How Open Source will Change the Product Design Industry
Open source projects have long been a fascination of mine as they really allow you to understand how things work, and provide building blocks to do better things. I use Linux operating systems extensively for backup servers, software development and hosting websites and I prototype with Arduino. I prefer to learn free software tools as they will always be available to me. The advantages of open source have slowly been moving from software to hardware and I believe they could be more influential in the product design process. This is a piece I wrote in 2013 as part of my major project entitled ‘CNC Resin Deposition Modelling for Rapid Prototyping Smart Fabrics’ for my Industrial Design Degree at Brunel University in London.
Open source development models have the potential to help the traditional design and manufacture industry meet user desires for more personal and meaningful products. The design industry should recognize the advantages offered by the open source development model for hardware as well as software and incorporate it where appropriate.
Legally, open source is an approach to intellectual property that promotes the free access and use of information. Licences such as Creative Commons, General Public Licence and, my personal favourite, WTFPL allow hardware, software and other types of information to be specified as such (Creative Commons, 2013). They state that information should be made available and usable, enabling anyone to modify, use, or distribute it (Rubow, E., 2008). As a methodology, open source implies the decentralization and increased accessibility of information to promote innovation through greater collaboration (Kuznetsov, S. & Paulos, E., 2010). Open source is not new. Linux, the free operating system, began in 1991 Linux, the free operating system, has been running since 1991, and its predecessor, GNU, dates back to 1983 (GNU, 2013). The disruption today is a result of the open source mentality moving into the realm of physical products.
The design industry has typically used a top down process, involving the conception of a product through identifying an unmet user need or applying new technologies to create new possibilities. It uses experts to develop complex solutions to stringent requirements and then protected the IP through copyright, patent, trademark, or design protection (Gardner, M., 2009). This model has persisted since the first industrial revolution, however, it is no longer adequate for consumer goods. The nature of these products has changed as users demand personal significance and pleasurable experiences (Anderson, S., 2011). This requirement could even be at odds with the nature of mass market products. While the industry has incorporated and developed new methodologies and skills to account for this, professionalization is a system of exclusion. It limits involvement in the design process to the few trained practitioners (Atkinson, P., 2010). While users do have a role as research subjects in the current process, the cost and time involved in running proper scientific research leaves many questions unanswered and others answered in limited or not very scientific manner as compromises in user numbers or groups represented often have to be made in commercial research. The new product failure rate of 80% to 90% estimated by Jack Gordon, CEO of AcuPOLL Research Inc (Hart, M., 2007) indicates there is room for improvement.
An open source approach to the design process is ideally suited to identifying and developing solutions to the users’ requirements. Open source projects make their information freely available to everyone. This creates a vast decentralized network of collaborators. Ariel Waldman (2012) claims increased involvement in the design process can only lead to further progress, especially in the exploration of overlooked areas that cannot support mass market products. This is explained by the theories of crowd sourcing, James Surowiecki (2011) in “The Wisdom of Crowds”, states that, under certain conditions, a distributed sample of amateurs can find a more accurate answer to any given question than a single expert. The most obvious example of this theory in action is the stock market. Here a wide variety of people, the vast majority not knowledgeable about all the factors affecting the value of any given company or even companies in general, are able to price its stock both quickly and accurately. A practical demonstration of this principle in software design can be seen in the development of Linux code. Here each collaborator adds a small amount within their expertise, building on the work of others and enabling still more. In this way, working solutions for highly complex interconnected systems are reached without any single moderator. As there is no distinction made between the developers and the users for these systems, feedback loops are accelerated allowing rapid adoption of good new features and bad ones to be dropped quickly. Ubuntu, a specific Linux distro, releases a major update every 4 months while takes Microsoft over 3 years to produce a new operating system, yet Linux is widely regarded as being more secure than Microsoft, with less bugs in the code.
Open source philosophies are able to move into the field of physical products a result of the tools to build complex products becoming widely available, a trend dubbed the third industrial revolution by Chris Anderson (2012). Low cost 3D printers provide access to additive manufacturing while Hackerspaces have traditional tools available for low monthly fees and Computer Aided Design (CAD) software such as Onshape is now available freely to hobbyists. Consumers’ designing their own products is a natural continuation of existing market trends. Consumers already modify products pre-purchase through services like Adidas’ miadidas (Mota, C., 2011) and post-purchase with optional parts from the manufacturer or even as part of a Maker community (Dougherty, D., 2005). Elizabeth Sanders (2006) identified a slow evolution from design for people to design with people within the industry. Today we could be at the beginning of an exciting new phase, design by people.
The Role of Users in the Design Process (E. Sanders, 2006)
Other, more traditional, consumer trends also play to the strengths of the open source model. The desire for a larger number and wider variety of consumer goods, updated faster, and on the cutting edge of technological developments require huge research and development departments and careful forecasting in traditional companies. The many different development directions and speed of progress inherent in open source projects mean they are able to get far more information about what projects have strong market interest and which do not (Holland, D., n.d.).
An interesting case study in open source production of physical products is the RepRap project. RepRap has its beginnings with Dr Adrian Bowyer at Bath University in 2006. It is an affordable 3D printing rapid prototyping machine which enables the production of physical products from digital files. The IP for the machine was subsequently released under an open source license and a crowd of collaborators took over. Dr Bowyer (2011) has since stated that he is no longer in control of the project. The community is now driving the future developments, just as they did with the Linux project two decades before. The open source structure of the RepRap project provides the same advantages of all open source projects as well as others inherent to the specific characteristics of physical products. Just like the Linux project before it, there is a lack of distinction between collaborators and users. Each user has the ability to direct the progress to create exactly what they require, shaping the product to meet their specific requirements. This explains the modification of the original RepRap printer into a whole family of printers suited to different conditions. See the family tree. This identification of the need for a product from the users themselves is referred to as a bottom up process. It is the most successful model for identifying new niche markets and meeting their specific needs. It is infused with a deep understanding of the users’ requirements at all stages of development and results in a higher percentage of successful solutions and they are often far more innovative and desirable. As a result the RepRap project was the first to identify the home user 3D printing market and the rapid development towards the various scenarios within this market provided the RepRap printers with an instant advantage. RepRap still hold the largest share of any one company in this market, having 26% (Moilanen, J., & Vaden, T., 2012).
The open source model’s reliance on a network of collaborators has other advantages over the traditional design process that are only applicable when it is used to create physical products. The collaborators also being the users means that extensive market research is not necessary and the reliance on amateurs means that the development work conducted is free. Combined with the loss of charges associated with the protection of the resulting IP, open source products are able to be sold much cheaper. In some cases they even undercut mass manufactured solutions despite their lower volumes. The RepRap Huxley’s part price of under £500 compared to the 3D Cube’s £1000 can attest to this. The proportional relationship of manufacture cost and volume inherent in all physical goods means that products for markets that would never have been commercially viable due to the low volumes involved can be created. Previously expensive technologies can be brought to whole new markets, as is the case with additive manufacturing technology and the RepRap project. The community of collaborators also removes the cost of providing customer support for companies selling open source hardware. Another key advantage for products of the open source model is the ability to become building blocks. As projects produce open results, they are available for use and modification by other projects. This leads to much wider applications for technologies than could ever be envisioned by a single company. As evidence of this, the RepRap project uses open source Python code to run its driving software. This, coupled with the incremental way that value is added by collaborators within each project, means that developments become building blocks. Each block is reusable and adaptable, allowing it to be used to further fuel developments within the project and beyond. The RepRap platform has been adapted for colour printing, different plastics, paste and resin extrusion, milling, plotting, portability, multiple extruder heads and many other functions. The wide reuse of project IP and building blocks even brings an environmental benefit as the physical results of open projects are more likely to be reused by future projects. They are more likely to be up-cycled to become new products rather than entering a down-cycle spiral to eventual landfill or incineration as so often implied by the “recyclable” label.
The advantage of a tight feedback loop that open source provides should be incorporated into professional design processes. However, with a network of amatures without a moderator, it can be difficult to provide a guarantee of quality or accountability, a crippling flaw for performance or safety critical applications in today’s legal framework. The distributed nature of an open source network means cost and time constraints cannot be applied either and differing individual aims can result in a lack of focus or optimisation for a given product. Furthermore, the initial leap of innovation required to create something entirely new if often best achieved through the holistic understanding of an expert. An open source structure has excelled at incremental developments for the RepRap 3D printers and Linux operating system projects, but the initial innovation came from Dr Adrian Bowyer and Linus Torvalds respectively. Open source philosophy’s potential is therefore constrained to incremental changes and products without stringent performance, safety, time, or cost requirements.
Dyson Ltd is one example that stands in support of the old model. It is a company built on the application of a technology by an expert individual to create a completely new and innovative system. The Reprap project was also built on the initial innovative leap of an individual, Dr Bowyer. The story of James Dyson’s company also highlights another flaw in the open design model. James was entering the lucrative market of vacuum cleaners which already had many established players. To protect the technological edge he had over his competitors in 1993 he took out a patent on his invention. In 1999 Hoover was found guilty of patent infringement. Without this patent, James’s product would have been undercut by the larger competitor, driving Dyson Ltd out of the market before it could gain a foothold (Dyson, 2012). Companies built on an open source model do not have this protection and so find entering existing markets much more difficult. As open source companies cannot rely on profits generated from the unprotected hardware they must instead add value elsewhere through experiences or services, and through their strengths, providing a wider variety of products, personalized solutions, rapid updates, reusable parts and lower costs. The growth of the 3D printing company, Makerbot, is evidence of this. Beginning as an open source commercial offshoot of the RepRap project, Makerbot began in the under exploited niche market of home users (Stern, B., 2012). As it now turns its sights on the professional markets already catered for by established companies, Makerbot has become closed source and developed a new product, the Replicator 2.
The consumer products industry is already adapting to provide the benefits of open source while negating its disadvantages through a hybrid process called ‘co-creation’; harnessing their networks of users through initiatives like Lego’s Digital Designer, where users can create lego models digitally and then they and others can order them, or Local Motor’s development of the Rally Fighter car by asking for design submissions from individuals and decisions being made by community voting. The Economist (2012) suggest the design industry itself is also moving from the traditional manufacturing model to that of a service industry, one which already more closely resembles a network that involves users in a more proactive manner than before. Kickstarter and Indiegogo’s funding the manufacture of new products through getting payment for first orders up front from the community, Ponoko and Etsy’s model that allows users to design, make and sell their own products using the platforms help, or Mass Drop’s customising of consumer electronics products by leveraging popular demand are good examples of this.
The future will likely see more hybrid product development models utilizing a balance of top down professional and bottom up user development to achieve the best of both worlds and more of them will start to fully open source their hardware to further increase the role of users in the development process. This will result in a new era of improved user centric consumer goods. Users will be given the power to modify their products as they see fit, each product will have multiple potential uses, they will suit our needs better, they will last longer yet be updated faster, and the companies that provide them to us will be adding value through updates, experiences, and other services throughout the product’s life.
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