Open Meta-Design

Abstract

The experience of the Open Source and P2P distributed systems represent a promising direction for the organization of collaborative networks, since their processes and organizational forms have been applied in fields other than the software development industry including biotechnology, pharmaceutical drug research, education, micro-credit financial services and also design. Until now, almost all of these cases have been designed and brought to the users focusing more on the technologies than on the users’ needs and their possible active role, and almost none of them has analyzed in depth the methodologies that could be used. There is a strong opportunity for the design discipline to have an important role in designing such distributed systems with open, collaborative and peer-to-peer dynamics starting from users, their communities and localities. This chapter focuses on an open source meta-design methodology aimed at co-designing distributed systems that show open, peer-to-peer and collaborative dynamics with users and their communities, visualizing and managing their nature of complex social and technological systems. In order to organize collaborative design processes between multiple and distributed actors, an activity-centered meta-design approach is introduced in the discussion, thus further advancing the possibilities of organizing open and peer-to-peer design systems and networks. This chapter reports the experiences of planning and facilitating three workshops in Seoul (South Korea), Singapore, Helsinki (Finland), for the experimentation of such meta-design approach.