openp2pdesign.org_1.1 [English] by Massimo Menichinelli

openp2pdesign.org_1.1 Design for Complexity Massimo Menichinelli

Open Peer-to-Peer Software

Research

Social Innovation Knowledge Economy

Crowdsourcing Technology Web 2.0

Community-based Local

Design Community Platform

Service Complexity Product

Hardware

Co-creation Enabler

Sustainability Business

Self-organization Social Network

Methodology

Locality

Activity Participation Institutions

openp2pdesign.org_1.1 Massimo Menichinelli

in English en Castellano: openp2pdesign.org

in Italiano: openp2pdesign.org

openp2pdesign.org_1.1 in English

Massimo Menichinelli Some Rights Reserved, 2008 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ Written and Designed by Massimo Menichinelli with Scribus, OpenOffice, Gimp, Inkscape, Ubuntu Anivers, Fontin, Fontin Sans Typefaces by Jos Buivenga http://www.josbuivenga.demon.nl

A copy of this book and the Italian and Spanish versions can be downloaded here: http://www.openp2pdesign.org/ http://www.scribd.com/people/view/98493 http://stores.lulu.com/openp2pdesign

info@openp2pdesign.org http://www.openp2pdesign.org

openp2pdesign.org_1.1 in English

Table of Contents Introduction 01 Design and Locality 02 Design and Community 03 Design, Community and Free Software / Open Source / Peer-to-Peer 04 Design and Complexity for Communities 05 Design and Complexity towards Sustainability 06 Open P2P Communities

11 13 15 17 21 25 31

06.01 An early definition of Open P2P Communities

06.02 A loose definition, between many classifications

06.03 An Open P2P Communities list (1.1)

06.04 Open P2P Communities and Participation

07 The activity of an Open P2P Community and Service Design

07.01 Activity of a community and Activity System

07.02 Activity and the structure of the Open Peer-to-Peer Communities

07.03 Open Peer-to-Peer Communities described with an Activity System

07.04 Activity Systems and Service Design

08 Open P2P Communities and the Platform 09 Open P2P Design: the designer as an enabler 10 First examples of an Open and P2P Design

53 59 63

10.01 Co-created Service Design: RED's Open Health

10.02 Open Design, Open Source Software and Open Hardware: Openmoko

10.03 Open Design and Open Hardware: VIA OpenBook

11 First guidelines for an Open P2P Design

11.01 Analysis

11.02 Concept

11.03 Parallel co-design / test / setting-up

11.04 Self-organization

12. Future development for Open P2P Design

12.01 Design and research directions

12.02 A research for a social knowledge discipline

Bibliography

105 9

Introduction This short book represents a summed up and multilingual version of my thesis, and also as an introduction to the openp2pdesign.org website (with its 1.1 version). My research behind openp2pdesign.org, in fact, arose from my master degree thesis that I developed from March 2005 to April 2006, "Reti Collaborative. Il design per una auto-organizzazione Open Peer-to-Peer" ("Collaborative Networks. Design for an Open Peer-to-Peer self-organization"), with prof. Ezio Manzini as a tutor at the Politecnico di Milano, Faculty of Design. This research started from the relationship between design and local dimension, through design for a community, and then design and community-based organizational forms like Free Software, Open Source, Peer-to-Peer and Web 2.0 (or, Open Peer-to-Peer). This thesis has represented a huge opportunity to observe a phenomenon as the passage of Open Source and Peer-to-Peer organizational forms from the field of IT and ICT to a much broader number of fields, yet when the term Web 2.0 was in his first months of life and YouTube had not yet become famous. Therefore I had the opportunity to know these trends and their opportunities at their birth, but I could also start to think and understand how we could learn from them and use them in the Design field.

Comments:

EN http://www.openp2pdesign.org/ openp2pdesign.org was born in order to publish, disseminate and develop further my thesis, and to stimulate on it a collective discussion. The intention is to render the ideas behind the thesis not as property of a single person, but to share them collectively within a community. The thesis as the first source code on which to develop a community: this is why it has been translated to English and Spanish too. This publication is a summary of the thesis and a snapshot of openp2pdesign.org after a year and half from its birth; a transposition of the blog format in a book format, in an attempt to maintain the most interesting elements of both media. There is a space for comments, and in each chapter you can find the link to the online version, and then leave a comment or look at the old comments, to enable a collective discussion about an Open and Peer-to-Peer Design theory and practice.

Comments:

EN Design Locality

01 Design and Locality http://www.openp2pdesign.org/blog/archives/24 In the last 7-6 years, the design community has started approaching the locality with growing interest. For the design community, the locality is to be intended as the whole characteristics of the territory where the project is developed and directed to. The territory of users and designers too: the territory of every stakeholder. Therefore, many initiatives have been developed in Europe and in Italy, with the purpose of redefining a relationship that (almost) have never been: the relationship between Design and Locality. Produced by the Industrial Revolution and its Modernity, Design could be an example of how we always tried to reduce the complexity of the local dimension to exploit it. Traditionally, most of the designers think about economies of scale and mass production, and not about small production and local scale. Coming from modern activities and theories, Design follows their paths too: as they are becoming more interested in local dimension nowadays (maybe to manage globalization better), Design is now pretended to develop solutions (and/or new products and services) to local problems and opportunities. Therefore locality become the place where new commercial and sustainable solutions can be found (to the problems old

Comments:

opportunities generated). Most of the economic theories, from the mainstream ones (development, and thus local development) to the more outsider ones (degrowth and thus localism), think of local dimension as the ideal place for every action in the future. Whether conformist or radical, the future has a local dimension. We should reflect more in the future on the relationships between Design and Economy (and between Economy and Locality, and Economy and Sustainability): but it is very important now to point out how the relationship between Design and Locality is growing. And what it is interesting the most are the opportunities that this relationship can bring to the sustainability issue. In order to understand this relationship, we can look at the map of the intersections between Economics, Marketing, Architecture, Urban Planning, Institutions and Design as they became interested in the local dimension. And then wen can see that the most important keyword in this map is participation , as it is common to all the fields studied. Theferore we should become interested in communities too, in order to design for a locality.

Comments:

Design

Sustainability

Community

02 Design and Community http://www.openp2pdesign.org/blog/archives/10 As designers, why are we interested in communities and so in participation to improve the qualities of a locality towards sustainability? The Design community has reflected upon the sustainability issue in the past years, why it is interested also in communityies now? For sure, the Design community has reflected upon sustainability, learning from successes and failures1. Now, we are at a point where we know that simply redesigning products (ecodesign) reducing materials number and quantity and proposing services (which are not so immaterial as we thought) itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not enough to achieve sustainability. These attempts have brought to a completely opposite effect (rebound effect), an incredible growth of products and services on the market (and, as a consequence, a growth in the use of resources). Maybe itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s better to propose (and improve the diffusion of) sustainable lifestyles, based on sustainable and fair use of resources. Lifestyles that could be proposed by designers or companies, but already exist in the society, though they are 1. Manzini E., Jegou F. (2003)

Comments:

EN http://www.sustainable-everyday.net/manzini/ not very well known and widrespread. Ezio Manzini calls these cases Creative Communities2, i.e. bottom-up communities that self-organize to solve local problems in a sustainable way. Design could support the emergence and diffusion of the Creative Communities, providing them products, communication tools, services and strategies that can help them doing their activities. But Design have (almost) never considered communities, how can it relate with communities in participative projects? Designers could learn something from Architecture, Urban Planning and Web Design, that usually deal with participation. Maybe the Design community could learn how to face the complexity of communities an of their local dimension, looking at whom have been capable to do it successfullyâ&#x20AC;Śfor example, Open Source communities, P2P communities and similar communitiesâ&#x20AC;Ś

2. Manzini E. (2006)

Comments:

Open P2P Communities

Free Software

Design Community

03 Design, Community and Free Softwarehttp://www.openp2pdesign.org/blog/archives/11 / Open Source / Peer-to-Peer

Open Source Peer-to-Peer

Why should Design learn from Free Software, Open Source and P2P how to relate to a community? Because Free Software, Open Source and P2P communities have developed some organizational forms and principles that can lead a community to self-organization, and potentially to high dimensions. In other words, they have developed an approach to a community-based organizational form that proved its usefulness. For this reason, even in other fields than software development, Open Source and P2P principles and organizational forms have been adopted explicitly by many organizations; moreover, many other organizations that have not been explicitly inspired by Open Source and P2P use some principles and organizational forms that come from them. As a consequence of their success, a general interest in community-based collaborative forms has been spreading: this has lead to the discovery of similar cases prior to the Free Software, Open Source and P2P phenomenon but that share some features. All these cases (inspired by, derived by, prior to Free Software, Open Source and P2P communities) can be grouped (at least

Comments:

temporarily) in Open P2P Communities, i.e. communities based on an Open and Peer-to-Peer participation. They can be grouped temporarily in Open P2P Communities as they are evolving so fast that new definitions rise often (and Crowdsourcing and Web 2.0 are just an example). This success proves that community-based organizational forms are promising ones and that they can be adopted in communities with an high number of participants, building short and long collaborative networks, with high probabilities of spreading and achieving success in the society. They represent, maybe, the only participation-based organizational forms with an high scalability: the more the participants, the faster they can achieve success. These organizational forms and principles could be used to support and spread the activities of the Creative Communities (or any community). Moreover, user-generated content and community-based organization represents strong business opportunities (like YouTube, for example), and so redefining the role of Design could lead to more business opportunities for designers too. The idea is to bring Open P2P principles and practices inside the design process, and to use the design process to spread them throughout society. Open P2P organizational forms and

Comments:

EN principles as a design tool and as a design goal to support Creative Communities (or any community). There have been some initiatives trying to bring the Open P2P philosophy inside the design process (though we should study this more); but the proposal now is to use the design process to spread Open P2P philosophy throughout society too, at least where it could be more useful. Now we know where Design can find informations and expertises on how to relate to a community. But a community is a complex entity, a real complex system. And if it has large dimensions, we cannot avoid its complexity. How should we relate to communities, in a project, when they can have an huge number of participants? How should we relate to the complexity of a community? And then, how should a designer relate to complexity? In this situation, the same Free Software and Open Source communities could be useful for us...

Comments:

Complexity

Free Software

Design Service design

04 Design and Complexity for Communities http://www.openp2pdesign.org/blog/archives/12

Open Source

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 Complexity3. Therefore, in and for the complexity of a community and of its territory. The connection between Design and Complexity represents a an interesting field of research, now in its first steps: the Complexity Theories are relatively recent and still society (and therefore also in the Design community), tends to prefer more the reduction of the complexity, than its valorisation. 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 Free Software/Open Source. According to Ko Kuwabara4 the Linux community has succeeded because it 3. Pizzocaro S. (2004) 4. Kuwabara K. (2000)

Comments:

can face the complexity of the project without reducing it, through its own intrinsic complexity. The Open P2P organizational forms therefore are potentially suitable to manage complexity. We can learn so many things from the Free Software / Open Source phenomenon, but this is 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 we could get together Design and Open P2P Communities, remembering their complexity? In a few words, the Open P2P Communities are characterized by one main activity. Luckily, an activity can be considered with a systemic view (and therefore a complex one) through the Activity Theory, that has been connected to Service Design by Daniela Sangiorgi5 (and we will see this more in depth in chapter 07). The need for a complexity approach in design, is not necessary only for communities or territories, but it is favorable for every project too. 5. Sangiorgi D. (2004)

Comments:

EN 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 and strategies with greater probabilities of sustainability and commercial success. The realization of the Complexity dimension is not only useful for the Design process, but also in the understanding of the Sustainability issuesâ&#x20AC;Ś

http://www.mediadigitali.polimi.it/ddd/ddd_07/numero/w_articoli/72_05_sangiorgi.pdf

Comments:

Complexity

Design

Open P2P Communities

05 Design and Complexity towards Sustainability http://www.openp2pdesign.org/blog/archives/13

Sustainability Modernity

Why Design should learn how to relate to Complexity to understand Sustainability? Because the lack of understanding the unsustainability of society is also a problem of lack of understanding the complexity of the natural, social and economic (complex) systems in which we live. The attempt of reduction (or overappreciation) of Complexity was born with Modernity, that has applied it to the social, natural and territorial systems (leading us towards the unsustainability we face now). For Rullani6 Modernity (and in especially the great fordist company) generates artificial environments with reduced complexity, in order to control the behaviour of the agents. And a modernity that proceeds reducing the complexity of the human and social dimension has few points of contact with the territory, that is a layered and localized synthesis of history, culture and of relations between men and the ecosystem. In the theory and the practice of the modern economy, the territory has disappeared. 6. Rullani E. (2002)

Comments:

Artificial spaces with a reduced complexity for the convenience of calculation have replaced it. A territory without complexity is a territory without quality, one of the many places (or non-places7), accumulations produced by the economic algorithm. If Design is interested about the territory (to improve its quality), it must face this complexity. This reductionist strategy has been proving, during the years, to be effective only in the short term, having increased instead problems and secondary effects in the long term, especially on the sustainability side. Nowadays, most of the people still consider sustainability in a reductionist way, searching single practical and technological solutions to single problems, and not systemic solutions for the complexity of the social system. However, there is an emerging awareness of the importance of facing complexity to attain sustainability, through the revaluation of the local dimension as the specific place of action. The complexity of the society and of the ecosystems in which it resides demands the understanding of the hidden connections at the local and global scale. In order to understand where the economical practices (and therefore also the design practices) are leading us, we must understand 7. AugĂŠ M. (1992)

Comments:

EN the hidden connections between the economic, social and natural systems, and the feedback that they generate between each other. Sustainability, at the local and globl level, has an unavoidable complex dimension. Our society, our economy, and the ecosystems in which we live (and from which we draw resources) are complex systems that interact between each other; the lack of understanding of their connections (and therefore of their complexity) leads to the lack of understanding of the initiatives that are really necessary for reaching sustainability. In a complex system, the connections between all the elements of the system represent the architecture that supports it and allows its survival. The elimination of a single element can provoke unpredictable http://www.fisherycrisis.com/coral7.html effects, eventually leading to the collapse of the entire system (in an ecosystem, for example, all the living beings in it). And therefore the same thing happens also in the social system and the economic system: every action (also the design ones) must be thought without underestimating the complexity and the connections between the elements. In these connections between social, economic and natural systems, the designer lives and therefore Design acts, and it can perhaps learn from the Open P2P Communities how to manage this variety of elements and directions.

Comments:

The diversity is the main characteristic of the nature and the foundation of the ecological stability, and the Open P2P Communities introduce some suitable practices to valorize the diversity of their own participants, succeeding in the construction of a collective intelligence based on an open and tolerant peer-to-peer learning.

http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_8/moglen/index.html Open P2P organizational forms and principles are very defined, but still loose, that there is someone that believes they represent Anarchy, Communism, perfect free market and therefore Capitalism, or that they are not Communism (or http://www.freeos.com/articles/4133/ something similar), or maybe a radically different phenomenon, that we should study better.

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Therefore, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s possible to study how to modify and apply these community-based organizational forms, as they can be adapted to many situations: their flexibility has made them so widespread. We could use Open P2P organizational forms in order to diffuse questionable activities like military activities, control activities, or activities that, with an increase of their scale, could lead to an increase pollution and the gap between rich and poor (representing an awful future). Or we could use them in order to diffuse sustainable activities from the social, economic and natural point of view.

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2006/11/05/texas-border-watch-website/

Comments:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/15/opinion/15robb.html?ex=128702880 0&en=c62742c466b5ed1e&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

EN We can see these organizational forms like a box: they have a shape (the values and practices), but it is the content that give them a sense and a direction. A content that must be adapted to the shape of the box, but we have seen that it is flexible enough: it is necessary therefore to decide which contents we should use. As this organizational forms are so suitable to manage complexity, it is possible to choose them for complex entities such as the territory and its sustainability, and therefore for a Design directed to this issues.

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/01/05/bill-gates-free-cult.html

Design, Locality, Open Source, P2P, Web 2.0 are therefore the center of this research, where they will be analyzed from the complexity and sustainability point of view. We are going to analyze all the cases that are not explicitly related to sustainabilty too, as they could be useful in order to understand how to spread sustainable activities.

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/01/66209 We should talk now a little bit more about Open P2P Communities and about how Design can approach them.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/chanel_develops_durable_low_cost

http://www.nextbillion.net/blogs/2007/01/23/bop-spoofed-by-the-onion Comments:

Comments:

Peer-to-Peer

Open Source Open P2P Web 2.0 Communities

06 Openhttp://www.openp2pdesign.org/blog/archives/37 P2P Communities

Crowdsourcing

http://www.openp2pdesign.org/blog/archives/144

06.01 An early definition of Open P2P Communities Before we take a look at the methodological part of my thesis and the conclusions to draw from it, it would be useful to say something more aboute those cases that have been defined Open P2P Communities. The methodology that I have developed in the thesis, in fact, has been developed taking in consideration some existing cases before, and later taking in consideration which design tools and theories were suitable. Therefore, I searched for cases with a community-based collaborative organizational form, that can build short and long collaborative networks, reaching a potentially high number of participants with an important active role. This was still a vague definition, therefore I began searching those cases that were inspired by the Free Software / Open Source / P2P phenomenon, as already then (at the beginning of 2005) some believed they had developed organizational forms and principles that could be adopted in other fields with success8.

8. Mulgan G., Steinberg T., Salem O. (2005)

Comments:

Collaboration has always existed, but only today its importance has been amplified to such levels that it is now considered more promising than competition. Thanks to the ITC distributed infrastructures, collaboration is being diffused as an organizational form outside of the Free Software / Open Source / P2P Communities. To all these cases directly inspired by the Open P2P phenomenon9, we can add some other cases that, even if not explicitly inspired by Open P2P, share some of its features (and therefore they could have been influenced indirectly)10. We can also add some previous cases (and therefore without relations with Open P2P), but that had developed communitybased organizational forms able to build long collaborative networks with an active role of the participants11. The existence of these last two categories is of fundamental importance: community-based organizational forms are not just for Open Source / Free Software / P2P software, but they are very important, and as they tend to develop some common characteristics, they can be used therefore for a 9. For example: Thinkcycle, OSCar, Open Health. 10. For example: BBC Action Network, Neubauten.org, Pledgebank. 11. For example: Amul, Dabbawalla, Grameen Bank.

Comments:

EN wide range of situations and disciplines, independently from the degree of technology used. The Open Source / Free Software / P2P phenomenon is therefore important because it made us aware of the importance of community-based models and inspired us to search for similar cases. Moreover, they have shown own scalable and innovative organizational forms, adapted to face the challenges of a knowledge society. All these cases represent community-based organizational forms, based on collaboration through the sharing of flows of information and sometimes of material resources. While traditional organizations are based on a vertical hierarchy that commands and controls, the Open P2P Communities are based on a horizontal network in which every participant commands itself and contributes to control the whole network. While in the vertical hierarchies the relationships are defined by power (top-down), in the Open P2P Communities they are defined by reputation (bottom-up). The structure is therefore an horizontal reticular one, where reputation becomes a centripetal force of infuence towards the other participants. These communities can assume forms that are localized or virtual; they share the ability of selforganization during the development of a main activity for the solution of a specific problem, that neither institutions neither the market had provided satisfactory solutions.

Comments:

Their community nature allows the creation of social capital, that could generate further processes of improvement of the local dimension, through the connections that they potentially can bring between short networks (the interest for the local dimension) with long networks (that involve a wide number of participants).

06.02 A loose definition, between many classifications This is therefore the concise definition of an Open P2P Community. Like every classification, there is the risk of excessive generalization and therefore to group cases that represents different things. And as I was approaching to Free Software, Open Source and P2P for the first time, there could be some ingenuous statements. And as one year has passed from the discussion of my thesis, the definition of an Open P2P Community maybe should be rethought and redefined. Probably in the future it could be convenient or necessary to make a distinction between those cases in which the community risks to be â&#x20AC;&#x153;usedâ&#x20AC;? in order to produce value with an activity, and those cases in which is the community itself that directs its activity.

Comments:

EN But for the moment I think it is better to continue to observe these phenomena, while they are living and developing, leaving any expectations of exaustive definitions for the future. Even so, this definition has been very useful for me, as it helped me to find a way between the wide number of cases. Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s remain, at least for the moment, with a loose and adaptable definition. But maybe itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time to signal others two phenomena (or, therefore, also categories of definition) that became famous towards or after the end of my thesis, and that share relations with the Open P2P Communities. They are Web 2.0 and Crowdsourcing. My research started from existing cases, with a wide and flexilbe classification at the beginning, and its point of departure was the Free Software / Open Source / P2P phenomenon and its diffusion to others fields. At the time (March 2005) the term Web 2.0 already existed, but it had not become so famous (it happened in 2006, with the success of YouTube) and developed completely. Therefore it seemed to me more useful to focus on the Free Software / Open Source / P2P phenomenon. And the Crowdsourcing term was born in June 2006, when the thesis was already finished.

Comments:

Therefore, the main reason for the lack of Web 2.0 and Crowdsourcing inside the thesis is mainly due for a temporal factor. The interest towards the organizational forms and the principles developed in the Free Software (and Open Source and P2P) Communities was born end of the nineties. However, we had to wait until 2003 for the first awareness of this possibility, thanks to the Goetzâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s article appeared on Wired12. The organizational methodology of the Open Source Communities are seen as the right infrastructure for a knowledge economy, just as the assembly line had been for the Fordist mass-production economy. The interest for Open Source / Free Software / P2P organizational forms was born therefore before the definition of Web 2.013. Moreover, I think they represent phenomena closely correlated between each other. Web 1.0 has been developed by communities, with bottom-up and P2P dynamics, through sharing and Open Source / Free Software. Therefore it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Web 2.0 that introduced these dynamics, but they were already present since years in the computer science and programming sciene under the hacker ethic.

http://web.mit.edu/is/isnews/v17/n03/170301.html 12. Goetz T. (2003) 13. For example, Thinkcycle started on March 2000, 4 years before the first definition of Web 2.0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

Comments:

EN Web 2.0 represents therefore a phase in which these dynamics have been widened, reinforced and spread further. Web (1.0, 2.0), Free Software / Open Source and P2P therefore should not be considered separately. The classification of Open P2P Communities, can thereforebe applied as well also for Web 2.0 services like YouTube. Although the classifications of these casesis in constant development, it is possible to assume for the moment the partial classification of the Open P2P Communities. In this way we can collect cases directly inspired from the Free / Open Source / P2P Software as well the ones that are not recalled directly (but that share some principles and organizational formss), are they recent or antecedent cases. If we want to learn from communities, in order to design with and for communities, it can be useful to maintain such a classification (which is a loose one but strongly focused on the community dimension).

06.03 An Open P2P Communities list (1.1) Here you can find the list of Open P2P Communities I made during the development of the thesis (2005 - 2006). The number of cases has increased remarkablly since then, especially if we consider those cases that can be classified like Web 2.0 services and Crowdsourcing; for the moment letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

Comments:

consider this directory, later on I will write about new interesting cases. The cases have been classified by the main activity these communities develop, gathering participants and building collaborative networks. Collaborative networks that reach a critical mass of participants http://www.pledgebank.com/ PledgeBank http://www.meetup.com/ Meetup http://www.smartmobs.com Smart Mobs Collaborative networks that manage informations and knowledge http://www.indymedia.org/ Indymedia http://www.globalideasbank.org/ The Global Ideas Bank http://english.ohmynews.com/ Ohmynews http://www.kuro5hin.org/ Kuro5hin http://slashdot.org/ Slashdot OpenLaw http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/ Wikipedia http://wikipedia.org/ Connexions http://cnx.org/ Silver Stringers http://stringers.media.mit.edu/ NASA Mars Clickworkershttp://clickworkers.arc.nasa.gov/ Distributed Proofreaders http://www.pgdp.net/c/ SETI@Home http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/ Grid.org http://www.grid.org/

Comments:

EN Collaborative networks that develop scientific research http://www.hapmap.org/ The International HapMap Project http://www.tropicaldisease.org/ The Tropical Disease Initiative (TDI) http://www.dndi.org/ The Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) http://snp.cshl.org/ The SNP Consortium Ltd http://www.cambia.org/ The CAMBIA BIOS http://www.bios.net/ Collaborative networks that design http://www.osgv.org/ Open Source Green Vehicle (OSGV) OSCar - The Open Source Car Project http://www.theoscarproject.org/ Episodes of collective technological innovations http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/meyer.pdf Thinkcycle http://www.thinkcycle.org/ iCompositions http://www.icompositions.com/ Solar Roof http://www.solaroof.org/wiki instructables http://www.instructables.com/ Zeroprestige.org http://www.zeroprestige.org/ Collaborative networks that organize business activities http://neubauten.org/ Neubauten.org

http://www.amul.com/ Amul http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala Dabbawalla Napster http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster GNUtella http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella Amazon http://www.amazon.com/ eBay http://www.ebay.com/ P-grid http://www.p-grid.org/ The Sims http://thesims.ea.com/

Comments:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/neighbourhood_gardener/

http://www.terramadre2006.org/

Grameen Bank http://www.grameen-info.org/ Collaborative networks that improve their local dimension Terra Madre / Slow Food http://www.slowfood.com/ Open Heatlh Development Gateway BBCâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Neighbourhood Gardener The BBC iCan/Action Network Self-Help Groups http://www.bbc.co.uk/actionnetwork/ Honey Bee network http://www.sristi.org/honeybee.html Kiva http://www.kiva.org/ Collaborative networks that help other communities Sustainable Everyday Project / EMUDE http://www.newearth.info/ The New Earth Fund mySociety http://www.mysociety.org/ The Launchpad (Young foundation)

http://www.microfinancegateway.org/content/article/detail/3249

06.04 Open P2P Communities and Participation I have always said that these Open P2P Communities can selforganize themselves, and this affirmation should be explained better now. These communities are created in order to fix a problem through the development of a collaborative activity. The social relations can already be present but more often, if they develop through time, they rise from the development of the activity. Moreover, we can point out a distinction on the

Comments:

EN http://www.designcouncil.info/mt/RED/health/ possible types of participation: there are three ways in which Open P2P Communities can self-organize. They can selforganize with:

http://www.developmentgateway.org/ _a bottom-up participation: a community gather independently to fix a common problem (for example: Amul). The community forms in a bottom-up way; _a top-down participation: a (public or private) service that allows the formation of a community and bases on it its operation is offered. Participants operate in order to fulfill the enterprise's/local institution's goals/work (i.e. the participants depend from the enterprise/local institution) (for example: YouTube). The service is offered in a top-down way, and the participants act consequently; http://www.sustainable-everyday.net/EMUDE/ _a marketplace participation: a (public or private) service that allows the formation of a community is offered, and the participants gather in the community. Participants behave independently, forming relationships between each other in order to develop their own goals/works (i.e. they behave independently, in a true peer-to-peer way) (for example: BBC Action Network). The service is delivered in a top-down way, but the participants act in a bottom-up way within it.

http://launchpad.youngfoundation.org/

The fundamental point is: who takes the initiative and looks for persons in order to form a community? And with which

Comments:

goals? And which type of relationships, and therefore social network, it enables? For example: Free Software is usually bottom-up, Open Source and P2P could be bottom-up or topdown, Web 2.0 and Crowdsourcing are very often top-down. Moreover, from this bottom-up and top-down distinction, we can ask another question: how much these communities are Open and P2P? Data, informations, processes, results are accessible in an Open and P2P way? This is a very important issue and should be studied more. As a consequence, as designers, we could design for a community in two ways: offering our professional capabilities to existing communities, or designing and developing (public and private) community-based services. Before we can get to the methodological aspects, let's consider how a designer can relate to an Open P2P Community (and therefore towards an Open P2P Design). How can we design for a community that gathers around a main collaborative activity? In a few words: through the the process of co-design of its activity (and the characteristics that allow it) like a complex collective service.

Comments:

Activity Theory Open P2P Communities

07 The activity of an Open P2P Community and Service Design http://www.openp2pdesign.org/blog/archives/45

Service Design

07.01 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 they develop and behave, and the characteristics that generate them, since they form from the development of one http://www.edu.helsinki.fi/activity/pages/chatanddwr/chat/ 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.

http://www.edu.helsinki.fi/activity/pages/chatanddwr/activitysystem/

In the Activity Theory, the Activity System (picture 01) represents the unit of analysis for the study of the human behavior, leading to a â&#x20AC;&#x153;conceptual mapâ&#x20AC;? that evidences the main places around which the human cognition is distributed

Comments:

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 useful instrument to describe human actions, and can be used at different scales: the activity of one single person, of a group, of a community, 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.

Comments:

EN 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. mediating artifacts

subject

rules

object

community

outcome

division of labor

Picture 01. Activity System (Source: Sangiorgi D. (2004))

07.02 Activity and the structure of the Open Peerto-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.

Comments:

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 researchers14 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 â&#x20AC;&#x153;gravitational forceâ&#x20AC;? that moves the participants towards the center or outside the community: this force is reputation15 and not power. We have then an horizontal (not a hierarchy) network-based organizational form, similar to the one found by Lave and Wenger16 in the Communities of Practice and called Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP). 14. Crowston K., Howison J. (2005); Madanmohan T.R. (2002); Nakakoji K., Yamamoto Y., Nishinaka Y., Kishida K., Ye Y. (2002) 15. Watson A. (2005) 16. Lave J., Wenger E. (1991)

Comments:

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.

07.03 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 such communities (table 01).

Comments:

BBC Action Network activity

to give instruments and informations useful to citizens for organizing campaigns of public pressure in order to improve their local conditions

subject object results

BBC, citizens who wish to resolve some local problems, local institutions useful informations for the organization of campaigns of public pressure to enable citizens citizens who wish it to organize campaigns of public pressure in order to inform society about local problems

artifacts rules community division of labor (roles) reputation levels

website (information, personal space for every citizen, search engine of other citizens) donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t carry out political campaigns or commercial ones, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t insult British citizens, local institutions webmaster, coordinator of campaigns, organizer of group, public relation, coordination of the new members, treasurer, mentor core group: BBC active participants: citizens trying to organize campaigns peripheral participants: citizens in search of campaigns already formed

Table 01: Example of one Open Peer-to-Peer Community described through an Activity System (Source: Menichinelli 2006)

Comments:

EN 07.04 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 later. 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 attention. According to Pacenti17, the most important thing in the strategic design of a service is in fact the â&#x20AC;&#x153;platform of interactionâ&#x20AC;? between the service and the customer. 17. Pacenti E. (1992/1993), Pacenti E. (1998)

Comments:

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 by 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 Peerto-Peer Community: Daniela Sangiorgi18 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 18. Sangiorgi D. (2004)

Comments:

EN encounter between the customerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Activity System and the enterpriseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Activity System (picture 02) (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.

artifacts

object

subject

rules

community

division oflabor

potentially shared object

object

division oflabor

subject

community

rules

Picture 02. Interaction between Activity Systems (Source Sangiorgi D. (2004))

Comments:

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 Peerto-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?

Comments:

Activity Theory Platform

Open P2P Communities

08 Open P2P Communities and the Platform http://www.openp2pdesign.org/blog/archives/106

Service Design

What can we â&#x20AC;&#x153;designâ&#x20AC;? in a community? We cannot think about designing the relationships and the complexity of a community (which are the features that make it a community). The disciplines that traditionally have been interested in communities (architecture, urban planning, web design) are not oriented to design the relationships but the characteristics that, once realized, enable and support the birth and the development of the relationships. The necessary infrastructure for the relationships, their platform. It is convenient therefore to talk about a platform19 as the object of the design process. It is possible to design and to supply those fundamental conditions that, shared inside the social networks of the participants, act as an infrastructure to the emergence of the community and its characteristic activity. A platform is present (and necessary) every time a community forms deriving from the interactions between a high number of agents. As it is part of the activty, the platform can therefore be described through the Activity Systems. 19. Menichinelli M. (2006)

Comments:

The platform consists in a system of artifacts (materials, cognitive and communication ones), rules and division of labor (picture 03), which make possible the development and practice of the collective activity. As it is shared between the participants, it has a reticular and dynamic nature (pictures 04, 05). If the platform is necessary for processes that demand an interaction between a high number of agents, then also the design methodology will demand a platform for being carried out. The platform exists previously to the design process, that has the goal of improving it in a determined direction, that comes from a design decision. It is therefore necessary, at the beginnig of the design process, to analyze the existing platform for the collective discussion; thanks to it is possible to establish a contact with the participants. The designers, in fact, enter in the wider design community: a community whose activity is an open and peer-to-peer design. But how the designerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s role change when he/she enters in a wider design community?

Comments:

artifacts

subject

rules

object

community

division of labor

Picture 03. The Platform, described through an Activity System (Source: Menichinelli M. (2006))

Comments:

Picture 04. The Platform is distributed in the social network (Source: Menichinelli M. (2006))

Comments:

Picture 05. Distributed nature of the Platform (Source: Menichinelli M. (2006))

Comments:

Open P2P Communities

Complexity Linux

09 Open P2P Design: the designer as an enabler http://www.openp2pdesign.org/blog/archives/107 Once we define the platform, it is possible to understand what, effectively, a designer can design for an Open Peer-toPeer community. It still remains to define how such a project can be developed considering the complexity of a community. We should try therefore to define a design methodology (or at least some guidelines) that can improve the open and peer-topeer participation of the community and its complexity. A community is a complex system, and there is the need of a design methodology able to face its complexity without reducing it. As we have seen before, Open Peer-to-Peer organizational forms seem promising in supplying greater probabilities to face complex problems and to elaborate complex artifacts. That happens just thanks to their own intrinsic complexity: the complexity of the project reflects the complexity of the community, and both strengthen each other. Whe we design an activity, the community itself (a complex system) designs a complex project collectively (its own organization and the necessary conditions). Moreover, a project dedicated to a community must consider the characteristics of the context in which it lives, especially the territorial characteristics that become resources once the community realize their importance.

Enabler

Design Methodology Institutions

Comments:

This is an ulterior reason for giving it a greater opportunity of direct participation to the design process, as a community can recognize the usable resources better than others. This is therefore a design approach that take advantage of the participation of a potentially elevated number of participants, through a complex process characterized by its specific path (path dependency), oriented to several the levels of interaction: between participants, participants and community, community and another community, communities and institutions, community and society. We should therefore adopt a design approach based on participation, in order to use the knowledge of the participants to getter better results. We can therefore say that a project directed to an Open Peerto-Peer community should be itself Open Peer-to-Peer, based on the participation of the community to the design process (open: open to the participation), to whose members is recognized an equal and active role (peer-to-peer: the acknowledgment of other peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s competences and expertise). An Open Peer-to-Peer design process therefore becomes a co-design process, where designer and participants collaborate in a wider design community (which is a collective intelligence). The designer therefore assumes a specific role in the projects directed to Open Peer-to-Peer communities.

Comments:

Thanks to his/her competences, a designer can supply the instruments for self-organization and the optimal conditions for an activity to take form, assuming a role of an enabler and not of a provider (or supplier of defined solutions). No more a simple supplier of his/her own creativity, but an enabler of distributed creativity. No more a simple design process that produces definitive solutions, but a design process that support communities so that they can develop appropriate solutions to their own needs and characteristics. We can see that the same shift is happening in the local institutions too, where local government is transforming itself into governance. A redefinition of the role of the local institution that becomes an enabler of the participation and the coordination between public entities and private and social ones, and not a provider of rules and services20. A designer can be an enabler naturally, since his/her competences make him/her able to establish connections between customers and enterprises, therefore mediating between different interests. Thanks to his/her abilities to visualize in advance, a designer can at the same time manage multiple and discordant interests, remembering the 20. Vicari Haddock S. (2004)

Comments:

advantages that derive from a collective collaboration. Moreover, an enabler should supply support to reach the selforganization of the members in the short term, avoiding to render them depending on him/her in the long term. The goal of a designer is therefore the social enabler of the development of communities; the role that Linus Torvalds chose to assume in the development of Linux, avoiding the more traditional one of designer-provider21.

21. Kuwabara K. (2000)

Comments:

Open Hardware Open Source

Business/Service Free Software

Community-based Services

Service Design

Mobile

10 First http://www.openp2pdesign.org/blog/archives/162 examples of an Open and P2P Co-creation Product Design Design http://www.openp2pdesign.org/blog/archives/172 http://www.openp2pdesign.org/blog/archives/173

In order to see how an Open P2P methodology has real and especially topical potentials for application, we can point out some first cases of design projects based on strategies of openness and user involvement in the project and usage stage of the product/service offered . These projects are the Open Health project developed by the design team RED (the first in chronological order, and even today one of the most innovative), the Openmoko mobile and the VIA OpenBook subnotebook. These three cases offer first reflections and attempts of Co-created Service Design, Open Design and Open Hardware initiatives: cases that share openness of the project through peer-to-peer dynamics and community building.

Technology

The goal here is not to present a complete list of cases and their analysis, but to provide a starting point for discussion, a proof of the validity of the Open P2P methodology and its integration into the world of design. Before the presentation of the individual cases, we can notice how they present open or p2p dynamics, but never both at the same time. Openmoko and VIA OpenBook are projects whose source codes were opened, but where the building of p2p dynamics was not explicitly sought (they are Open Design projects): they were

Comments:

left to develop on their own. The Open Health project instead aimed at facilitating the emergence of p2p dynamics (P2P Design), but the project is not open (it was so only in a short period of confrontation during its initial development). An Open P2P project instead, covers both the opening of the project, of its source code, and the facilitation of the emergence of p2p dynamics: is not only about the publication of a code, but about the facilitation of a social system through the use of a project code. In the next chapter the proposal for a methodology for an Open P2P Design will be presented more in detail.

http://www.designcouncil.info/RED/ 10.01 Co-created Service Design: RED's Open Health Open Health is one of the first example of P2P-inspired Design. After a careful reflection, Hilary Cottam and Charles Leadbeater developed this experimental project of reform of public services within the RED design unit of the British Design Council, which, during its lifetime, proposed new approaches to economic and social problems through innovative uses of design. During its existence, RED eveloped its projects explicitly relying on the principles developed by the movement of Open Source software, i.e. developing concepts very rapidly and making them questionable even outside the division.

Comments:

EN The approaches currently used for the reform of public services are demonstrating their limits. By maintaining a hierarchical structure and institutionalized, top-down, they can do little in solving complex problems, such as the growth of chronic diseases or other health problems, which could be solved simply by encouraging different behaviour and lifestyles. The new proposed approach leads to the development of radical innovations, not incremental ones: new public services must be co-created with end-users. To do so we must render movable the resources, know-how, actions and experts so that they are distributed in local communities, rather than locate them only within the institutions, even if local. These distributed resources can be more effective if used collaboratively through the sharing of ideas, providing mutual support and giving voice to the needs of citizens. The development of new answers requires a creativity widespread in society and the activation of networks of knowledge and resources outside the public institutions. These reflections also cross with the situation of the health sector, where it is important to place the emphasis on community because it is now evident that many chronic diseases are strongly linked to practice and judgement that society exerts on individuals. It is therefore necessary to develop a community of co-creation, as they are defined by

Comments:

Cottam and Leadbeater, i.e. a community of users and professionals who work using all the resources already existing in innovative ways, based on a common platform that makes possible the activity of many participants without having the need for an hierarchy of control. Communities that are similar in some characteristics to the community of Open Source software, even if their activity depends on the characteristics of all stakeholders of the health system. The prevention and cure of chronic diseases can therefore also occur in the homes if we give people advice, technologies and services, particularly through support groups: the knowledge, skills and experience spread between people allow the construction of a network of relationships and collaborations. Solutions to deal with unhealthy lifestyles will be created only if a system of all actors, where resources, knowledge, advice and funding will be distributed outside of public institutions, between communities and individual citizens. In this way the same citizens and communities will be themselves protagonists in the elaboration of collective solutions careful to local conditions. Therefore we must distribute knowledge now found only within the institutions, use the resources that already some people have them become agents for the provision of support to other citizens (peer-to-peer).

Comments:

EN With these considerations in mind, the RED division developed two projects in collaboration with two localities, Kent and Bolton, as prototypes for testing future services which are not yet ready for introduction throughout the whole country. In the city of Kent the problem addressed was of an ageing population, while in the city of Bolton was addressed the issue of management of chronic diseases, in this case diabetes. The projects were developed in six months by the RED design team that consisted of designers, doctors, economists, anthropologists and politics experts, in collaboration with professionals, local services employees and residents of the http://www.designcouncil.info/mt/RED/files/REDActivmobs.pdf two localities.

http://www.activmob.com The problem addressed in the city of Kent was to encourage people (initially aged between 50 and 70 years) to play physical activities in order to reduce the chances of problems related to old age, such as fractures, osteoporosis, diabetes, etc.. The design team developed Activmobs, a service aimed at providing support for people who want to maintain their good state of health while carrying out physical activities and following their inclinations. A mob is formed by a group of acquaintances who, together, play a regular physical activity (such as gardening or walking with the dog). The service, whose communicative artefacts are a magazine and a website, allows the self-organization of the activities by

Comments:

the mob, and their networking with trainers and resources. The magazine, the website, mob groups, the roles of "trainers" and "motivators" are part of the service system co-designed and co-managed by citizens and professionals. A group already formed can register through the website, choose its activities and build a timetable for the conduct. Through the website, individuals can look for mobs in their area, mobs looking for participants can reach a minimum number of participants or suggest an activity to form a mob (also taking inspiration from a special site section that gives advices and examples). When one of these mobs is formed, its founder (motivator) receives a special coupon, which can be used to cover the costs of organizing the mob or to attend courses to become a trainer for mobs. The trainers are chosen after an interview, and can help the mobs to choose their activities, to improve their effectiveness for the physical health, and help setting targets to be achieved through the activity, which will be rewarded. Targets may be based on the presence of participants, on a space distribution, on a time distribution or on a score achieved. The participants can also choose individual goals, and once all components of the mob have achieved them, the whole mob earns a reward. In this way the components of the mob

Comments:

EN encourage each other in order to achieve the objectives, just as it happens in the microcredit services developed by the Grameen Bank. The magazine show ideas, interviews with mobs, list of existing mobs and recommendations, awards, instructions on how to organize the mob, interviews to trainers and motivators, list of trainers divided by area, list of facilities that can be used and so on. The website shows all the information on the magazine, and also allows the mob to self-organize themselves keeping in contact and looking over personal and collective progress. The members of the mob compile fact sheets every three months on the website in order to monitor their progress, receiving in return a score and coupon for activities within the mob or for their family. In the second project, developed in the town of Bolton, the RED design team addressed patients suffering from diabetes, about one every ten families. In this case the team proposed a co-created service based on the encounter of top-down and bottom-up initiatives for the distribution of resources and to encourage patients to follow more healthy lifestyles. The service developed tries to provide an interface between citizens suffering from diabetes, so that they can support each other through peer-to-peer dynamics, and between them and doctors, encouraging the sharing of their knowledge.

Comments:

EN www.designcouncil.info/mt/RED/publications/publicationscontainer/me2_story.pdf The RED design team developed a service based on two approaches to resolve the problem. The first concerns the development of a set of cards (Agenda cards) that patients and physicians use during their meetings to improve their communication, because patients are not always able to communicate their feelings about diabetes. The advantage of cards is the easy and short prototyping and testing time, using the feedback of the participants to direct the further development of the project. The second approach consists in a consulting service called Me2Coach Service, where people with a long experience of living with the disease play the role of coaches of people affected by the problem only recently, who knows what changes are to be undertaken but are not quite willing to act yet. The coaches, with their long experience, provide valuable advices outside the public health service, thus constituting a not hierarchical service where participants are at the same level and have the same problems: on a peer-to-peer basis.

10.02 Open Design, Open Source Software and Open Hardware: Openmoko The case of Openmoko plays a crucial role here, because it represents the most complete case of the first mass product completely open source. Therefore, this is the first example of

Comments:

EN http://www.openmoko.com/ a real Open Design, not tied to individual experiments or niche markets (albeit very important): the first example of how open source philosophy can be adopted not only in areas different from programming and production of knowledge, but also in a http://www.openmoko.org/ production of physical goods, rival goods. It's the Openmoko organization, a project aimed at designing a completely open source smartphone, first for its software, and now also for its hardware and design. We can say that this is the first, true, open source mass product design, as the previous examples have not pursued completely the Open Source philosophy, or because they have had limited results, or, lastly, because the context was not ready for such http://www.thinkcycle.org/ initiatives.

http://www.ronen-kadushin.com/Open_Design.asp

Thinkcycle, which is the first and most developed Open Design example (at least so far), was an experiment aimed at niche markets, and for this reason should deserve even more importance because it was aimed at helping disadvantaged contexts, but still limited in the results and in influence on the world of design as too ahead of the spread of Open Source awareness in society. Ronen Kadushin's initiative, although worthy, represents only a solitary experiment without broad appeal and development. MartĂ GuixĂŠ's proposal takes the Open Source just as a metaphor and try to adopt some of its collateral features, i.e. that he looks for certain aspects of

Comments:

http://www.guixe.com/exhibitions/2003_mtks-lisboa/index.html

EN http://www.openmoko.com/products-neo-base-00-stdkit.html open source software that he can apply to products too, but in substance this is not Open Design.

http://www.fic.com.tw/ The Openmoko initiative (in its first incarnation, Neo1973, produced by FIC) is so important because the adoption of the Open Source philosophy is not an experiment but a real initiative. We have gone beyond the stage of inspiration and experimentation for Open Design, to a stage where it is put into practice by big companies too. Of course, experimentation is not over and should be pursued further, but now we are talking about a product that the general public will see in stores and that is in competition with the most expected product of the moment, the Apple iPhone. And this referring to the freedom that this choice of opening may give the user, just like the philosophy of the Free Software: "If you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t open it, you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t own it. Our first key unlocked the software, unleashing the community to recraft the code. Now, we free the case and share the keys to Industrial Design. Developers who want to re-craft the case are set free". http://www.openmoko.com It is by no coincidence that we can buy an advanced version, bearing all that is needed to open and edit the phone, enabling its hacking in order to customize and learn from it at the same time. The distribution of the design files is therefore a logical consequence; the files (IGES, STEP, ProE), have been published under a Creative Commons ShareAlike license.

http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo1973

Comments:

http://downloads.openmoko.org/CAD/

Picture 06. Openmoko (Source: http://openmoko.com/)

Comments:

Picture 07. Openmoko (Source: http://openmoko.com/)

Comments:

Picture 08. Openmoko, Open Source Software (Source: http://openmoko.com/)

Comments:

Picture 09. Openmoko, Open Hardware (Source: http://openmoko.com/)

Comments:

Picture 10. Openmoko, Open Design (Source: http://openmoko.com/)

Comments:

The fact that a mobile phone of new generation, a smartphone, is the first true open source product, makes the event even more important, because mobile phones represent a huge potential for the development of community-based collaborative services. A tool that will enable us in the future to exploit, enhance and more easily spread the collective intelligence, because it has the ability to further break down the barriers of the services, as many more people have access to mobile phones and feel more comfortable with them than with computers and the World Wide Web. Therefore, with an Open P2P design methodology we could design with/for a community, mobile phones, their software and their services, according to their specific needs. We are then able to co-design with a community their collaborative services and the tools that allow their deployment, even for small contexts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIA_Technologies 10.03 Open Design and Open Hardware: VIA OpenBook After the first example of a real Open Design mass product, we have now another example like this, showing us how Open Business strategies are already understood and spread now. VIA Technologies, the world's largest independent manufacturer of motherboard chipsets, from Taiwan, published the CAD files of his last product: VIA OpenBook.

http://www.viaopenbook.com

Comments:

Picture 11. VIA OpenBook (Source: http://www.viaopenbook.com/)

Comments:

Picture 12. VIA OpenBook (Source: http://www.viaopenbook.com/)

Comments:

EN http://www.viaopenbook.com/ The CAD files of this subnotebook are available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. There are many reasons behind such strategies, but mainly two reasons are the most probable here. First, this move is a way to lay the foundation basis for the development of an hackers/modifiers/suppliers/manufacturers ecosystem around the product. Second, this is a strategic move in the subnotebook market, which is rising in these months (just see the Asus eeePC phenomenon). Indeed, an open design product gives more probabilities that innovation and competition will eventually shift in other areas: no more in the manufacturing of a subnotebook but in the construction of an open peer-topeer ecosystem of users and enterprises. Moreover, VIA is mainly a computer components manufacturer, not a notebook one: everyone could manufacture an OpenBook, but will most probably end using (and therefore buying) VIA's chipsets and motherboards. Releasing the "source code" of an open design product brings a positive side-effect that makes a little step further toward environmental sustainability. Open design products can be manufactured locally, avoiding therefore the need for long travel for the finished goods (unfortunately it is not the same for the raw materials) and fossil fuels consumption and CO2.

Comments:

And as we know everything about this product (it is open) we can manufacture it and repair it in such a way it will last longer than other products and then there will be less need to change it frequently. Sure, these are not great steps toward sustainability, but we should consider these side-effects too for an open and sustainable business. The openness of VIA OpenBook is considerably very limited (CAD files relate solely to the plastic shell, while hardware and its related software remain closed), especially if we compare it to the Openmoko initiative. Its importance lays therefore in being another proof that Open Design and Open Hardware products are a feasible business and that we should pay attention to the level of openness adopted. Here is an early analysis that Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation wrote about Open Hardware:

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/how-open-is-vias-openbook-design/2008/06/07

Closed Hardware: is any hardware for which the creator of the hardware will not release information on how to make normal use of the hardware, in such a way that that information may be freely shared with others. A sure sign of closed hardware is requiring the signing of an NDA to receive documentation on how to make use of a device. Open Interface: In the case of Open Interface hardware, all the

Comments:

EN documentation on how to make a piece of hardware perform the function for which it is designed is available. In the case of computer hardware, this means that all the information necessary to produce fully functional drivers is available. This is the minimum level of openness that makes hardware useful to the open software community. Surprisingly, large amounts of integrated circuits fall into this category. Any device for which you can get a complete data sheet from the manufacturer, with no limitations on sharing the data contained within, meets the Open Interface definition. Open Design: Open Design hardware is hardware in which enough detailed documentation is provided that a functionally compatible device could be created by a third party. It is not at all uncommon for the programmerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s guides for a micro controller to have complete instruction encoding formats, memory maps, block diagrams of the processor core, and other technical details that would make it possible to reproduce a compatible micro controller. Open Design hardware allows you to see what was implemented and what it should do, but still keeps the finer details of how it was implemented closed. Open Implementation: Hardware for which the complete bill of materials necessary to construct the device is available fall into the category of Open Implementation. In the realm of computer

Comments:

chips, this means the hardware definition language description of the device is available. For a circuit board, this would include the schematic. Everything needed to reproduce an exact copy of a device is available. This is the hardware parallel to the concept of open source software. The debate between ‘open’ and ‘free’ (libre) that exists in the software space exists for hardware as well. In this regard, the only hardware that can truly be claimed to be free, in the same manner that the Free Software Foundation defines free, is that which falls into the Open Implementation category. Unfortunately, unlike software, an idea and the desire to produce a hardware device that is free and open is not sufficient. Certainly in the semiconductor space, the ability to do so is beyond the individual and in most cases, beyond even a reasonably equipped development group.

Comments:

Participation Self-organization

Open P2P Communities

Complexity Platform

11 First guidelines for an Open P2P Design http://www.openp2pdesign.org/blog/archives/108 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 â&#x20AC;&#x153;suitableâ&#x20AC;? to the community, whose selection will lead to better results.

Enabler

Design Methodology Social Network Analysis Community

An Open Peer-to-Peer design process is characterized by openness and sharing of the project (the source code, in the 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 coming from service design, with the introduction of a description of the reputation levels within the community, the license that governes cooperation and the

Comments:

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 the 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 (picture 13).

Comments:

EN 11.01 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 communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;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 communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;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.

11.02 Concept Once the analysis of the participants, of their activities and their social networks is done, a first concept of the communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;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. 10.03 Parallel co-design / test / setting-up

11.03 Parallel co-design / test / setting-up Once developed, the concept is shown to the participants and

Comments:

collectively discussed. Now begins a phase of co-design of the activity/platform, characterized by steady growth of commitment, energy and visibility from the participants. At this stage, the concept of activity is developed collaboratively to get a functioning project, a â&#x20AC;&#x153;stableâ&#x20AC;? 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 bought. 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

Comments:

EN nor execution. As in software, then the source code (the project) gives place to the binary code (the activity done by the participants).

11.04 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.

Comments:

energy and visibility

coalescing

potential

stable

self-organization

individual participants

people with the same interests meet each other

Comments:

raise of social awareness first dicussions and proposals about common problems

analysis the minimum critical mass of participants is reached participants start to gather decision to form a community

co-design / test / construction concept communication concept design

self-organization and expansion

decline

communities networks

single communities

time

stable version

Picture 13. Open Peer-to-Peer Design timeline (Source: Menichinelli M. (2006))

Comments:

co-design participation level analysis

concept design

none

indirect

consultative

shared control

total control

Picture 14. Open Peer-to-Peer Design participation matrix

Comments:

concept communication

co-design

co-design / test

(Source: Menichinelli M. (2006))

Comments:

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

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2006/press.html

Comments:

Bottom of the Pyramid Design Methodology

Innovation

Design Research

Local Services

Business/Service

12 Future development for Open P2P Design http://www.openp2pdesign.org/blog/archives/112

Knowledge Economy

These Open Peer-to-Peer design steps should be considered more as guidelines than a complete methodology: we should apply them, test them, study them more (as in research as in practice). And this is the right time to study and test these participative practices. We can say that there have been two cases that show a change in how society perceive this kind of participation: Timesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; decision to choose Web 2.0 users as person of the year, and the Nobel Peace prize awarded to Muhammad Yunus for inventing micro-credit services (this kind of service is not related to Open Source and Peer-to-Peer, but is based on communities and activities that are open and peer-to-peer as well). It is now possible to say where Open Peer-to-Peer guidelines can be applied and studied.

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

Comments:

01. improve local conditions Opportunities for projects related to specific local dimensions are increasing visibly, and therefore an Open Peer-to-Peer design methodology is very interesting, because it offers more chances of success in involving local communities and in addressing complex projects. 02. develop/deliver commercial/non-profit community-based services The importance of involving active users, not as single individuals anymore but as a community, is gaining consensus both for business activities and non-profit or institutional ones. An Open Peer-to-Peer methodology can be used here as it allows community involvement giving it a real active and peer-to-peer role in creating content and developing projects. 03. organize complex design processes based on participation The Open Source organizational forms / design methodologies have proved with Linux to be able to develop complex projects in a relatively short time through an open and equal participation. The Open Peer-to-Peer Open methodology has been developed from them, and therefore can be applied to projects where there is awareness of its complexity (and need for a relatively quick solution).

Comments:

EN 4. design for contexts with scarce resources or economic return probabilities Thanks to their ability to involve participants beyond the more restricted logical market, Open Peer-to-Peer communities can find an application in disadvantaged contexts too. It is difficult to develop/deliver product/service systems to countries and markets characterized by scarce resources (or poor prospects for profit), but there are now economic strategies that study this: the Bottom of the Pyramid ones22. An Open Peer-to-Peer methodology can be applied in these strategies because it allows the development of projects based on a community of volunteers (thereby reducing the economic resources necessary), and because it can involve local communities in all these contexts inside the design process (succeeding to get projects suited to specific socio-cultural contexts). And it can develop and provide product/service systems that seeks to reconstitute/strengthen the social fabric, and not product/service offering unsustainable environmentally and socially.

lifestyles

both

12.02 A research for a social knowledge discipline For a design discipline that begins to take an interest not only 22. Prahalad C.K. (2004)

Comments:

in technological innovation but also in social innovation, the Open Peer-to-Peer attitude can offer useful elements and many possible directions of research. So far, most of the interest towards the Open Peer-to-Peer attitude has been revolved around the organization of scientific research or entertainment services. It is possible too to study also other areas where it is possible to develop Open Peer-to-Peer community-based services (and hence economic activity and business). There is a potentially vast and promising field: all the cases specifically linked to the social dimension, and therefore public services, non-profit organizations and strategies that may belong to the commercial sector but linked to the Bottom of the Pyramid strategies. For example, in the case of public services, the eGovernement strategies implemented so far (and, in general, the reform strategies of public services) have not reached a large number of people and the desired outcomes. This is the reason why the introduction of the Open Peer-to-Peer methodology is possible, as it provides an active role of users in the cocreation and delivery of services. An introduction that proposes the Open Peer-to-Peer communities and attitude as useful not only at the operational level but also at the strategic level, where local institutions assume the role of their facilitators.

Comments:

EN http://www.designcouncil.info/mt/RED/health/ With the shift from local government to governance, local institutions are becoming facilitators of participation (of both civil society and the economy sector). In particular, Charles Leadbeater and Hilary Cottam23 and the Demos think-tank , for example, are moving in this direction. Fields of application of this attitude and its organizational forms are therefore wide; the attention to the â&#x20AC;&#x153;social sideâ&#x20AC;? has two advantages. The first is that we work in an environment suitable for the introduction of this attitude (for the affinity to the participatory and collaborative dimension, and the need to solve real unaddressed problems). The second consists in the possibility of studying the social dimension of an Open Peer-to-Peer project, something this context can offer http://www.demos.co.uk/projects/participativepublicservices/overview more than others. There are many critical aspects in the relationship between design and the Open Peer-to-Peer attitude that could be studied. Here there are the most important ones:

http://www.demos.co.uk/projects/userledservicedesigninlocalauthorities/overview How can design relate with the Open Peer-to-Peer attitude? The Open Peer-to-Peer attitude is a recent and evolving one, and brings with it new values and new strategies; therefore it is necessary to study this attitude in depth, and also study how the discipline of design can relate to it. 23. Cottam H., Leadbeater C. (2006)

Comments:

And then how the role of the designer, the design process and the object of the project change. How does design relate with these Open Peer-to-Peer Communities and their local dimension? We should not forget that these Open Peer-to-Peer communities have their own local dimension (even if they are distributed). And the relationship with the local dimension is one of the latest trends that can be found in Web 2.0 services. Luckily, the design discipline is studying how to relate with the local dimension since several years. How does design relate with the knowledge produced and shared within a community? Knowledge and its sharing (or not) is a tricky issue and currently of great interest and the subject of debates and reflections. In this case, we should understand how to manage knowledge both within the design discipline and both within communities characterized by an Open Peer-to-Peer attitude. How does design relate with the complexity of a community? A community is an organizational form with an high degree of complexity, and this is intuitive. Nevertheless, some studies on Open Peer-to-Peer organizational forms showed how they have a high complexity and the ability to improve it in solving

Comments:

100

EN complex problems (a capability that the other disciplines are looking with interest now). But the concepts related to the complexity and the their relationship with design are a recent phenomena, which require deeper researches. How does design relate with the relationship between market economies and gift economies? These Open Peer-to-Peer communities present different forms of economic organization, that lays between the market economy and the gift economy. This characteristic should be studied in depth to understand the extent to which they can survive in an different economic environment, and the extent to which this characteristic can be extended in society, through the contact with other communities. The research and implementation of this Open Peer-to-Peer attitude within the design discipline can bring new opportunities both to the design practice and the design research. And introducing an attitude that has at its center the collective construction and sharing of knowledge can make a further step in the configuration of design as a knowledge discipline for a knowledge society.

Comments:

101

Comments:

102

103

104

Bibliography Augé M., (1992), Non-Lieux, introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité, Le Seuil Cottam H., Leadbeater C., (2004), RED PAPER 01 HEALTH: Cocreating Services, Design Council

http://www.designcouncil.info/mt/RED/health/REDPaper01.pdf

Cottam H., Leadbeater C., (2006), The User Generated State: Public Services 2.0 http://www.charlesleadbeater.net/archive/public-services-20.aspx 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 Goetz, T., (2003), Open Source Everywhere. Software is just the beginning … open source is doing for mass innovation what the assembly line did for mass production. Get ready for the era when collaboration replaces the corporation, Wired Issue 11.11, 2003 http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/ Kuwabara K., (2000), 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

105

http://www.dis.polimi.it/manzini-papers/06.01.06-Creative-communitescollaborative-networks-distributed-economies.doc Lave J., Wenger E., (1991), Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Manzini E., (2003), Jegou F., Quotidiano sostenibile. Scenari di vita urbana, Edizioni Ambiente, Milano Manzini E., (2006), Creative communities, collaborative networks and distributed economies. Promising signals for a sustainable development , Dis-Indaco, Politecnico di Milano 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 Menichinelli M., (2006), Reti collaborative. Il design per una auto-organizzazione Open Peer-to-Peer, Tesi di laurea, rel. Ezio Manzini, Politecnico di Milano, A.A. 2004/05

http://www.openp2pdesign.org

Menichinelli M., Valsecchi F., (2007), Le comunitĂ del Free Software come organizzazioni complesse. Il ruolo del design verso una cultura Open Knowledge., Paper presentato alla Conferenza Italiana sul Software Libero 2007, Cosenza, 11-1213 Maggio 2007

http://www.openp2pdesign.org

106

Mulgan G., Steinberg T., Salem O., (2005), Wide Open. Open source methods and their future potential, Demos, London http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/wideopen 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 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 Pizzocaro S., (2004), Design e complessità, in AA.VV., Design multiverso, Poli.design, Milano Prahalad, C.K, (2004), The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Wharton School Publishing Rullani E., (2002), Il distretto industriale come sistema adattativo complesso, in Quadrio Curzio A., Fortis M. (a cura

107

di), complessità e distretti industriali: dinamiche, modelli, casi reali, Il Mulino, Bologna 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 Vicari Haddock S., (2004), La città contemporanea, Il Mulino, Bologna Watson A., (2005), Reputation in Open Source Software, College of Business Administration Northeastern University Working paper http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/watson.pdf

108

109

110