innovation process within a "design for disability" context and suggest the first steps of an iterative codesign methodology bringing together professional designers, occupational therapists and patients. In this paper the authors sketch the holistic framework which starts with the innovation development and the cocreation process between these disciplines.
<p class="2">This case study explores the opportunities for students of Industrial Design Engineering to engage with direct and indirect stakeholders by making their design process and results into open-ended designed solutions. The reported case study involved 47 students during a two-weeks intensive course on the topic of urban gardening. Observations were collected during three distinctive phases: the co-design phase, the creation of an open design, and the sharing of these design solutions on the online platform Instructables.com.</p><p class="2">The open sharing of local solutions triggered more global discussions, based on several types of feedback: from simple questions to reference to existing works and from suggestions to critiques. Also, some examples of <em>re-appropriation</em> of the designed solutions were reported. These feedbacks show the possibilities for students to have a global vision on their local solutions, confronting them with a wider and more diverse audience.</p><p class="2">The case study shows, on the other hand, the difficulty in keeping students engaged in this <em>global</em> discussion, considering how after a few weeks the online discussions dropped to an almost complete silence. It is also very difficult with such online platforms to follow the re-appropriation cycles, losing the possibility of exploring the new local context where the replication/modification of the designed product occurred. The course’s focus on open design is interesting from both the design and educational points of view. It implies a deep change in the teaching approach and learning attitude of students, allowing unknown peers to take part in the design process and fostering a global discussion starting from unique and local solutions.</p>
Abstract:Online platforms (i.e. Instructables) often provide design solutions developed locally for one specific person's needs. The goal of the research is to understand how existing specific projects, created to be for one person, can be translated into open design solutions that facilitate spontaneous re-appropriation in a variety of new contexts. By observing and interviewing 36 teams of students within a living lab project where occupational therapists and designers co-design personal assistive devices with and for disabled clients, we explored how the relevant design information can be meaningfully reorganized to create open design. We focused on the designers' choices of concrete attributes with a high impact on the end-result. We suggest a model wherein these attributes are listed and categorized as: Undefined, Defined-Fixed, Contextual, balancing openness and overdesign. The research led to a new definition that distinguishes "Open-ended Design" from "Open Design".
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