Tommi Laitio

In a world of material scarcity and competent people, the right question to ask when designing is not who knows best. Rather, we should be asking what is just and fair.

The world’s problems are rooted in moral bankruptcy that underlies all the systems in which we live and operate. Over 90% of the resources taken out of the ground today become waste within three months. ¹

To avoid the catastrophic effects of climate change, we need to cut our carbon emissions to a tenth of the present level. Approximately 75% of the world’s population live in countries where national consumption exceeds the planet’s bio-capacity.² Worse yet, the world’s population is expected to grow by 50% in the next forty years. That will make nine billion of us.

Consuming less will not be easy. In the developed world, the demand for new products, different lifestyles and more active forms of participation grows as people gain new skills, have more expendable time and money, and find themselves looking for meaning in their lives. Meanwhile, basic standards of living are far from being met in many parts of the world. While the developed countries are dealing with hedonistic angst, approximately 50,000 people die daily from poverty-related causes – most of them women and children. One billion people go to sleep hungry every day.

The world as it is, in all its flawed complexity,  TREND is the ultimate design challenge of today. The issues that need to be tackled do not have a clearly identifiable owner or one simple solution. We’ve entered an era of co-existing versions of truth that may not be fully compatible, even to the point of being mutually exclusive. The ultimate problems of this time are results of the way we eat, interact with others, exercise and consume. This is why they are also far too serious to be left entirely to professional designers.

This complex combination of problems calls for open design. So far, professional designers have dealt with material shortages by minimizing their negative impact on production and distribution. Classic approaches to market segmentation no longer function when factors like age or ethnicity no longer define ambitions and desires. Neither professional-led design nor classic approaches will be broad enough to solve pandemic problems like climate change and other worldwide anthropogenic issues, stemming from an absence of moral responsibility. The facts are clear: we need a full paradigm shift; minor tweaks to traditional methods will no longer suffice.  REVOLUTION

The challenge that we all share is to create design that actually solves problems.  SOCIAL DESIGN The questions to be answered become far clearer with this strategic focus. If design is to be used successfully in striving for a fairer place to live, a number of things will be needed, including more participatory tools for understanding the architecture of the problem, quicker ways to test alternative solutions, smarter methods of negotiation and selection, and flexibility in production and distribution.

A Tale of Two Worlds

For the first time in human history, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities. According to the UN, in 2020 half of these city-dwellers will live in slums. Aspirations for urban lifestyles are inevitably going to clash. It is harder to build communities when everyone feels they belong to a minority.

Urban freedoms need to be pursued in ways that do not limit other people’s freedoms. Strong local communities  COMMUNITY are fundamental in assisting people in planning their lives, sharing resources and knowledge, developing a sense of home, solving the problems they face, feeling safe, having room to laugh and play as well as building lasting relationships with the people around them. Community structures necessitate government investments as well as new inventions in affordable communication, food production, public transport and housing.

It is in cities that the world of tomorrow is being made, as they build resilience against global turmoil. Issues like local food production are being acknowledged in government programmes. However, in order to share their ideas and resources, people need to feel comfortable and safe. This poses a tremendous challenge, especially in societies where people are most affected by global injustice. When people are struggling to meet their most basic day-to-day needs, the motivation to search for solutions together is small. The same applies to marginalized groups, even in developed societies. When people consider themselves victims of circumstance, opening up to others takes several preparatory steps. Equality, good public spaces and education are fundamental preconditions for open design. The same applies to open design for public services – and equal societies are both happier and more cost-efficient.³

Open design is part of a shift from ‘wow design’ to ‘we design’.

Even if there are many developments that run parallel in developed and developing countries, there are also vast differences. Developing countries urgently need affordable, yet sustainable solutions using easy-access resources. Initiatives like the non-profit International Development Enterprises ⁴ in Nepal allow the local farmers to tap into global information without having to spend their limited resources on personal equipment. The cooperatives share phones so that they can check market prices and avoid being taken advantage of in negotiations.  SOCIAL DESIGN Combining local trust networks and striving for sustainability calls for other, better solutions than poor copies of the systems in the developed world. It also tackles one of the pitfalls that growing economies need to navigate: the risk of spending a disproportionate percentage of increased national revenues on technology instead of health and education. Systems like free text messaging, reliable communication networks and easy-to-build recharging systems become crucial.

The same logic was used in the development of the Open Source Washing Machine ⁵ using solar power, loudspeakers or bicycle tires. The design work started from the available materials and actual needs of the local communities. This approach to design would make it possible for developing countries to become frontrunners in smart recycling.

Smarter Crowds

The greatest potential in open design lies in building from incentives. According to Michel Bauwens, open and peer-to-peer processes have a built-in drive to seek the most sustainable solution. ⁶ When the entire process is a negotiation of the common good, there will be an automatic push to search for a solution that can be applied to various situations. As people twist and turn the matter, analysing it from many different angles, the true nature of the problem becomes clearer. A crowd of people will always be able to subject a problem to more thorough scrutiny than an army of corporate anthropologists.

In a climate of adaptation and rapid prototyping, PRINTING we can test the functionality of various alternatives in a faster pace. This reduces the risk of betting everything on the wrong horse, as is often done in the traditional process. Open design is part of a shift from ‘wow design’ to ‘we design’. Making that shift, however, requires broader access to places of experimentation and learning like Fab Labs.

The new dividing line is the underlying motives of the people involved: whether things are done for benefit (altruistic motives) or for profit (selfish motives). Legislation and education play a key role in the ongoing change. As Michel Bauwens has pointed out, true for-benefit design leaves room for new people. ⁷ New people notice undiscovered errors and contribute new resources and new ideas. A good example of design for benefit is Whirlwind, ⁸ which has in the last 30 years provided thousands and thousands of wheel-chairs to developing countries. Product development collaboration  CO-CREATION between developing and developed countries has guaranteed that the chairs can handle the rough circumstances. The drawings are protected by a Creative Commons license. The biggest success is the RoughRider wheelchair, produced by local manufacturers and already used by 25,000 disabled people in developing countries.

By pooling knowledge and resources, individuals can actually turn the supply chain around. Inspiring examples can be found in the field of architecture. Take Loppukiri, ⁹ a home for the elderly in Helsinki, Finland. Disappointed by the options for assisted living currently on the market, a group of pensioners pooled their funds and selected an architect to work with them on building residential facilities that would meet their specific needs. The Loppukiri cooperative did not limit their design process to their physical surroundings; they also designed structured activities and living arrangements in consultation with numerous professionals. The people in this community split domestic chores, cook lunch for each other and eat together. All in all, they have efficiently solved one of the greatest challenges of aging: loneliness and social isolation. The co-designed architecture of the building supports this community-based ethos and the members are keen to share their lessons with others.

As the example demonstrates, crowds do not make the professional irrelevant. The same approach could be adapted to other groups with special needs. The role of the designer would increasingly shift toward the roles of a trainer, translator and integrator. In order to tap into available resources and the in-depth knowledge held by the group, the designer needs to adapt to their needs and desires. Pooling a number of designers to tackle a bigger community challenge might be a way to win the trust of a new client. In a world where the crowds control the resources, the need for value-driven design grows. This clearly represents a potential growth market for design agencies functioning as a cooperative or a social enterprise.

Time Is Money

Open design requires a re-evaluation of the concept of time. People are willing to contribute more time to shared initiatives when they have a sense of the common good. True happiness comes from feeling needed, valuable, wanted, confident and competent. Open design at its best allows people with skills, experience, knowledge and enthusiasm to contribute their time and energy to building something together – and the desire is there. The recent economic turmoil and an increasingly well-educated population also add potential momentum  OPEN EVERYTHING to the open design movement.

Super-diversity makes it all the more difficult to apply clear distinctions between experts and amateurs. The strategy towards inclusion and trust often acts outside the global monetary world. It means valuing people’s contributions based on the assumption that every individual can have equal value. This is where innovations such as time banks ¹⁰ , the Design Quotient proposed by design agency IDEO, and hyperlocal currencies ¹¹ come in. When people earn credits by participating in a design process,  CROWDSOURCING we give a useful and important reminder that citizens have both the right and the responsibility to take part in shaping their world. Structured participation can accelerate the positive cycle; for instance, each person’ contributions could be tracked in the form of hourly credits, which could then be traded for help from someone else. Systems that foster healthy co-dependency, such as time banks, remind us that everyone has something valuable to share: social skills, technical excellence, catering for a session, or translation. Tools like the School of Everything ¹² – local social media for bringing people together to learn from each other – make it possible to provide a clearer impression of what a community actually can do.

Open design towards sustainable local happiness seems to take a major time investment. Luckily, time is something we have in abundance. The age of ‘useless people’ looks very different in different parts of the world. In Central Africa and the Middle East, the number of young people clearly outnumbers the number of elderly people; in sharp contrast, Japan has nearly five pensioners to every young person. Although many people from both groups will remain in or enter the labour market, the number of people who have nothing meaningful to do is still growing. Whether this time is directed into private endeavours or put to use for the common good is crucial to the well-being of our communities, as well as for the global resource potential. This means serious rethinking, especially in cultures where individual value has been closely linked to gainful employment.

Design for Better Living

Participation in the process is also a strong driver for sustainability. Taking part in the creative process associates the final result more strongly with an experience. Recent studies have shown without a doubt that product consumption has a lower impact on personal happiness than experiences. The sense of ownership generated by participation creates a stronger emotional bond, both between the object and its owner, and between the object and the people in the owner’s network. Objects with an experiential dimension transform into tangible memories, whereas pure objects are subject to material degradation and devaluation. In addition, if we assume shared ownership of the solution as well as the end product, we need more people to be involved in deciding how to handle disposal.

Design stemming from a desire to serve the common good is really about giving people tools to live fuller and better lives and creating objects with a longer shelf life. Inspiring examples of the potential already exist. For instance, Open Source Ecology ¹³ is a project of strengthening self-sufficiency in food production. Sharing the instructions on how to turn a Toyota Corolla into an eCorolla ¹⁴ allows people to improve something they already own.  REMIX The Open Prosthetics Project ¹⁵ shares the peer-to-peer learning curve with all the physically disabled people of the world. The Factor e Farm in Missouri ¹⁶ explores ways to create an off-grid community relying on scrap metal and labour. By putting the results out in the open for everyone to see and adapt for their own use, communities of people can learn from each other. Through copying, prototyping, improving and formatting, the common good can grow. Motives are crucial here: if a person’s intrinsic motives for participating are about solving problems in their own community, the right strategy for growth is sharing the methods openly.

It is difficult to say whether open design leads to better services and products. What it certainly does accomplish is building stronger communities. COMMUNITY It allows people to get to know the people around them while doing something meaningful. It builds bonds and healthy, reciprocal dependencies as people exchange services, equipment and time. As people join in, design is rooted in the DNA of their lives and they keep the end products longer. Open design also builds support for peer-to-peer politics.

Open design is a crucial tool for discovering ‘Us’ again. When successful, it challenges the traditional preconceptions about knowledge, professionalism and democracy. Open design shakes up the current balance of power. It will therefore not come as a surprise that many of the remarks warning against the purported dangers of open design – lower quality, poorer aesthetics, more junk, things that will not work – express the same complaints echoed in every democratization process in history, all the way back to the French Revolution.

The right question to ask is not which process will lead to the best design. The fundamental question is far simpler: what is right and just?

Bert Mulder

Open design for government is a challenge. Not only is open design itself a relatively recent concept, but design and government generally do not interact easily. We do not often talk about governments designing things; we say that governments institute policy and procedures, develop urban planning and create services. Even in a recent Dutch initiative with the grand name of The Hague, Design and Government the tagline reads ‘design for public space, architecture and visual communication’. When design for government is discussed at all, design is mostly seen as functional.

But design will become an increasingly necessary and strategic tool for government at all levels. That is why exploring the relationship between open design and government is not only interesting, but also timely and necessary.

Today’s society requires us not only to create a wider range of diverse solutions, but also to do so faster and better.

Exploring the possibilities of open design for government requires delicacy. Much of open design thinking seems to be in the ‘hype’ phase of Gartner’s hype cycle, where arguments for and against reflect hopes and expectations rather than reality, simply because there is little or no experience on which to base tangible forecasts. This article takes a somewhat analytical approach, outlining several qualities of open design and government and identifying potential challenges. It describes a plan and proposes developments that would stimulate open design in the public sector. Essentially, this article tries to envision what open design would be like as a structural and strategic tool for government.

The Importance of Design

The first reason to consider open design for government is the increasing importance of design across the board. This increase is occurring because our increasingly complex society requires more design. TREND Where supermarkets in the 1960s stocked 1000 products, today’s supermarkets carry between 20,000 and 40,000 items. All these products need to be created, produced, marketed, bought and used. This process is why design has grown from ‘nice to have’ to ‘need to have’: we need to create more products and services to sustain our society, and to present them in a way that is meaningful to us.

But design is also becoming more important for another reason. Today’s society requires us not only to create a wider range of diverse solutions, but also to do so faster and better. New challenges require fundamentally new solutions; simply extrapolating the past will no longer suffice. And because solutions will have to survive into a future different from today, the ability to design well becomes more important. We need to shape society with the future in mind, REVOLUTION not relying on a past that increasingly has little bearing on the problems we face today; we need to realize better and more sustainable solutions using imagination, innovation and our talent for creativity and creation.

Why Government is Involved in Design

Future-driven thinking is what makes design fundamentally important for government. To face the challenges that the future will hold, the government needs to develop and integrate design competencies into its processes. Analysis and simple extrapolation governed by political processes will have to give way to imagination and more original creation, buildings more sustainable solutions. The development of social innovation serves as an example: design professionals are creating novel solutions in social contexts.  SOCIAL DESIGN This approach involves a more strategic use of design by the government than the simply functional use of design in public space, architecture and visual communication.

A second reason why design capability becomes essential for government is the new complexity of the networked society: government policies and services are increasingly developed in networks that link many different partners. The complexity of a context involving many different stakeholders and regulatory frameworks makes it essential to have a central concept to bind it all together. These considerations also mean that any development in the design field will potentially have relevant applications in the public sector. Clearly, the development of open design for government purposes is an important trend.

Open Design: Requirements and Domains

Current discussions of open design often refer to two related developments: open production and open design. Design(ing) with reference to the ongoing revolution that is triggered by the ubiquitous availability of digital design and production tools and facilities and that reverses the distribution of design disciplines. It portrays design as an open discipline, in which designs are shared and innovation of a large diversity of products is a collaborative and world spanning process.¹ Neither happens by itself and each requires very specific conditions. Analyzing those general requirements will make it possible to achieve a more precise indication of what preconditions would be needed to facilitate open design for government.

DIY  DIY is a good example of how open design gets started. To really take off, do-it-yourself production requires access to appropriate materials, tools and techniques to empower enthusiastic amateurs. For instance, DIY projects around the house require a power drill, easily available wood and fastening techniques that unskilled workers can use. This is how amateurs start designing and making things in any field; every professional started somewhere.In the same way, open design emerges in parallel with the availability of user-friendly and accessible information, methods, concepts, values and tools that allow non-professionals to create their designs. Homebrew electronics materials are available in electronics stores, and the corresponding plans can be obtained from electronics magazines or websites. When all these resources are available, more people may be encouraged and empowered to create their own designs.

Both DIY production and open design empower the user by putting professional tools in the hands of the masses. Those tools are usually available on different levels. At the simplest level, professional solutions are provided as easy-to-use templates   TEMPLATE CULTURE that users can re-use and apply without significant modification. At the intermediate level, tools are available as design templates or generative code that users can modify to create their own designs.  BLUEPRINTS At the highest level, skilled amateurs may access and use advanced design tools used by professionals. When open design for government becomes a reality, it will by necessity consist of a variety of ready-to-use solutions, design templates and advanced tools. Open design should be distinguished from other recent design developments in which users have been more intimately involved in the design process, such as participatory design, co-design or social innovation. In open design, many users are able to design on their own. They are not users involved in a design processes that is initiated and run by professional designers. Open design moves in two directions: outward, when individuals design and produce their own individual products, and inward, when people design solutions collaboratively. The latter faces the additional challenge of coordinating complex systems. Open design for government creates the conditions for many people to design solutions together – and that’s exactly what governments do.

Both DIY production and open design empower the user by putting professional tools in the hands of the masses.

Open design for government may lead to different outcomes than are currently being achieved. These outcomes may include harvesting novel ideas from a larger audience, such as in crowdsourcing; improving the quality of a design; promoting participation and loyalty; or facilitating the creation or composition of actual services. Open design may be used for all or any of these, but will have to be adapted to the desired outcome. There are two roles that open design could fulfil in the private sector. First, it could serve the government in its interactions with the people, as a civic resource that gives citizens the ability to take part in the processes of governing. Second, it could serve the government internally to support and contribute to existing government processes supporting government agendas. Again, it could be used in both directions, inward and outward, but the way open design is used would have to be adapted to the desired outcome. The tools for open design themselves are not affected either way, but supporting a pre-existing agenda means obeying pre-existing procedural constraints, which means that open design is not solely reserved for citizens.

When Open Design Meets Government

When open design meets government, design must adapt to the constraints of government in order for the two to interact. In the same way that architects or industrial designers have a basic understanding of building materials, the forces of physics, and the requirements of production, design in the public sector is subject to its own specific constraints. What would open designers need to operate in a government context?

Open design and government might have been made for each other. After all, doesn’t the government work for all of us, and wouldn’t it be much better if we all contributed? In some sense, democracy at large might be seen as a form of ‘design’ where society is run ‘by the people, for the people’: all of the people are involved in designing better futures for each other. However, the structure of the democratic process as it stands now (whether representative or direct) hardly involves citizens in the process of designing new solutions.  MASS CUSTOMIZATION The government seems to have its own requirements. So how could the characteristics of open design fit those requirements?

Open design for government will follow government activities. The government is involved in setting policies and providing services in such domains as economics, infrastructure and urban design, welfare and healthcare, culture, education and public safety. These are the subjects of government, and open design for government will have to produce useful solutions in those areas in order to be successful.

The government’s agenda mirrors society’s needs. Running a country or a city involves a finite number of activities; one might assume that open design would focus specifically on those activities. It can be compared to having a family, which also involves making a finite number of decisions in consensus: we really only need to sit down together a few times a year to deliberate such matters as buying an expensive household appliance, deciding where to go on holiday, choosing where to move or what school would be best for our children. While the process of open design may involve more people in the discussion, it will not increase the number of issues on the agenda, nor make dramatic changes to its structure.

Public administration works for the public good. Accordingly, open design for government will have to balance the wants and needs of many different citizens while dealing with power, politics and the manufacture of consent. That is why open design does not mean designing individual solutions for individual cases; rather, the process will have to take into account the balance of power between different stakeholders. One of the important elements in that process is fair representation: open design for government cannot be a process taken on solely by the strong and able; it must also involve the weak and underrepresented.  SOCIAL DESIGN

Open design for government needs to support a deep and empathic sense of the needs of ‘users’. The best solutions never consider such concepts as ‘society’, ‘citizens’ or ‘the public’ to be a generic class. One neighbourhood is not the next, one side of town is not identical to the other, and one city does not face precisely the same challenges as another. The same holds true from one generation to the next, and no group in society can be considered a carbon copy of another. Either the open participants, or the process in which they are involved, needs to have the ability to recognize and honour these distinctive qualities and let them ring through in the solutions that are created through open design. In order for open design for government to be effective, it has to be sensitive to the rhythm of government. Policy and development processes have their own dynamic and may take many years to synchronize. To achieve maximum effect, any contribution needs to play its role at the right time in the policy cycle or development process. It will be a major challenge to integrate a complex process of open design, with its own dynamics, without disrupting the necessary tempo and quality of decision-making.

Participation

Open design implicitly assumes that many people will participate once tools and materials become available. However, participation is more complex than that. Participation in today’s political process is a challenge in itself, but participation in online activities is also uneven. On large-scale, multi-user communities and online media sharing sites, user contributions are characterized by participation inequality. Only 0.16% of all YouTube users actually contribute video content; approximately 0.12% of Flickr users contribute their own photos. It’s called the 1% law: only 1% of users contribute, while 9% post comments, and 90% are silent observers.

Doesn’t the government work for all of us, and wouldn’t it be much better if we all contributed?

What’s more, the online communities on those sites are not representative of average web users; actual participation is probably lower if the subset is extended to include all websites on the internet. In itself, the 1% law does not have to be a disadvantage. It closely resembles the state of political participation: only 3% of the Dutch population is actively involved in a political organization; of those, about 30% are active in local politics: about 1% of the population. Early findings on the reality of online political participation show that it tends to be biased, and, just as in real life, the active participants are always the same group of people. Preliminary research on e-petitions for the German Parliament shows this. The online audience is a different group from the people who participated in real life (in this case younger), but online political participants seem to belong to a separate group anyway: highly educated white males.

In open source software development, participation is a major challenge. Projects have a hard time finding enough people who are sufficiently qualified and motivated, and an even harder time keeping those people involved. The current successful examples, such as Linux and Apache, draw their contributors from the 1.5 billion users on the global internet – and only about 1600 programmers among those 1.5 billion users are actual contributors. Scaled down to the level of small cities or neighbourhoods, that level of participation presents a major challenge. Although there are more than 120 million blogs on the internet, it is hard or even impossible to find one good blogger at the level of a single neighbourhood. There is simply too little news content and too few people able and willing to write daily or weekly posts. In the Netherlands, the number of contributors to the Dutch version of Wikipedia is too small to maintain good-quality content. Open design for government may be a good idea, but finding enough people to sustain it will be a challenge.

To really participate in a process of open design for government, participants would at least need access to information on aspects like the financial, regulatory and political consequences of their design effort.

Another widespread assumption is that there is a correlation between civic participation and the democratic quality of society. A related assumption is that finding ways to increase online participation will, in turn, contribute to the democratic quality of society. Research does not support that assumption; rather, it shows that the relationship between participation and democratic quality may be more complex.

Quality

One of the challenges of open design for government is quality. Decision-making at a government level is not about individual and small-scale projects, nor is it about short-term, localized projects. Any contributions to the process would have to create the kind of quality that supports large-scale, long-term projects, answering to regulatory, financial and political constraints. Of course such an argument may be focusing too much on the design outcome: the real result of open design for government might be a greater sense of participation, transparency and increased loyalty.

Involving more people does not create better design, most of which comes from individual designers or small teams. In fact, involving more people may be detrimental to the quality of the result. Of course a larger group may produce more unexpected and useful ideas – that is one of the ways that crowdsourcing produces results.  CROWDSOURCING However, turning ideas into a good design requires a completely different process. An illustration may be seen in online petitioning. First results show that e-petitions often fail to contribute serious new policy ideas, though they may increase the people’s feeling of participation and transparency.

Good design requires experience and knowledge of many different aspects of materials, production, marketing and user needs. Design for government is its own domain requiring its own skills. For social innovation, where designers operate in a social context, professional designers estimate that about 5% of their colleagues possess the necessary skills to deal with new and different complexities. Open design for government invites untrained and unskilled participants; the open design process must empower them in a way that compensates for their lack of experience. In open design for government, projects may be active in a wide variety of domains and bring complex challenges on different levels. Open design is simple where challenges and solutions are straightforward and the aim of the process is participation. But when real complexity comes into play, creating the right prerequisites for open design becomes more of a challenge – it will require more extensive information, better tools, more refined methods and deeper shared values.

The Ecology: Information, Tools, Methods and Values

Open design relies on participants who have been empowered with the right information, the right tools, fitting methods and shared values. When done well, these create a constructive balance between the complexity of the design task and the abilities and motivation of the prospective participants. To really participate in a process of open design for government, participants would at least need access to information on aspects like the financial, regulatory and political consequences of their design effort. Then they would need tools to work with that information: visualize it, analyse it, integrate it. They would need methods to support the design process and the manufacture of consent. All of this would be active within a framework of values and concepts that is needed to design appropriate solutions.

New digital tools allow users to create mashups that show the policies and regulations currently in effect on every piece of land and property.

The field of urban design shows the complexity and the power of such an ecology of information, tools and methods. In that field, basic information is becoming available now that datasets of geographic and policy information are open to citizens. This trend is apparent in the DataGov projects in several countries, including the US, UK, Australia and the Netherlands. New digital tools allow users to create mashups that show the policies and regulations currently in effect on every piece of land and property.

After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Louisiana was in urgent need of immediate community redevelopment, which had to be implemented far more quickly than usual. The Louisiana Speaks Regional Plan was a key part of the response. One of the design tools used in the project was the Louisiana Speaks Pattern Book, a resource used to inspire and empower all those rebuilding their communities. It contained an extensive analysis of Louisianan quality in buildings, communities and regions and provided design patterns for new houses and communities, formulated as easy-to-understand examples with the aim of inspiring better, higher-quality projects. The design patterns incorporated the complexity of historical analysis, the qualities specific to the region and the possible modern interpretations in such a way that it was easier for designers to create quick solutions while retaining good quality.

These efforts were based on another generative model, which aims to bring about a ‘21st-century correction’ of the American urban landscape. Called Smartcode, it outlines the best physical attributes of regions, communities and individual buildings and specifically embodies the views of the New Urbanism movement. It addresses all levels of design, from regional planning and the shape of communities down to individual buildings. Smartcode also outlines a design method in which local citizens are actively involved in calibrating the general design code for use in local circumstances. All this shows that, in urban planning, the general trend is increasingly facilitating the requirements for open design. As basic information becomes available, various tools are developed to use the data, followed by a design method that supports active involvement by citizens; finally, the code clearly describes its value systems. Of course, we may want to influence the trends to ensure that they suit the needs of a real open design for government – but the basic elements of the ‘open ecology’ are being developed.

This is just one example; there are many more, but it illustrates the necessary ‘ecology’ in which different components (information, tools, methods and values) may be necessary to support open design. The necessary support framework may be more readily apparent in urban planning, since it is already a design-based domain. When open design meets government, we should see a similar development in other domains like healthcare, welfare, public safety, economics and education. Creating the same ecology for policymaking in healthcare or public safety will require further development.

Fostering Open Design for Government

Open design is in its early stages and open design for government is a promise at best. What if we not only described the possible preconditions needed to facilitate open design for government, but also developed an agenda to stimulate it? Although some projects embrace new ways of working, such as crowdsourcing to involve citizens, that is far from open design for government. A much clearer practical agenda may help to harmonize relevant developments, creating synergy and better quality.

An agenda for development would require an investment on four fronts: further developing the core concept, outlining its possible implementations, identifying their components and stimulate experience in different projects. We need to ask ourselves what we really mean by ‘open design for government’, what it could be, what it should be and what it needs. Only a more operational view can provide the basis for a practical development agenda. Scientific studies are not the first priority; there is nothing to research yet. What is needed is a design effort to outline what open design for government might actually look like. We need scenarios, concept studies and small projects to refine possibilities and parameters. Such a clearer understanding of what open design actually means would allow us to gauge the current trends (such as open government data, new tools for visualization, new developments in design) and to determine whether they possess the right qualities to support a truly open design process.

We will see open design being used in government, partly because design is becoming more important, and partly because the tools and methods necessary for open design will become more readily available. Open design may serve a range of aims, from creating a sense of participation and harvesting new solutions, to genuinely inspiring better solutions for government challenges. However, in order to realize the potential this presents, we will need to make the move from dreams to reality, despite the serious challenges that arise in considering open design for government. As practical concepts are developed further, creating synergy between new and current developments may provide the parameters needed to support open design for government. Whether all of this will lead to higher-quality design for government will depend on the quality of the tools, methods and values that we come up with. Perhaps it is time to make use of the open design process in establishing open design for government.

Michel Avital

‘Openness’ is a recurring and increasingly frequent theme in recent buzzwords that populate the discourse on the forefront of technology, from open source via open innovation to open design. A review of related articles in the popular press and trade magazines indicates that the modifier open often denotes better, cheaper and faster. Apparently, the qualities inherent in openness or being open have materialized as the underlying enablers that pave the way for creativity, innovation and prosperity. In keeping with the thrust of this volume, this article contextualizes open design, focusing in particular on the characteristics of the infrastructure that are most conducive to its generative capability in relationship to innovation.

The Context of Open Design

Openness pertains to accessibility. Openness is a relative characteristic that refers to the degree to which something is accessible to view, modify and use. The ability to view refers to sharing  SHARING content and the availability of detailed information about the subject matter. The ability to modify refers to sharing labour and empowering changes, improvements and extensions of subject matter. The ability to use refers to sharing ownership and enabling semi or unrestricted reuse of the subject matter or parts thereof. These are the three fundamental operations that are implied by accessibility. Subsequently, from a systems theory perspective, openness relates to the transparency and permeability of any natural or constructed boundaries. Yet openness is not merely a technical attribute that conveys flow or lack thereof; it is an embedded trait that pervades the structure of a thriving civil society. From a social perspective, openness is a core characteristic of an infrastructure that conveys and reinforces sharing, reciprocity, collaboration, tolerance, equity, justice and freedom. The application of openness,  OPEN EVERYTHING as implied by various accessibility features, to a growing number of central ubiquitous practices that drive the human enterprise, has turned into a megatrend that can be labelled the Rise of Open-X. Megatrends are widespread trends which have a major impact and are likely to affect all levels – individuals, organizations, markets, countries and civil society – for a long duration. Understanding megatrends  TRENDS and their rolling effects can provide valuable information for developing futuristic scenarios and can subsequently help to shape current actions in anticipation of that future. So far, as described below, Open-X has materialized in various configurations that can be classified according to three archetypes: open innovation, open source and open design. The three archetypes are juxtaposed in the table on the previous page as a preliminary overview to point out their different respective value propositions and thrust (as a distributed collective action), core openness orientation, and prime actors involved.

Open Innovation

The value proposition and thrust of open innovation is ‘distributed knowledge’ processes that emphasize the view-related capabilities of openness. The prime actors of open innovation are organizations. According to the traditional doctrine, industry leaders self-create the most and the best ideas; innovation should therefore be fostered by internal development teams behind high organizational walls and protected as a trade secret. In contrast, according to open innovation, industry leaders make the best use of internal and external ideas to develop better business models. In other words, superior outcome should be expected with permeable boundaries between a firm and its environment, which allow idea flow, knowledge
KNOWLEDGE exchange, and intellectual property trade. Reaching out and tapping into external knowledge resources extends the generative and innovative capabilities of a firm, as demonstrated by industry leaders like Procter & Gamble, Boeing, Philips and many others. The tenets of open innovation have promoted the proliferation of communities of practice and laid the foundations of crowdsourcing.  CROWDSOURCING

Open Source

The value proposition and thrust of open source is ‘distributed development’ processes that emphasize the modification-related capabilities of openness. The prime actors of open source are developers. The open source concept originated in the software industry; according to the traditional doctrine, software is developed in commercial software firms by professional personnel, guarded through legal and technical measures, and then licensed for a fee. In contrast, according to the open source business model, software is developed through coordinated peer production by independent volunteers.

THE APPLICATION OF OPENNESS TO A GROWING NUMBER OF PRACTICES THAT DRIVE THE HUMAN ENTERPRISE, HAS TURNED INTO A MEGATREND THAT CAN BE LABELED THE RISE OF OPEN-X.

Subsequently, everyone can freely access the source code, and can modify and redistribute it under the same terms, thus nourishing continuous cycles of improvement, adaptation, and extension in a distributed fashion. Reaching out and tapping into external development resources extends the generative and innovative capabilities of a core project. Inspired by the impact of high-profile projects like Linux and Mozilla Firefox, the tenets of the open source development, licensing and distribution model have promoted the proliferation of open source projects of all sorts – from digital content development (e.g. Wikipedia), via vehicles (e.g. c,mm,n) and beverages (e.g. Free Beer – Vores øl), to 3D printers (e.g. RepRap), just to name a few.  OPEN EVERYTHING

Open Design

The value proposition and thrust of open design is ‘distributed manufacturing’ processes that emphasize the use-related capabilities of openness. The prime actors of open design are consumers. Although designers undoubtedly play a pivotal role in fostering open design by producing and sharing suitable design blueprints,  BLUEPRINTS ultimately the consumers who engage in distributed manufacturing are the core players and raison d’être of open design. According to the traditional doctrine, design is mostly a preliminary stage prior to commercial manufacturing and distribution. In contrast, open design is directed toward consumers who engage in fabrication, passing over the conventional manufacturing and distribution channels. Open design implies that the design blueprints are publicly available, sharable, licensed under open-access terms, and distributed digitally in a general design specification file format (e.g. dxf, dwg). Moreover, open design is not black-boxed or exclusive; it implies reconfigurable and extensible design that can be fabricated in distributed and scalable fashions through commercially available, off-the-shelf, multi-purpose means of production.

A structured description of the unique features and boundaries of open design is provided in the table on the next page. The inherent reconfiguration and extension potential of a user-driven open design reinforces the generative and innovative capabilities of consumers. The tenets of open design have inspired the development of public manufacturing facilities networks like Fab Lab, and laid the foundations of open design clearinghouses like Ponoko, Shareable and Instructables. In summary, the distinctions between the three archetypes of Open-X are more a matter of thrust and areas of application. They are not mutually exclusive. All three inherit the core features of openness and naturally overlap to some degree. Open design, for example, is not merely a matter of re-use and distributed manufacturing – it also entails sharing design blueprints and sharing extensions thereof, thus distributing knowledge and development. Building on the working definition of open design and an understanding of its unique features, the remainder of this article will discuss its potential, in particular addressing the infrastructure characteristics that are most conducive to its generative capability in the context of innovation.

Unpacking Open Design

Open design signifies open-access digital blueprints that can be adapted at will to meet situated requirements, and can subsequently be used by consumers to fabricate products on demand by commercial, off-the-shelf production methods. The open design model diminishes the traditional vertical value chain that is formed by designer-manufacturer-distributor-consumer relationships and offers an alternative, open web of direct links between designers and consumers. The resulting short-spanned, transient and non-hierarchical relationships forge dynamic and flexible arrays of blueprints that are not only user-centred but also user-driven.

The discourse on open design encompasses a multitude of considerations: for example, design specification, fabrication, collaborative action, supply and value chain management, business models, legal aspects, technological infrastructure and normative values. The complexity of this ecology can be untangled to some extent by classifying the underlying issues of open design into four interdependent conceptual layers, as follows:

Object layer refers to the design blueprints that enable and constrain the specification of the design artefacts. This layer encompasses the design and distribution of open design objects, that is, configurable and extensible blueprints that are available under open access license in online public repositories.

Process layer refers to the means of production that enables and constrains the fabrication of the design objects. This layer encompasses open design fabrication, that is, the application and operation of commercial, off-the-shelf machinery like printers,  PRINTING  laser cutters or CNC machine tools to produce customized products with no custom-built moulds or machines.

Practice layer refers to the work practices that enable and constrain the conception of the design processes. This layer encompasses open design culture, that is, the related nomenclature, professional standards, craftsmanship, rules of the trade, code of conduct, rituals and normative values.

Infrastructure layer refers to the underlying institutional and technical foundations that enable and constrain the vitality of the design practices. This layer encompasses open design substructure, that is, the related legal system, market structure and technical archi—tecture that govern open design activities and future growth.

The discourse so far is focused on the object and process layers, with some touches upon the practice layer. However, quite surprisingly, despite its fundamental role, the infrastructure layer is virtually ignored.

Designing Generative Infrastructure

The infrastructure that governs open design activities, business models and development is based on the related code of law, market structure and technical architecture, which together enable and constrain most human activity systems in an attempt to balance inherent conflicts and pursue the common good. In a general sense, infrastructures are designed to promote fairness, wealth and operational efficiency. TEMPLATE CULTURE Much has been written about the general nature of infrastructures elsewhere, leaving no need to reiterate it here. Instead, let us elaborate on the generative capability of infrastructure as an additional area of concern that should be considered particularly in the context of developing infrastructure requirements for open design. In view of the generative character of design in general, and open design in particular, developing an appropriate infrastructure should aim to incorporate the structural features that are most conducive to creative processes and products. Building on the concept of generative design, I suggest a set of generalizable considerations for designing such infrastructures. More specifically, I propose that the infrastructure of open design should be evocative, engaging, adaptive, and open.

Generative design refers to the design considerations in developing an array of artefacts and interactions that support and enhance generative capacity – that is, the considerations in designing systems that are conducive to the ability of a person or group to produce new configurations and possibilities, to reframe the way we see and understand the world, and to challenge the normative status quo. ¹ People’s generative capacity is a key source of innovation; by definition, generative design aims to encapsulate the design directives that enhance and complement that human capability.

In general, generative capacity refers to having an evocative power or aptitude that can result in producing or creating something, or tapping into a source of innovation. In the context of open design infrastructure, the modifier ‘generative’ denotes that the noun it modifies is conducive to the production of something innovative or the discovery of new and hitherto unknown design alternatives. In other words, generative design refers here to the design requirements and considerations in developing open design infrastructures – that is, the related code of law, market structure and technical architecture – that augment people’s natural ability to innovate. Subsequently, four top-level design directives are suggested for infrastructures, as follows:

Generative infrastructure is evocative
Generative infrastructure inspires people to create something unique. It evokes new thinking and enables them to translate their ideas into a new context. The infrastructure can help to create the environment or conditions that are prone to those insights by generating and juxtaposing diverse frames that are not commonly associated with one another within an underlying context. Systemic features that drive evocative design enable, for example, seeing an object or situation from multiple perspectives, testing it in multiple situations, examining it at multiple degrees of granularity, and exploring multiple overlay configurations.

Generative infrastructure is engaging
Generative infrastructure is enchanting and holds the attention of people by inducing their natural playfulness and ‘flow experience’. The infrastructure TEMPLATE CULTURE can help in the creation of engaging environments or platforms that stimulate the users’ cognitive spontaneity and playfulness as well as overall positive affect state, thus encouraging further exploration, tinkering and experimentation. Systemic features that drive engaging design enable, for example, fostering positive affect and high spirit that stimulate a state of ‘joie de vivre’, activating cognitive spontaneity induced by playfulness, and stirring up curiosity through intriguing challenges.

Generative infrastructure is adaptive
Generative infrastructure is flexible and conducive to effective use by a heterogeneous set of people in their own respective environments and for various tasks within an intended scope. It can be adapted with respect to the type of users or groups that it serves in diverse problem spaces. It is also simple to understand and easy for anyone to master. The infrastructure can help in the creation of adaptive systems or platforms that are flexible yet powerful enough to enable the generation of a continuous stream of new ideas and configurations. Systemic features that drive adaptive design enable, for example, user-induced tailoring and customization to meet situated needs, self-production of complementary extensions and features that meet new or initially unforeseen needs, automatic system-induced adaptation, and overall scalable functionality with no regard to size-related attributes.

Generative infrastructure is open
Generative infrastructure accentuates permeable boundaries and transparency that promote co-production, cross-fertilization and exchange of any kind. The infrastructure  ARCHITECTURE can help in the creation of open systems or platforms that provide connectivity, enable transparency, allow information sharing, and encourage dialogue with no regard to institutionally or culturally imposed boundaries. Systemic features that drive open design enable, for example, free and unrestricted access to information, communication among all stakeholders, and the easy integration of third-party extensions by independent boundary-spanners. In summary, from the generative requirement perspective, infrastructures of open design should be evocative, engaging, adaptive and open. However, while the last two directives are clearly implied in the discourse of open design, the first two have not yet been addressed. Subsequently, the inclusion of evocative and engaging features in the infrastructure of open design, let alone in the discourse concerning its requirements, is strongly recommended. Although this conclusion might not be obvious for legislators, policymakers, managers, and engineers, it should be quite intuitive for designers.The expected proliferation of open design has far-reaching implications that are likely to extend well beyond design practices as such and have significant socio-economic effects on a global scale.

Another Brave New World

Open design presents entrepreneurs and agile companies with a grand opportunity to expand existing markets, to develop new ones, and to capture large shares from current market leaders. Mobilizing open design to generate organizational value and to boost its market position requires radical strategic and operational changes. However, the tight coupling between design and production, which has so far been instrumental in fostering economies of scope and competitive advantages for the current industry leaders, is now likely to hinder their agile capability and their ability to take advantage of the new vistas that are beginning to be afforded by open design.

PEOPLE’S GENERATIVE CAPACITY IS A KEY SOURCE OF INNOVATION; BY DEFINITION, GENERATIVE DESIGN AIMS TO ENCAPSULATE THE DESIGN DIRECTIVES THAT ENHANCE AND COMPLEMENT THAT HUMAN CAPABILITY.

The adoption of open design practices by esta-blished industry leaders, let alone run-of-the-mill manufacturers, where the dominant culture and mode of product design has been shaped and reshaped over long periods, is likely to pose multiple challenges to these organizations at all levels, from the boardroom to the production floor. Subsequently, the resistance to change in these organizations is expected to reinforce the current tight coupling between product design and industrial manufacturing. Just as Amazon could conquer the market share of established retailers that were unable to adapt quickly enough to the new marketplace of e-commerce, emerging market players based on open design business models are likely to cannibalize the turf of established manufacturers that are entrenched in the old model of industrial production.

From Push to Pull

Open design paves the way to the next iteration in the massive shift from push to pull business models. In general, push business models are based on top-down value chains where a line of a few mass-produced products is distributed broadly through value-driven downstream marketing techniques. In contrast, pull business models are based on bottom-up value chains where a line of customer-configured products are distributed individually through features-driven upstream marketing techniques. Whereas push models are based on economies of scale and emphasize cost efficiency, pull models are based on flexible manufacturing and emphasize mass ustomization. In previous centuries, most artefacts – from shoes to carriages – were custom-designed and built on demand by a craftsperson.
Building on push business models, the industrial revolution almost wiped out cottage manufacturing and shifted its lion’s share to production lines and mass-scale manufacturing in factories that offer economies of scope and scale. Consequently, the resulting abundant supply of affordable products was instrumental to massive market expansion, higher living standards, and growing wealth across the board. This prosperity has come at the expense of product variety and personalization, as most notoriously conveyed by Ford’s remark “any color as long as it’s black”.  MASS CUSTOMIZATION

OPEN DESIGN INFUSES ‘DO IT YOURSELF’ WITH A WHOLE NEW MEANING THAT GOES FAR BEYOND COST SAVINGS OR THE JOY OF CRAFTING.

The advent of the internet has bestowed a new communication infrastructure that made it possible not only to exceed the economic accomplishments of industrialization, but also to offer an unprecedented variety of products and personalization thereof. The latter has been accomplished through pull business models and upstream marketing that take advantage of automated fulfilment and logistics centres supported by fast, wideband, many-to-many communication networks. The extent of product variety and personalization has been attained and fortified in three main phases enabled by the accessibility (i.e. ability to view, modify and change) afforded by the internet. In the first phase, retailers have introduced consumers to the ability to view up-to-date, rich and targeted information about off-the-shelf products, thus enabling them to make informed decisions. Then, in the second phase, manufacturers have introduced consumers to the ability to modify base products and specify a customized configuration thereof, thus enabling them to fine-tune a product according to their preferences. Finally, in the still-nascent third phase, designers have introduced to consumers the ability to use blueprints for self-managed fabrication, thus enabling them to gain full control over the features of the resulted product as well as its production process. In summary, as in a stage model, every phase builds upon the previous one to bring the consumers closer to the designers and to provide them with more control over what they get, how it is produced, and how it is delivered.

The Road Ahead

Open design is still nascent, yet it provides a springboard for radical changes in the way we acquire almost anything that is currently mass-produced. Open design presents a new way of design that complements new methods of fabrication, commonly branded as 3D printers  PRINTING of all sorts. Open design infuses ‘Do It Yourself’ with a whole new meaning that goes far beyond cost savings or the joy of crafting. It allows consumers to be in charge and offers them an opportunity for full customization of an artefact, including a choice of features, materials and delivery options. It allows for continuous innovation and localization, which in turn has major implications for consumers in shoestring economies as well as in developed countries. It also provides a fertile ground for the development of new forms of organization, new business models, new supply chain structures, new varieties of products and services, and the like, as demonstrated in the many cases in this volume. Nonetheless, traditional design and mass manufacturing practices have been extremely valuable since the Industrial Revolution  REVOLUTION and are unlikely to disappear in the future. Although the threat to the dominant technologies and practices may seem implausible, open design presents a clear alternative that may grow strong once it reaches a critical mass in the right socio-economic conditions. Open design is not a threat to designers’ livelihood. Quite the contrary; it opens new vistas and new opportunities and is likely to generate increased consumer appreciation of the role of designers. Moreover, it is likely to bring designers closer to the intended and unintended applications of their designs. Grand opportunities also imply undeveloped land. There is much development to do in all four layers of open design – the object, process, practice and infrastructure layers. To a large extent, the discourse mirrors the field; the most immediate attention is required in shaping practices and laying the foundations of the support infrastructures.

Conclusion

It has been suggested that open design stands for accessible design in the form of blueprints that are publicly open to view, modify and use under open-access terms. Moreover, open design often implies that the design blueprints are available via open-access digital repositories, that they can be adapted at will to meet situational requirements, and that they can be used by consumers to fabricate products on demand by commercial, off-the-shelf means of production.  DOWNLOADABLE DESIGN Open design is generative. It is conducive to continuous re-design, adaption, refinement and extension. Open design is a potent elixir that mitigates stagnation and awakens generative action.

EARLY EXAMPLE OF CROWDSOURCING: THE OXFORD DICTIONARY

PHOTO: LIZ WEST — WWW.FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/53133240@N00

ONE FRAME OF FAME, ROEL WOUTERS, 2010

ONE FRAME OF FAME: MUSIC VIDEO PROJECT FOR SONG MORE IS LESS BY C-MON & KYPSKI — HTTP://ONEFRAMEOFFAME.COM

TEN THOUSAND CENTS, DRAWN BY 10000 ANONYMOUS ARTISTS, 2008

AARON KOBLIN AND TAKASHI KAWASHIMA — HTTP://WWW.TENTHOUSANDCENTS.COM

MECHANICAL TURK, A MARKETPLACE FOR WORK   ➝  THE GENERATIVE BEDROCK OF OPEN DESIGN / MICHEL AVITAL

AMAZON MECHANICAL TURK — WWW.MTURK.COM

A MILLION DOLLAR HOMEPAGE, ALEX TEW, 2005

ALEX TEW — WWW.MILLIONDOLLARHOMEPAGE.COM

GUERRILLA GARDENING   ➝  DESIGN AND GOVERNMENT / BERT MULDER

KIRAINET.COM — A GEEK IN JAPAN