NOTE: this post was originally written for the P2P Foundation blog on September 22nd 2010, but since it’s a quite interesting issue and its contents fit within openp2pdesign.org, I republished it here. The original post is here: http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/design-in-the-age-of-sharing/2010/09/22

01. Sharing by Design

A recent post on Shareable made me think about how the culture of Sharing has been changing the discipline of Design after the success of Open Source and the Web 2.0.
We are researching and discussing how we can bring collaboration into design processes and how we can use design processes to foster collaboration, but what about developing design projects for facilitating the sharing of physical goods?

Keara Schwartz wrote a post on Shareable, trying to start a conversation about this issue; however, that post is not really deep and inspiring since she finds that the only barrier to sharing products is the lack of trust in other people we have in sharing physical products. According to Keara Schwartz, we can share digital information easily, but not physical goods as well because we don’t believe other people will take care of them as we would do; she then suggest that products might be designed differently in order to facilitate their sharing.
I believe though that this is not the point: we don’t share products because our socio-economic system has developed in that direction, not because products are not designed for being shared. And designing for facilitating the sharing has wider (and older) implications.

Nonetheless, that post is a good starting point in order to think about the issue of Design for Sharing: we have to notice that Shareable is a nonprofit online magazine that “tells the story of sharing, covering the people, places, and projects bringing a shareable world to life”. And its tagline is Sharing by Design, implying that sharing can be enabled with design.

02. Access by Design

We could argue now that we are entering into the Age of Sharing, since after the success of Open Source and of Web 2.0 new terms, theories, technologies, products and services that are based on the concept of sharing (and collaboration) are increasingly introduced. But these trends started before, though a little bit different, as Jeremy Rifkin clearly explained in his book The Age of Access:

In the hypercapitalist economy, buying things in markets and owning property become outmoded ideas, while “just-in-time” access to nearly every kind of service, through vast commercial networks operating in cyberspace, becomes the norm. We increasingly pay for the experience of using things-in the form of subscriptions, memberships, leases, and retainers-rather than for the things themselves. [...]
Rifkin argues that the capitalist journey, which began with the commodification of goods and the ownership of property, is ending with the commodification of human time and experience.

As Rifkin noted, the transition from owning products to accessing them through a service started long time before the rise of the Web 2.0; it is therefore a longer trend coming from the evolution of society and economy. Design for Access came before Design for Sharing. Design, and especially Product Design, in the Age of Access means above all Product Stewardship, a concept developed as a Design for Sustainability effort with the aim of involving all the stakeholders of the life cycle of a product. With this approach, we ask all the stakeholders to take shared responsibility for the impacts to human health and the natural environment that result from the manufacturing, use, and end-of-life management of products. If we want to just access a product instead of owning it (and maybe the service is built upon its sharing it with other people), we need a lot of different players that actually manage it through its life cycle.

Product stewardship is a concept whereby environmental protection centers around the product itself, and everyone involved in the lifespan of the product is called upon to take up responsibility to reduce its environmental impact. For manufacturers, this includes planning for, and if necessary, paying for the recycling or disposal of the product at the end of its useful life. This may be achieved, in part, by redesigning products to use fewer harmful substances, to be more durable, reuseable and recyclable, and to make products from recycled materials. For retailers and consumers, this means taking an active role in ensuring the proper disposal or recycling of an end-of-life product.

Accessing a product, instead of owning it, means that the traditional life cycle of a product has to change and to be shared among all its stakeholders. Design for Access and for Sharing is more about new processes than new product typologies and technologies: it could be a way to design more proper and sustainable products (like the Universal Design / Design for All approaches). (more…)

Just a quick post: here are my presentations for the first day (What is Open Design?), the second day (What is Open P2P Design) and the fourth day (What Is The Distributed Manufacturing Scenario?). In the next post I will write about what happened in the workshop and the outcome we got.

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Few months ago I prepared a presentation in English about Open P2P Design and openp2pdesign.org that was not used; I remade it now and I decided to publish it as the shortest and easiest introduction to Open P2P Design methodology and the openp2pdesign.org project. You can find it in Slideshare:
http://www.slideshare.net/openp2pdesign/what-is-open-p2p-design

You can download the pdf file and share it, it’s under a Creative Commons license:
Massimo.Menichinelli_what.is.openp2pdesign

The Story of Co-Design from thinkpublic on Vimeo.

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

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 « Intro.08 « Intro.09

Unlike a traditional, linear, design process, Open Peer-to-Peer Design is non-linear and characterized by multiple parallell processes because of the large number of agents and their interactions. An Open Peer-to-Peer design process thus provides the basis for developing more parallel projects, an ecosystem of designer agents with a memetic evolution of the projects that are more “suitable” to the community, whose selection will lead to better results.

An Open Peer-to-Peer design process is characterized by openness and sharing of the project (the source code for software) of the platform and of the activities that it allows once provided to the community by the designers. The community will test and modify it several times and in several directions (in the software, compiling the binary code), until a satisfactory version is reached (the stable version of the software) and self-organization is ensured.

The source code of the project (community source code) consists of tools from design services, with the introduction of a description of the reputation levels within the community, the license that governes cooperation and the access to the results, a social network map able to show weaknesses and strengths in the community. The source code is accessible to all participants, who are testing it with increasing level of reality (the platform is gradually built during this phase) reporting to the design community any errors (bugs in software) present. The higher the number of participants, the greater the chance that errors are detected and corrected.
During the design process and at its end, the community will self-organize modifying the project if necessary, as far as possible; it is this ability to self-organize and improve the local conditions that makes the communities alive and interesting.

Participation in this design process is open and equal, but is also governed by two principles: self-selection and reputation, which give place to different levels of participation in the various design phases, according to the possession of knowledge needed in each project phase. The different phases of the design process, therefore, require different levels of participation and therefore commitment and visibility of the participants. These different levels give place to different typical phases (similar to some phases of the community of practice) of the life of the communities: potential, coalescing, stable, self-organization and expansion, decline.

analysis

The project begins with an analysis of the participants, in order to understand the existing and therefore usable resources, limitations, critical points. Through the analysis, the designers begin to know the participants, prefiguring which features the community’s activity could have in the future. The objective of this phase is to define the objectives and the strategy on which the concept of the community’s activity will be build. The analysis, carried out through ethnographic investigation and social networks analysis, will cover the platform, the characteristics of the individual participants if possible, as well as existing activities.

concept

Once the analysis of the participants, of their activities and their social networks is done, a first concept of the community’s activity (and its platform) is developed. The designers then develop an initial version (we might say the 0.0.1 version) of the project of the activity/platform, formalized in the community source code.

parallel co-design / test / setting-up

Once developed, the concept is shown to the participants and collectively discussed. From now begins a phase of co-design of the activity/platform, characterized by steady growth of commitment, energy and visibility by the participants. At this stage, the concept of activity is developed collaboratively to get a functioning project, a “stable” source code (version 1.0).
The participants test the community source code of the community simulating the activity, in order to understand what are the weaknesses, errors (bugs in the community source code). The source code is subjected to a peer-review process, in which both the designers (who observe the simulation) and the participants report errors and the necessary changes. Once a bug is identified the source code is modified and again a testing begins with the new code.

In order to simulate the activity, participants must share the conditions necessary to carry out the activity, represented by the platform. Rules and roles should be developed and adopted, and the artifacts that are not already present will be built or acquired. This means that along with the continuation of the co-design / test process, the platform is implemented and when the project reaches the stable version, the participants can begin the regular activity, strengthening then the sense of community.
Once the co-design / test ends, the project will already be done, there are no phases of production nor execution. As in software, then the source code (the project) gives place to the binary code (the work done by the participants).

self-organization

After the first “stable version” (1.0.0) of the source code is reached, the community will be largely formed: during the simulation / activity new social relationships will have formed. A stable version of the source code means that it can be “compiled” (ie, done) and used by anyone without the possibility of critical errors. At this stage, therefore, the community is able to carry out the activity and self-organize without the contribution of the designer: if his role was that of a facilitator (enabler), now the community is able to act successfully alone.

At this point, ideally, the role of the designer is not needed anymore; however, the community will always need its contribution in the future: the designer has always knowledge and expertise useful to provide support to the community in response to changes in the outside world.
Also, if the community activity is a design one, the desinger’s capabilities make them important in the community, and they will continue to be part of also during the self-organization phase.

These observations represent therefore an initial proposal (1.1) for an Open Peer-to-Peer design guidelines, in a broader process of studying a comprehensive methodology.

Finally, what are the future opportunities and directions for the application and study of these design guidelines?

(to be continued)

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 [↩]

« Intro.01 « Intro.02 « Intro.03

Why Design should learn how to relate to Complexity?

Because the communities and the territories where they live are so complex that a design process dedicated to them must understand their complexity, to have greater probabilities of success.

Understanding Complexity, for a designer, means to design in and for Complexity¹. Therefore, in and for the complexity of a community and of its territory.

The rconnection between Design and Complexity represents a an interesting field of research, now in its first steps: the Complexity Theories are relatively recent and still there is, in the society (and therefore also in the design community), a mentality nearer the reduction of the complexity, than to its valorisation. I started this blog with the desire to study this connection.

We could spend so much time before we understand how to face the complexity of a community, but fortunately there is a very important consideration that can help us and comes from the phenomenon of the Free Software/Open Source. According to Ko Kuwabara² the Linux community has succeeded because it can face the complexity without reducing it, through its own intrinsic complexity. The Open P2P organizational forms therefore are potentially suitable to manage complexity.

I will return later on this topic, as it is very important; meanwhile, I suggest you to read Kuwabara’s text. We can learn so many things from the Free Software / Open Source phenomenon, but for me this has been maybe the most important. On one side, it is an ulterior proof of the validity of the Open P2P organizational forms and principles, as they can lead to a promising complexity management. From an other side, they show that the connection between Design and complexity is not so distant, if Design will learn to relate to complexity from the Open P2P communities.

How could I get together Design and Open P2P Communities, remembering their complexity? Well, in a few words, the Open P2P Communities are characterized by one main activity. Luckily, an activity can be considered with a systemic view through the Activity Theory, that has been connected to Service Design by Daniela Sangiorgi. Here you can find an article: (link to the file, 744 Kb, in Italian). I will explain better this connection later on, for the moment you can find everything inside my thesis (direct link to the file, 20 Mb, in Italian).

The need for a complexity approach in design, is not necessary only for communities or territories, but it is favorable for every project. Every product has connections with the social dimension (who designs it, produces it, sells it, distributes it, uses it) and the local dimension (where these persons act and from where they get the resources needed) throughout its life cycle. Understanding these hidden connections can lead to design (products, communication artifacts, services, strategies) with greater probabilities of sustainability and commercial success.

For this reason I think that the connection between Design and Complexity is so important!

The realization of the Complexity dimension is not only useful for the Design process, but also in the understanding of the Sustainability issues…

(to be continued)

Notes:

1. Silvia Pizzocaro, Design e complessità, in AA.VV., Design multiverso, Poli.design, Milano 2004 [↩]
2. Ko Kuwabara, Linux: A Bazaar at the Edge of Chaos, First Monday, volume 5, number 3 (March 2000),
   http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_3/kuwabara/index.html [↩]

After one year and one month, my graduation thesis is now online in this website under the Texts section.
As its 1.0 version was the one presented at my graduation, this one is the version number 1.1, a slightly modified one especially designed for the online publication.

Therefore, the version number 1.1 represents a milestone in its path: this website has been designed for its publication and for its further development ( a collective one, I hope! :) ).

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