These are photos of our place as of April 2009.

Want a dock for your iPhone 4, but don’t want to pay the full price for one of them? Check eBay or online classifieds for an original iPhone dock, it works perfectly with the iPhone 4. I bet Apple didn’t do this on purpose…

iPhone 4 works with the original iPhone dock

Retro radio concept drawing

Looking through old piles of drawings and here’s one that I’m quite fond of. I had to throw it out, because… no use in keeping these. I’ll just keep a digital copy, it should be good enough, right? The drawing is copied from a Korean sketching and drawing book, unless I’m mistaken. I don’t know the name. This drawing was an exercise to practice marker and guache techniques that I did in 2nd year of industrial design at Carleton. Hope it inspires you to do some nice drawings with traditional media. It’s quite satisfying…

On several occasions, I’ve gone online on Lugnet, Wikipedia and Flickr and looked at inspiring and nostalgia-inducing photographs of Legos. I grew up on Lego and considered myself a Lego maniac. Today, I am separated from the Legos that I had growing up because I am here in Ottawa studying industrial design, but there are many days that I dream of being reunited with the Legos of my childhood and see what I can create. Somehow I feel that I will be disappointed… that my expensive education somehow didn’t make me more creative than I was when I started this program. However this post is really to share some of my first and most memorable Legos that I have ever owned. All images are from Lugnet… hats off to the people behind Lugnet for their dedicated work in cataloging and documenting the beautiful and creative history of Lego collections.

My first ever Lego set was actually something quite special. I feel as if I never really appreciated the value of these Legos until much later.

Jetport fire squad

The first Lego Technic Lego set that I ever got was one of the most incredible building experience ever.

F1 Racer

The internet in its early stages was rather simple. In fact think of Wikipedia, a microcosm of the internet, as its own internet. Pages link to pages, each page representing some content that the author intended on publishing. That was the internet about two decades ago (a bit less). Wikipedia is a whole collection of unrelated pages that link to each other with keywords. The principle of the early internet was that a page could contain any content, but its content was relatively static (although it could be edited from some backend). With Wikipedia, we see articles covering an incredible number of topics and there is not much organization of any kind. How is a page about a person different than a page on a historical event? Or perhaps a molecule? Or a process? Or how about a country or language? Any topic can be covered but the page ‘frame’ is always the same; it doesn’t support a model for the content. Some things that Wikipedia has implemented are templates: organized groupings of metadata that is common between similar classes, but that is only a faint attempt at organizing and adding true meaning to the content of the page.

The semantic web tries to solve this problem of content distinction. Every day we use websites like Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, Flickr. These websites are offering focused services in the form of a web application. And each of these web applications is actually interacting with objects that have real physical meaning. For example, we know that objects in Facebook’s web application include people, events and messages. That means that other services know how to interact with these objects.

The denotation of semantic is ‘related to meaning’. The semantic web is a internet of objects with meaning. We may browse Wikipedia pages that have lots of valuable and interesting information, but to non-humans (robots, crawlers, and various artificially intelligent organisms that live on the internet) this information is very difficult to digest. To these non-humans, the semantic web is a lot more meaningful: messages are messages, pictures are pictures, people are people, events are events. For each virtual object, these non-humans know what to do with them, know what kind of information to use for their purposes.

These ‘crawlers’ or ‘bots’ exist to simplify tasks that humans don’t want to do. They are workers that are told what to do. Sometimes we give them complicated tasks and these robots don’t know how to go about them. Let us look at another example. A trend in today’s phones is to dynamically collect contact information from social networking sites and compile them in an address book. Palm’s Pre was the first with its revolutionary Synergy software. However I know that Windows Phone 7 and maybe even Android performs these as well. If we want to have a little robot like the ones that works for these phones, they need to know how to identify a friend, how to identify a phone number, or e-mail and then report it back to you. In a non-semantic web, this would be nearly impossible, the instructions that you would give to this worker would be much to complicated. If that worker came across a web page called ‘Welcome to Felix’s homepage’ how would it know that Felix is my name? Then how would it figure out what information on that page is in fact contact information? I might have a series of numbers at the bottom of the page: like 16132523138. Is this my phone number? Is this something else?

Web designers might argue that semantic web is an issue that HTML5 is solving. However I see this as only one small technical solution. Using semantic HTML, a date is tagged as <date></date> and so on. These tags help our robots recognize information. Looking at the above example, the number was tagged as such: <date>16132523138</date> then this would tell the robot that this number somehow represents some date. However, if this was tagged in another way: <phone-number>16132523138</phone-number> then all of a sudden this has content has very different meaning!

The semantic web the logical step to enabling artificial intelligence and better, more reliable services layered on the internet.

Our fourth year major project (thesis project) requires that we keep a blog for our research, a place where we can post information for and have access by other students, the advisors (professors) and the sponsors. In my case, that is the BlackBerry manufacturer, RIM. I will be transferring all the content that I have posted on our Mobile Life blog onto this blog once the project is completed in April 2011.

Introduction to Open Source

It would be nice to start a paper on open source with a definition from the Open Source Initiative (the foundation that manages definitions of open source), however, the definition of open source with respect to software is very heavily based on the details of the license that is tied to the source code. In the world of software development, it is hard not to notice the success of open source as a viable means of creating high quality software products at a relatively low cost. However, open source in itself is not a simple solution. It relies heavily on the concept of community and the concept of a ‘commons’ where the source code of the project is shared. The source code of software is the recipe to make that software; some companies hide their recipes, like Coca-Cola and Microsoft, others share them openly in hopes to improve upon them. The concept of commons and the concept of community are the two major building blocks of open source. To seed open development, code must be openly shared for the benefit of everyone, and community must be built following the social patterns that any real community would follow.

Misconceptions exist on how open source development is harnessed. Some people think that one can simply come up with an idea, throw it out there on the Internet and have the people on the Internet contribute to it and you can just watch it grow. It couldn’t be further from the truth. Harnessing the creative capabilities of a community takes time, effort and resources: managing, directing, and keeping in constant contact with members of the community.

Essentially, open source is just a method of developing software that can be combined with other traditional development methods. Open source projects are often available via the ‘commons,’ and anyone can make use of the source code in any way he or she wants, so long as that user agrees to use the code in a way that does not conflict with the terms of the license. The license attached to the assets in the commons governs what can and can’t be done with them. Open source projects can be initiated by an individual or community or by a business; in the former case, the copyright or ownership of the source code is often held by a not-for-profit foundation established to maintain the copyrights, and this is often the purest form of open source. In the latter case, the business owns the intellectual property and is leveraging the power of a community and an open approach to development to improve the quality of their own product. An open model can be beneficial to the company in several ways: if the design is open, other people will have an easier time testing, and developing software that is compatible and interoperable with it, it can also be a form of marketing, and a way of spreading adoption more quickly.

As businesses become more competitive, it is becoming increasingly difficult to become innovative. Often, innovative software companies leverage the power of existing community- or company-driven open source software projects and integrate them into their own products. The open source code does most of the heavy lifting and lets people share solutions to problems that have already been solved; it saves people and businesses from having to re-invent the wheel. Many software products are assembled with dozens, perhaps even hundreds of small open software components, and proprietary, value-added features are layered on top of these to develop applications and products that are of a much higher quality and complexity. Open source does not really change the way that people write code, but it does change the role of the business that owns the code in many ways. While some traditional closed-source software companies sell the software, companies of open-source software license the code technology to other companies or offer value-added services to help integrate the software code to solve a specific problem.

Opening Design

Open source software (OSS) makes sense for some people and businesses, because their business models or motives do not conflict with sharing their assets. This is one reason businesses have value-added services layered on top of the assets that are part of the commons. Another reason open source makes sense with respect to software, is that software is purely information-based; it costs nothing to make a copy of software and copying software only increases value.

When we look at open source design, however, we begin to run into a few problems. Making a copy of software costs nothing and brings value, however, making a new product uses materials. But in the case of traditional design disciplines, what is the incentive of opening design? Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation said, “Think free as in free speech, not free beer.” (Lessig, 2006) Opening design does make sense, especially in education and innovation if we think of ‘open’ along the same lines as Stallman’s notion of free speech, however it is much richer than this.

There are two places where I see design can be opened. We can open the instructions of parts or we can open design methods. Parts are the assets that we need to build a copy of a product. Parts are blueprints, drawings, images, technical layouts, wiring diagrams, etc. Methods are the means in which parts are developed and put together. Methods are higher-level principles that lead to the design of parts and how those parts should fit together. Remember, when we open up parts and methods to the commons, we don’t need to open it to anyone and everyone; open source design can mean opening parts and methods at any level. We can think of building a design community as a ‘gated community’.

Figure 1: Ways of collaborating, adapted from Pisano, 2008

There are a couple of reasons why the design of parts should be opened up. To some extent we do have standard industrial parts that can be used in a product so that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel for basic components such as fasteners and fixtures. We see this in software as well: common utilities and building blocks for more complex software are the most obvious to ‘open source’ and are often licensed with the most liberal licensing options. There is another way that parts can be opened up, however, and this way is much more interesting. This is when the product designed is opened up in such a way that it becomes a platform for more products. Apple, Inc. has done a terrific job of leveraging Mac and mobile device developers into an iPhone developer community, and these people have created some incredible 3^rd party applications for the iPhone. These ‘apps’ (as the are called) are value-added products developed by the community in a way that is only possible if one opens the design of parts in such a way that a product becomes a platform. Luigi Ferrara, the first keynote speaker for this year’s School of Industrial Design Mini-Seminar Series introduced a product that was also a platform for other products, and where the design of the parts and the ‘methods’ (the ways the parts could be put together) was opened. He called it the ‘bench world,’ a collection of standard parts that could be reused and put together in ways to form a multitude of standard household products at a very low cost.

Figure 2: Relation between parts and methods

Finally, China and other developing countries are becoming more capable of building knock-offs of Western products and are well on their way to developing their own designs that could be more innovative. It makes less sense to keep the design of our products closed as it isn’t difficult to open and reverse engineer a product. What we should focus on instead is building products as platforms.

Figure 3: Commons and Business Models in Open Design

Several decades ago, design was much more of a skills-based profession. Form and color were the foundations and designers drew, sketched and built models. It could take many years for people to build these skills up and use them properly within a commercial setting. Graphic design and industrial design were relatively well-established disciplines. Many of these skills are being commoditized with the advancement of processing power and the falling cost of devices associated with these skills: low cost digital SLRs and everyone is now a ‘photographer’; the ubiquity of 3D modeling and rendering packages make product visualization easier and more realistic; the proliferation of graphic tools and desktop publishing and everyone can be a graphic designer. At the same we are seeing many new higher-level design disciplines. One such discipline is transformation design, a mixture of industrial design and business consulting that has become one of IDEO’s and  key assets. What they do is design methodology applied in new ways. Educational commons are where I believe open design methods are best shared. IIT’s Institute of Design has developed some incredible design methods that can be applied to solve many kinds of design problems, even designs of new business models and service-based products. These methods should be openly shared and contributed to. Universities could develop new design methods and open them up for any member of the commons to use. These methods could be used, documented, and shared with the community as case-by-case studies of these methods in real world use. These could then be modified and the documentation could be used for further design research and education. By opening up design methods, we could be building stronger connections between businesses and schools and we could improve on current design methods in a much better ways.

MIT has opened some of its lectures and course materials as ‘OpenCourseWare.’ Although this is more of a means to market MIT’s excellent education program, it is also a way of spreading knowledge. This really isn’t open-source, as it is a one directional conversation, a monologue between the contributors and the community. If this open course system were opened up to a gated community where people that actually was interested in contributing to the educational materials commons, then we are on our way to an ‘open source’ design education.

Conclusion

Predictions rarely turn out to ever be true, and it is possible that an open approach to design methods may not really help market the school’s education program or build partnerships between the school and businesses. However, open source approach to software is certainly here to stay, and open platforms for intelligent products are becoming very successful means of developing products that will sustain themselves in an ever increasingly competitive market place. With developing countries coming into the picture, we will have to compete less, and innovate openly more.

References & Further Readings

• Dahlander, L. (2007) Penguin in a new suit: a tale of how de novo entrants emerged to harness free and open source software communities. Industrial and Corporate Change. 16:5 pp. 913-943. August 28, 2007.
• Dubberly, H. (2008) “Design in the age of biology: Shifting from a mechanical-object ethos to an organic-systems ethos” Interactions, XV.5 September-October, 35-41
• Ganapati, P. (2009, December 4). For Hardware Entrepreneurs, Getting From Idea to Reality Isn’t Easy. Wired Gadget Lab. Retrieved December 16, 2009, from <http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/hardware-startup-lessons/>
• Goldman, R., & Gabriel, R. P. (2005). Innovation happens elsewhere: open source as business strategy. Amsterdam; Boston: Morgan Kaufmann.
• Lessig, Lawrence (September 2006). “Free, as in beer”. Wired. Retrieved December 17, 2009, from <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.09/posts.html?pg=6>.
• Mintzberg, H. (2009). Rebuilding Companies as Communities. Harvard Business Review.
• MIT OpenCourseWare. <http://ocw.mit.edu>.
• Pisano, Gary and Roberto Verganti. (2008, December 1). “What kind of collaboration is right for you?” Harvard Business Review. Available from <hbr.org>.
• Raney, Colin (2009) “Business in Beta”. Patterns. Volume 2. Retrieved October 6, 2009, from <http://patterns.ideo.com/images/uploads/pdf/PATTERNS_business_vol2.pdf>.
• Different by Design. (2008, May 1). Time. Retrieved December 16, 2009, from <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1736729,00.html>.