research as in practice).

And this is the right time to study and test these participative practices. We can say that there have been two cases that show a change in how society perceive this kind of participation: Times’ decision to choose Web 2.0 users as person of the year¹, and the Nobel Peace prize awarded to Muhammad Yunus for inventing micro-credit services² (this kind of service is not related to Open Source and Peer-to-Peer, but is based on communities and activities that are open and peer-to-peer as well).

It is now possible to say where Open Peer-to-Peer guidelines can be applied and studied.

1. Design and research directions

There are four main directions where Open Peer-to-Peer guidelines could be applied and studied:

1. improve local conditions
   Opportunities for projects related to specific local dimensions are increasing visibly, and therefore an Open Peer-to-Peer design methodology is very interesting, because it offers more chances of success in involving local communities and in addressing complex projects. Moreover, it has been developed for such projects.
2. develop / deliver commercial / non-profit community-based services
   The importance of involving active users, not anymore as individuals but as a community, is gaining consensus both for business activities and non-profit or institutional ones. An Open Peer-to-Peer methodology can be used here as it allows community involvement giving it a real active and peer-to-peer role in creating content and developing projects.
3. organize complex design processes based on participation
   The Open Source organizational forms / design methodologies have proved with Linux to be able to develop complex projects in a relatively short time through an open and equal participation. The Open Peer-to-Peer Open methodology has been developed from them, and therefore can be applied to projects where there is awareness of its complexity (and need for a relatively quick solution).
4. design for contexts with scarce resources or economic return probabilities
   Thanks to their ability to involve participants beyond the more restricted logical market, Open Peer-to-Peer communities can find an application in disadvantaged contexts too. It is difficult to develop/deliver product/service systems to countries and markets characterized by scarce resources (or poor prospects for profit), but there are now economic strategies that study this: the Bottom of the Pyramid ones³. An Open Peer-to-Peer methodology can be applied in these strategies because it allows the development of projects based on a community of volunteers (thereby reducing the economic resources necessary), and because it can involve local communities in all these contexts inside the design process (succeeding to get projects suited to specific socio-cultural contexts). And it can develop and provide product/service systems that seeks to reconstitute/strengthen the social fabric, and not product/service offering unsustainable lifestyles both environmentally and socially.

2. A research for a social knowledge discipline

For a design discipline that begins to take an interest not only in technological innovation but also in social innovation, the Open Peer-to-Peer attitude can offer useful elements and many possible directions of research.
So far, most of the interest towards the Open Peer-to-Peer attitude has been revolved around the organization of scientific research or entertainment services. It is possible too to study also other areas where it is possible to develop Open Peer-to-Peer community-based services (and hence economic activity and business). There is a potentially vast and promising field: all the cases specifically linked to the social dimension, and therefore public services, non-profit organizations and strategies that may belong to the commercial sector but linked to the Bottom of the Pyramid strategies.
For example, in the case of public services, the eGovernement strategies implemented so far (and, in general, the reform strategies of public services) have not reached a large number of people and the desired outcomes. This is the reason why the introduction of the Open Peer-to-Peer methodology is possible, as it provides an active role of users in the co-creation and delivery of services. An introduction that proposes the Open Peer-to-Peer communities and attitude as useful not only at the operational level but also at the strategic level, where local institutions assume the role of their facilitators. With the shift from local government to governance, local institutions are becoming facilitators of participation (of both civil society and the economy sector). In particular, Charles Leadbeater⁴ and Hilary Cottam⁵ and the Demos⁶ think-tank , for example, are moving in this direction.
Fields of application of this attitude and its organizational forms are therefore wide; the attention to the “social side” has two advantages. The first is that we work in an environment suitable for the introduction of this attitude (for the affinity to the participatory and collaborative dimension, and the need to solve real unaddressed problems). The second consists in the possibility of studying the social dimension of an Open Peer-to-Peer project, something this context can offer more than others.

There are many critical aspects in the relationship between design and the Open Peer-to-Peer attitude that could be studied. Here there are the most important ones:

• How can design relate with the Open Peer-to-Peer attitude?
  The Open Peer-to-Peer attitude is a recent and evolving one, and brings with it new values and new strategies; therefore it is necessary to study this attitude in depth, and also study how the discipline of design can relate to it. And then how the role of the designer, the design process and the object of the project change.
• How does design relate with these Open Peer-to-Peer Communities and their local dimension?
  We should not forget that these Open Peer-to-Peer communities have their own local dimension (even if they are distributed). And the relationship with the local dimension is one of the latest trends that can be found in Web 2.0 services.
  Fortunately, the discipline of design is studying how to relate with the local dimension since several years.
• How does design relate with the knowledge produced and shared within a community?
  Knowledge and its sharing (or not) is a tricky issue and currently of great interest and the subject of debates and reflections. In this case, we should understand how to manage knowledge both within the discipline of design and both within communities characterized by an Open Peer-to-Peer attitude.
• How does design relate with the complexity of a community?
  A community is an organizational form with a degree of complexity, and this is intuitive. Nevertheless, some studies on Open Peer-to-Peer organizational forms showed how they have a high complexity and the ability to improve it in solving complex problems (a capability that the other disciplines are looking with interest now). But the concepts related to the complexity and the their relationship with design are a recent phenomena, which require deeper researches.
• How does design relate with the relationship between market economies and gift economies?
  These Open Peer-to-Peer communities present different forms of economic organization, that lays between the market economy and the gift economy. This characteristic should be studied in depth to understand the extent to which they can survive in an different economic environment, and the extent to which this characteristic can be extended in society, through the contact with other communities.

The research and implementation of this Open Peer-to-Peer attitude within the design discipline can bring new opportunities both to the design practice and the design research. And introducing an attitude that has at its center the collective construction and sharing of knowledge can make a further step in the configuration of design as a knowledge discipline for a knowledge society.

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Notes:

1. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html [↩]
2. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2006/press.html [↩]
3. (2004) Prahalad, C.K, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Wharton School Publishing [↩]
4. (2006) Cottam H., Leadbeater C., The User Generated State: Public Services 2.0, http://www.charlesleadbeater.net/archive/public-services-20.aspx [↩]
5. http://www.designcouncil.info/mt/RED/health/ [↩]
6. http://www.demos.co.uk/projects/userledservicedesigninlocalauthorities/overview http://www.demos.co.uk/projects/participativepublicservices/overview and other publications [↩]