[OpenDesign] Hello + Re: Bram Geenen

Mon Apr 9 15:44:17 UTC 2012

Hi Stuart, all

"perhaps Bram + friends' open-designism project could be a/the solution?"

I hope so :) For us too those questions don't have clear cut answers, but
one of our approaches is to get the collaboration platform out there as
soon as possible, and to start learning from actual usage, and from
questions or remarks from users.
Concerning sharing design processes, for now we don't want to apply a rigid
framework, but instead give users enough possibilities to share their
process, and give others all possibilities to join and help out, or improve
the design and its documentation.

What do you think is a good approach? Giving as much freedom as possible,
relying on the community's self-organization, or provide a clear framework
on how to share, communicate and document?

Thanks!

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 2:54 AM, Stuart Childs <stuchilds at googlemail.com>wrote:

> Hi Peter, all
>
>
> first I think there is a distinction between sharing a design (result) and
> sharing (while) designing.
>
>
> I'd agree here.
>
> you're obviously talking about the first one
>
>
> I am interested in both - great that you highlighted the sharing while
> designing, sharing the process, aims, thoughts one goes through as a
> designer, brick walls / problems one comes up against. All very useful for
> others trying to use or modify existing shared designs. I hadn't considered
> the distinction.
>
> one rough thought of mine is, that sharing a design is not only sharing
> the "design file(s)" but also the design rationale -- the WHY of a design,
> not only the WHAT
>
>
> Would this be akin to blogging about the design process? An example I
> recently shared was designing a laser cut plywood clamp:
> http://stuartchilds.com/2012/03/snijlabs-plywood-clamps/ where I shared
> both the design process as well as files.
>
> Taking photos, notes, exporting different file formats and writing a short
> post about it all takes some time.
>
> A challenge may be to find a way to put the WHAT/WHY / info about the
> process alongside the design files / hard content, without blurring the
> lines, confusing the two (quite) different things. This might work on a
> personal website, would it work as well on a larger scale community site?
>
>
> this is stuff you won't necessarily find in a say .stl file … but it is
> extremely valuable to understand, what the thinking of the designer was
> when creating the code
>
> I feel that's where we need clever ideas in open design to make "how a
> design works" and design decisions understandable to non-designers
>
>
> I'd agree here. I see one great benefit of open design as a way of
> bettering one's design practice - it's the classic 'if everybody can see
> how I did this, I would be less inclined to cut corners / include sloppy
> design'.
>
> However sometimes you might end up with a design file after a few
> days/weeks/months/years, and actually have little record of the design
> procedure, or what you went through to get to the final result. Should one
> then recollect from a blurry (and perhaps inaccurate) memory, admit that
> there are gaps in the design process, or otherwise?
>
> The instructables website is a kind of nice example of this: some projects
> are incredibly well documented with detailed step by step instructions,
> close up photographs, diagrams, etc. where others are hastily added 'i
> didn't know about instructables until after i completed the project but
> here's a photo and some of the steps I took'.
>
> I have seen (and also followed / contributed to) instructables where the
> steps have not been obvious and a series of messages, updates by the
> author, feedback from others has led to a clearer, easier to follow, better
> documented set of instructions. Nice to see a project evolve in this way,
> if not perhaps the norm.
>
> Interesting stuff and good food for thought.
>
> perhaps Bram + friends' open-designism project could be a/the solution?
>
>
> Hi Stuart, thanks for posing those questions!
> I agree that there is a need for streamlining the process of sharing a
> design. Sometimes I worry that standardizing file formats reduces variety
> and possibilities, but it could help out a lot. For now I mostly focus on
> improving the process of sharing and collaborating itself, by creating an
> intuitive and inspiring envrionment for collaborative projects. instead of
> standardizing formats.
> Our collaboration platform hopes to be of great use for designers, but we
> also want to attract 'non-designers' since we think that a great variety of
> people with different skills and knowledge will stimulate innovation.
>
>
>
>
> *What is exactly the difference between open hardware and open source
> hardware? *
>
>
> I don't exactly know - a quick google throws up the wikipedia page and a
> few other interesting links, including the Open Source Hardware Bank -
> which seems to feature lots of arduino shields.. http://www.oshwbank.org/
>
> Another good read is the freedomdefined.org OSHW page:
> http://freedomdefined.org/OSHW
> Including details of a summit where a group got together to discuss this
> very subject, and try to define what open source hardware means / could be
> / how OSHW could be licensed:
> http://www.eyebeam.org/projects/Opening-hardware
>
> I personally like the creative commons licensing as it is very human
> readable, and easy to grasp. But this is perhaps laziness, or because I
> don't fully understand / know of all of the OSHW licenses that are
> available.
>
>
> Can anybody else shed light, or give their thoughts on OSHW and open
> hardware [OHW?] ?
>
>
> Enjoying the chats.
> Stuart
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> OpenDesign mailing list
> OpenDesign at lists.okfn.org
> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/opendesign
>
>
>
>   --
> Stuart Childs
>
> +44 777 911 4531
>
> http://stuartchilds.com/
>
> http://twitter.com/sc_r <https://twitter.com/#!/sc_r>
>
>
> LASER CUTTING PROJECT
> http://sniject.wikispaces.com/
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/opendesign/attachments/20120409/24216bbe/attachment.html>