Week 10 (probes, resources arrive)

Reading
I finished The case for Working with your hands, Matthew Crawford. This is an interesting read based around his background of the motorcycle 'shop' that he set-up. This notion of making and physically working is of definite interest, but I am continually intrigued by where the concept and digital application becomes more interesting, ie I can think it can I make it?

Doing
All of the materials for my probe books have arrived, I am using SD cards and some digital cameras rather than the conventional disposable cameras. This is due to the change in what users own and also the ease of transference. I am still interested and looking for people that might lead double lives, for example bee keepers as they might work as a bank manager or TV presenter but they have practical application which is interesting. They are not just creating for the purpose of making but they are suiting a need...

Planning more of my literature review and I am now looking at the following:

- Open design defining what this has been in academic literature
- Self-creation, hacking, creative commons, IP, mass customisation
- Technologies, rp, electronic rp, open source and web, software, cad, arduino, future gazing
- The corporate world of open design, fab labs,
- Defining user, practical user, craft, modern craft, digital craft,

Talking
I had a quick interview with James Woudhuysen is Professor of Forecasting and Innovation at De Montfort University. He has some interesting view on open design and that the future is based around large scale manufacture. I agree with this, but it also highlights how open design has to be used.


Question: We have had several movements in design; do you think that this burst of 3d printing and people manufacturing their own objects is a positive direction?
Answer: I like 3d printing and all of that but there have been many false dawns relying on this sort of technology, If you go to my website, you will find an article called ‘cult It’ published about the late 90’s and some people were talking about said that the whole car industry was going to be transformed by people working from their homes. Maybe people could be making their own cars in America as there are less controls but I still think that this ideal is rather Utopian to be rolled out across the world. Due to the fact that people will not achieve the same efficiencies in personal manufacture as they will in industrial manufacture.

Question: How do you think that extreme user groups are interesting to look at when engaging with technologies or do you think that design outside the everyday doesn’t have a place? 
Answer: I think that it is always a good idea to test things to destruction and take a lead from lead users, I think that you will find similar things from the manifesto that I wrote on http://www.bigpotatoes.org/ it is for designers and manufacturers to have the last word and not the user because if you look at large manufacturers they have done it their way. On the other hand users are worth consulting as long as you ignore some of what they say as they can lead you astray. Many of use are put into extreme situations; does that make us an extreme user?

Question: What do you think of the hacking movement that is popping up all over the world?
Answer: Are you referring to Tinkering, this is going on in the states, but I am not sure at what it will amount to, people paying with things and trying to get practical. It does relate to Design and manufacture but to what end.

Question: What do you think is the next movement within the design industry?
Answer: Stop listening to users as much as people do, stop editing designers with post-it notes and bean bags and start getting them obsessed with manufacturing and the details that surround it and science and technology, crush the utopia about manufacture and realise that it is not just a race to the lowest wages but involves many factors, much of this is in http://www.bigpotatoes.org/ What is the next movement of manufacture, I don’t know, this is a good question.