Open design
The majority of the ideas presented here are drawn from an openly licensed book called Open Design Now!. Though out of print at the time of this writing, the entire book can be read for free at opendesignnow.org. Open design is not necessarily opposed to capitalism or the free market, though open design projects, viewpoints, and experiments often present ideas that suggest alternative ways of supporting such systems and processes in a more fair, effective, inclusive, and sustainable way. To be sure, open design tends to emphasize shifting knowledge and power structures from an elite few to the many. Distinct features of open design include a variety of attributes that are counter to how design traditionally occurs, particularly for the purpose of supporting market and business goals. Many of the projects enthusiastically discussed in Open Design Now! are defunct, a telling indicator of open design's relationship to the many forces and systems in play — can open design survive?
Notable projects that still exist include Open Structures, Wiki House, Local Motors and Open Source Ecology, all of which hope to use the power of open source technology with crowdsource design communities to enable the average person to create houses, products, vehicles, and sustainable living environments.
Open design is made available, sharable, and licensed under open access terms. For access to be open, it cannot be concealed, protected, or licensed under a fee or payment structure. For instance, Apple, Inc. is highly secretive about their projects until they are released to the public. The Linux operating system project is a good example of a transparent-box design, where development and functionality is exposed. Open design helps others contribute by using common digital notation language to specify blueprints and plans. The use of proprietary notation language for specification does not contribute to openness. An example of an open specification language can be found at Schema.org, where a community of developers promote structured data for the Internet. Open design is reconfigurable and extendable enabling derivatives, whereas design that is not open is black-boxed or fixed, preventing derivatives from being possible. Open design is reproducible and not exclusive or limited to a finite series. In contrast, one-offs are not compatible with the open design philosophies. Open design can be fabricated by commercial, off-the-shelf, multi-purpose machines expanding a means of production to more people. If the design must be fabricated by a skilled artisan or if it requires custom built machines or moulds, then it is not open. The manufacturing process of open design is subject to distributed and scalable production. A centrally controlled and preset batch production process is not open design. Open design has generative qualities whereas closed design does not have this potential, and is close-ended. [1]
DIY
Make magazine launched in 2005 by Dale Dougherty, and challenged users to move from passive participants into active product production roles. Not only would users make their own products, but they would gain in-depth understanding of how production technology works. Make: published the The Maker's Bill of Rights to their website in 2006, which includes lines like, "If it snaps shut, it shall snap open." and "Special tools are allowed only for darn good reasons."
Open source
Open source consists of projects open to modification by an engaged community of developers. This text is written and published on an open source tool called Gitbook, which itself only exists because of a multitude of other open source software projects. This text is open source as well, and modifications can be made and suggested by anyone with a computer and Internet access.
Open innovation
Open innovation refers to organizations that demonstrate a large amount of transparency and discourse in their design process. One notable organization is Mozilla, chronicling their open branding initiative and requesting advice and guidance from the greater design community. Every year, IKEA hosts Democratic Design Day, an event set up by the marketing department, where customers can engage in conversation with designers and glimpse into their future product lines.
Open Design Power Values
| Old | New |
|---|---|
| Managerialism, institutionalism, representative governance | Informal, opt-in decision making, self-organization, networked governance |
| Exclusivity, competition, authority, resource consolidation | Open source collaboration, crowd wisdom, sharing |
| Discretion, confidentiality, separation between private and public spheres | radical transparency |
| Professionalization, specialization | Do-it-ourselves, maker culture |
| Long-term affiliation and loyalty, less overall participation | Short-term, conditional affiliation, more overall participation |
[2]
Citations
- Adapted from Open Design Now!. Page 55.
- source: https://hbr.org/2014/12/understanding-new-power