Tinker it now!

I spoke a few days ago at Web2.0 expo Europe in Berlin and wanted to complete the thoughts I had started since 10 minutes turned out to be really not enough time to squeeze everything in.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the impact of open-source hardware on product design and the way we see the objects around us as open boxes. Having studied product design in another life, it seems like an interesting turn of events: the objects some slave away to design are seen as empty boxes full of potential by others. Obviously the conversation between the closed design industry and the hacking community isn’t being opened up but thats a bit normal. One side likes to think of itself as a profession and the other likes the subversive and slightly underground act of hacking. You might even say that the risks of such activities being considered as free R&D for those companies are very real. I digress.

Taking Arduino as an example of a platform that has so far managed to generate sales and interest based on its philosophy, its presence in the design and high-level education environment (ITP, MIT, RCA, Central St Martins, etc) it’s not unrealistic to think others will come too, developing communities of their own. The open-sourceness of it has enabled new products to be developed (think Botanicalls) and many new companies to emerge (Boarduino, Freeduino, Arduino Nano, Sparkfun’s Wee and Skinny), but I’m waiting for people to contribute back in really meaningful ways beyond taking what they want out of the community. This is not a market of products, its a market of platforms, and what makes or breaks it is what people build with it. Platforms and toolkits are a hot topic right now in our little world

Knowledge-sharing, knowledge transfer from the more advanced users to the newbies is right now mostly done on forums, a format that could use some improvement. It would be great for knowledge to get stored in places where people can find it. Topics to stop repeating themselves, issues to be noted, tracked and addressed by the founders and the community, track the community itself, all the things that Github, Get Satisfaction, Dopplr and other web2.0 services do well.

There have been some really fantastic communities that have evolved out of web2.0ness, why not apply these models to this very physical community? Will someone come up with an Instructables-like model for documenting projects, since it’s so much about the bits and atoms of it all? Will there be a JBoss for hardware hacking? Will there be CC licenses for hardware projects emerging, like there are for science projects? These are all things that will make the community around these platforms rich and diverse and sustainable beyond the simple product. Because if these communities start to compete on the product price, clearly they will eventually lose out to better equipped, leaner companies in the East. It’s not about the product, it’s about the community!

I think the golden era of hardware is still to come as the current wave of economic problems will make us turn to more DIY problem-solving. In terms of sustainability as well, oil prices will make products coming from all corners of the earth more and more difficult to get a hold of, so why not make it ourselves! In the world of retail Zara has had a tremendous success with a de-centralised model of production where all the CAD files to the patterns are sent around the world as demand fluctuates. There is no reason why it shouldn’t be the same with our everyday products eventually and that the platforms that help make those products can equally be made, sourced and purchased quickly.

All and all, this area is dying for some help and hopefully the wave of interest coming from all the press it’s getting these days will have more eyes looking at the problem and more inspiring thoughts and actions will be shared and take place.