OpenDesign: Analyzing Deliberation and Rationale in an Exploratory Case Study

摘要

The open phenomenon coming from the free-software movement has gained several fields, including services, digital and physical products. Nevertheless, some authors point out the limited availability of supporting methods and online tools to face the challenges of distributed collaboration of volunteers. They claim that online collaborative platforms are still needed for supporting co-creation. In this paper, we investigate the deliberation and design rationale in an (open) design process using the OpenDesign Platform. A case study conducted with 22 participants of a Conference illustrates the use of the platform to cope with a proposed design challenge. Results illustrated with graphical representations based on concepts of the Actor Network Theory provide a visual representation of the network constituted by both the participants and the artifacts (boundary objects) they produce and interpret. Further studies are pointed out suggesting new possibilities of features and platform enhancements.