There are no barriers here, new members are introduced into the community and encouraged to share and learn.  Different time slots have different themes, so between 10am until 2pm is ‘quiet time’, where makers are encouraged to work on projects independently, whereas after 6pm we actively encourage cross-participation and the workshop comes alive with banter.

Some people build projects individually, but the really interesting projects are collaborative ventures, with small teams of people working together.  These larger projects are often part funded by grants, competitions or investment and often result in spinout companies.  Projects are developed openly within the community, but without public disclosure so that IP protection is maintained.  This enables other companies to outsource their R&D process to MakerLab members, funding joint projects that can then be commercialised.

During the week we run outreach sessions in schools with a portable workshop, we teach kids how to explore their products around them, to think about how they are made, and how they can be fixed.  We give them something that doesn’t work and we get them to remake it, teaching through real world problem solving.  We then invite them to our workshop where we run supervised sessions specifically for under 18s.  They can also attend starter sessions, learning the basics of making alongside adults who have the same experience level.

In one room there is a seminar on Intellectual Property, we also have skills workshops on topics like welding, lathework and CADCAM.  Mostly it is the members themselves who give their time to teach others about their area of expertise, in return they receive credits that may be used to pay for membership fees or seats at other seminars.  The number of credits is worked out in relation to the number of people who join the seminar, so the onus is on the organiser to drum up support.  Credits can also be earned by working for the community, staying late to clean up the workshop, tending to the equipment, or donating materials.  The credit system is worked out such that it is possible to get free use of the workshop if members are willing to work instead of paying cash.

Sometimes external speakers are brought in to cover specific topics, and we have access to a range of advisors who are able to provide specialist assistance to specific projects.

A number of members also work repairing equipment that is brought in by the public.  The repaired (remade?) equipment is either then collected paid for by the owner, or sold on.

Each member pays a joining fee, which pays for the day to day running of the workshop.  Different membership levels are available; depending on the space required ranging from a ‘hot desk’ to a dedicated desk space, secure storage and tool set.  Once the membership fee is paid use of tools and basic raw materials are free, more expensive materials and use of specialist equipment (eg laser cutter, 3d printer) are charged for at time of use.

The initial capital expense is covered by a social enterprise startup grant and additional equipment is provided by sponsorship agreements with tool manufactures, and relevant service providers.  The management of the space is partially democratic, with the membership consulted before the purchase of new equipment or changing policy, rules etc.

MakerLabs are more than just collaborative spaces, they represent a viable and sustainable community resource, they enable people to learn how to negate their dependency on products by allowing them to make and remake objects which have physical, rather than just functional value.

Small is...

Or at least this is what I found myself convincing a group of festival goers huddled in a yurt on a bright Saturday afternoon a few weeks back.  The festival was “Small is…”, organised by Practical Action and Engineers Without Borders to celebrate the ideas of EF Schumacher in his book “Small is beautiful” and I had been invited to talk about my ideas on design for sustainability.

So, having stripped these poor people of their possessions I stood in the half-light and tried to dig myself out of a hole.

“Ownership, you see is the relationship between a product and a person.  The product fulfils its duty to its owner, and in return the owner takes responsibility for the product.  I would assert that in recent history this relationship has been moving towards extreme one-sidedness; products keep up their end of the bargain but we as owners seem to be shirking our responsibility.

For example, 60 years ago if you owned a car then you would, more than likely know how to tune it, you would be able to maintain it, and if it broke down on the side of the road you would probably have the tools and knowledge to fix it.  You would have responsibility for the physical object and therefore by my definition, you would have ownership of it.

Contrast that with modern day cars, how many people could strip down their car and, change the plugs?  How much maintenance does anyone really carry out on their cars? Fill up the water? The coolant? Change the oil? What about a tyre? We as a society have become so far removed from the responsibility of maintaining the vehicles we drive, that I would say that our side of the ownership relationship has broken down entirely.  Therefore, you don’t own your car, as the Maker’s Bill of Rights lays out: if you can’t open it, you don’t own it.

What you do own, what we as people are prepared to take responsibility for is the action of driving.  We own the function of products, not their physical manifestations.  And what is the consequence of this?  Well, if we only take responsibility for the function of a product, when it breaks, our responsibility (and ownership) ceases.  That then makes it very easy for us to throw stuff away.  How many people here have thrown away expensive objects just because they didn’t work any more?

Only owning a product function, by the way, isn’t really the problem.  Take a sky TV box, you never really own it, if it breaks you send it away and get a new one.  This works because what Sky sells you isn’t the ugly black box; it’s the action of watching TV.  The boundaries of the relationship are set out before anything has a chance to go wrong, people don’t throw out their skyboxes because the physical object is owned by someone else.

The problems arise for two reasons.  Firstly because physical objects seduce us, as purchasers, iPods are beautiful, sexy, lickable things and we are fooled into thinking that it is the shiny object we want, rather than the act of listening to music.  The second, related problem is that these shiny music boxes are completely unopenable (and therefore, according to Make, unownable).

So in order to move away from these two problems, we really need two distinct design and business models: the Sky model, where we as consumers take no responsibility for our physical objects and as soon as the function stops functioning we send them back to be repaired or recycled.  The alternative, then, is that we take full ownership for our products, take responsibility for their maintenance, repair and end of life.

I come at this from a development standpoint, and these are my principles for design against dependency. So if you want to design against dependency only one of those models really works, end users must be able and willing to open their products and take responsibility for the whole product lifespan.  Is important to make the distinction between being able to and having the desire to maintain.  ‘Being able to’ is relatively straightforward to design, you make it easy and safe to open the hood of your product and reduce the number of non-user serviceable parts.  Employ modularity and reduce the number of tools required etc…

Creating the desire to is slightly more complex, and it comes back to this idea of a relationship between user and object.  In order for a user to want to maintain a product it has to be valuable to them, and the cost of maintenance, in time, money and hassle has got to be significantly less than the cost of purchasing a replacement.  This means ultimately switching from an economy based around ‘buy cheap and often’ to one where we ‘buy expensive, once’.

So, the bottom-line? If you don’t want me to depend on you, allow and encourage me to take responsibility myself.  Make me something I can and want to maintain and you make me something I can truly own.

1. When a problem seems impossible to solve, your thinking is probably too complex
2. Your sub-conscious is often far better at problem solving than you are
3. If you can’t explain it in the language of a 12 year old, you probably don’t understand it yourself
4. If you don’t understand it yourself, explaining it to others isn’t going to help you figure it out
5. Behind every form of communication is a real person, and you seem as distant to them as they seem to you
6. Honesty, openness and transparency will free up emotional space and allow you to be happy
7. Regular sessions of low-stress work over a long period of time cannot be replaced by a short spurt of high-stress work just before a deadline
8. Some things are just tough, they hurt and there is no escaping that, deal with it
9. Hinging your emotional state on the thoughts, feelings and actions of others is dangerous and ineffective
10. Books aren’t any good if you don’t read them
11. Decisions don’t really matter as long as you make them
12. Mistakes don’t really matter as long as you accept them and learn
13. Things don’t make anyone happy, experiences make people happy, which means that things don’t really matter unless they create meaningful experiences
14. Nobody is ever going to care as much about your ideas as you are, but that doesn’t mean they can’t contribute
15. People are most important

Initially these co-ops would manufacture our products from ‘kits’ of components which are difficult to source locally in the required quality and quantities. However, longer term we see this network as a way of sharing ideas between distributed co-ops whilst providing access to resources that would be otherwise unavailable. We would offer support to the network, perhaps by providing product development services, access to specialist knowledge or components/materials etc.

We believe that a network of linked manufacturing co-ops could harness the latent talent that exists throughout emerging markets on a small scale with a multitude of local fabrication centres which, by exploiting the network, could each have an impact on a global scale.

An innovation in Ghana could be combined with another from India and developed with support from the US or Europe and the market ready product could then be manufactured wherever local demand existed. If the innovation was a way to protect against maleria, or a safe, low cost solution to lighting (or a drinking water transport, purification and storage device) then the global impact could be huge.

MFA09 for us holds the opportunity to meet people already involved in small scale manufacture, to learn more about their capability and barriers to growth and to learn about how we can best support local talent.

SICamp'ers working on the FlockLocal Project

The third Social Innovation Camp (SICamp) was held last weekend at Glasgow Caledonian University.  60 people from across the UK (and Europe) gathered to help turn ideas into reality.  Six back-of-the-envelope ideas for web tools that would make a positive difference to the real world had been previously chosen out of 133 applicants.  The six chosen ideas, which included an online public planning tool (think google maps meets sim city!) and a website which enables flash-mobbing for social good, were taken on by a group of people with an amazingly diverse range of skills, from hardcore coders to services designers and interaction specialists.

Diversity, in fact, proved to be the aspect of this gathering that made it such an enjoyable and productive experience.  Without exception all the ideas started off as rough concepts at 9am on Saturday and by the time we presented to the judging panel at 2pm the next day, every site was online.  But not just that, one team who were working on a web tool which gives live bus information via txt message had a fully functioning demo.  And the flash mob team (FlockLocal) actually arranged for a group of people to turn up to a communal garden in Glasgow and spend an hour fixing it up! Its incredible what can happen when a group of motivated people with a wide skill set focus on a defined problem, in fact the whole weekend had the feel of a FlockLocal-style flash mob, with lunch and dinner announced on twitter and the fantastic support crew from Gladserve running from team to team with the latest server news.

Each team was not only tasked with building a site, but also with defining the need, creating a sustainable business model, designing the site to work within the user’s needs and then putting together a presentation to show it off.

MyPolice Logo

I worked with a fantastic group of people on a website which fosters and supports meaningful dialogue between local communities and the police which serve them.  Named MyPolice, the site allows the public to share their experiences of the Police and allows the Police to respond, either individually or on more general topics. By encouraging people to talk more openly about both good and bad aspects of the policing service they receive we hope the site will be of true value to the Police, the public and support services.

At the end of the weekend MyPolice was awarded the idea with the most potential by the panel of judges and we have been given a range of business and technical support as prizes so keep an eye out for MyPolice.org!

For more information on the weekend, have a look at SICamp, but also check out the individual project pages:

• Citipedia: A platform for locating, tagging and commenting on future use of public space.

• FlockLocal: The site matches short-term volunteers with one-off activities. From cleaning a garage to painting a shelter, Flock Local makes it easy for you to get involved and help make a quick difference in your community.

• AngelFish: A platform for individuals to provide small loans, in-kind support and advice to small businesses by creating an online/offline community of ‘makers’ (those receiving advice and financial backing) and ’supporters’ (those who are giving advice or financial backing).

• WeeDayOut: A site which pinpoints accessible toilets and shows the facilities they have. And if you know where a loo should be, you can add a gap to the map too.

• Hitch’n'Bitch: All about making buses easier to use. On the ‘hitch’ portion of the site you input where you’re going from together with the route you want to take and the site tells you when your next bus is due in real time. The ‘bitch’ section of the site asks you where you’re traveling to and lets you post feedback about the bus – whether it’s late, over-crowded or unclean.

• MyPolice: A tool for members of the public to give feedback, express thanks or tell their story about their experiences with the police and offer suggestions for improvements. It’s Patient Opinion for the police service.

LINDA is a baited mosquito killer that attracts mosquitoes with carbon dioxide and human foot-odour.

Featured a while back on Coroflot’s Creative Seeds Blog Andrew Stordy’s Malaria Must Go project is a fantastic example of simple design that has the potential to change lives on a large scale.  The prototype shown above combines the CO2 produced by burning charcoal with the scent of human sweat given off from a sock to trap mosquitoes.  Placed in communities and combined with more conventional protection the device works to reduce the number of mosquitoes targeting people.  Mosquitos are an important disease vector for malaria, which is the largest global killer of children and whilst the pharmaceutical companies work on a chemical solution, this simple device has the ability to be effective now.

As a final year Design Engineering student it is inspiring to see others working on products with so much more relevance than the usual collection of lighting, cell phones and ‘grey boxes’ on show at most degree exhibitions.

Visit Andrew’s Website for more inspired projects and a fascinating video on the design process behind this work.

I just spotted this video on TSA, its a fantastic collection of photographs taken by Eric Testroete whilst on a trip to Japan.

It is really well executed, with some images that really stand out from the narrative.
This is Japan! from Eric Testroete on Vimeo.

“What Gutenberg’s press did for Europe in the 15th century digitization and the Espresso Book Machine will do for the world tomorrow.”

Whether or not you agree with the extent to which the ATM for books will change the course of history, it is evident that the introduction of rapid manufacturing technologies coupled with the increasing consumer demand for customisation will result in exciting new ways to buy.  Trendwatching.com has labelled the new(ish) breed of amateur web content generators “Generation C”, but why should these creative non-professionals be limited to creating virtual content?  With rapid manufacturing techniques such as stereo lithography, CNC tooling and 3d printing, combined with easy to use 3d software such as Google’s SketchUp it will soon be as easy and common to create a physical artifact as a webpage, you-tube clip or myspace profile.  How long will it be until design/manufacture can be crowd-sourced, shared, mashed and modded just like online images, video and music?

The implications of widespread mass customisation and on demand manufacture are both widespread and fundamental.  Imagine being able to ship ideas rather than products, instead of a centralised manufacturing hub shipping thousands of tons of products across the globe your customers can log on to your website, customise your products online, then have the model data sent to their local CAM workshop where their personalised product is machined while they wait.  The reduction in cost and CO2 emissions possible when you replace container ships with email would be huge, but perhaps even more importantly would be the feeling of true ownership created when your customers are a part of the design/creation process.  This sense of ownership will be vital to reaching towards a goal of greater sustainability.  Ownership is what makes users value a product and products that are valued are not thrown away the next time a new model is released.  For example, take mobile phones, if you lost your mobile and it was replaced the next day with the same model, how much would you care?  Probably not a lot, you might lose some text messages, photos and contacts, perhaps the sticker that was on the back, but the loss of your phone as a physical object would be more or less meaningless.  Phone companies rely on this lack of value, alongside the perceived constant need for the latest model to keep customers locked into contracts, offering free upgrades if you sign for another year.  The result is the disposal of millions of perfectly functional, but nevertheless superseded phones going to landfill every year.  Compare that to an engraved iPod, a relatively minor customisation compared to what could be possible, nevertheless it is instantly apparent that the engraving has added that sense of ownership, and so value to the product.  When my engraved iPod ceases to work I will search for someone to repair it, and once it is beyond repair I will hold onto it, because it means something to me.  The thought and the time that I, or someone else, put into modifying an object has an intrinsic value and it is this value that is passed on to the object.  We need to move towards a culture where users are compelled to value their products enough to keep them out of the ground.

Of course moving away from a low value – high volume design/manufacture/sales model is a risky thing for a large company to do, but the combination of economic climate and environmental awareness makes now, or at least very soon the best time to move towards a low volume – high value model.

The low volume model requires a completely different approach, customer loyalty and brand equity become even more important as customers must identify with the product they are buying into. Additional revenue streams involving repair, user support and add-ins/ons become more profitable when the customer isn’t continually tempted to dispose and replace.  The mass customisation model fits nicely in here when costs can be cut by transporting light data as opposed to heavy materials/components/products.

So its time to brush up on your product design skills and start taking creative control over the products you own.  

–

Some interesting implementations of mass-customisation:

• Design your own postage stamps - www.mystamps.com
• Upload a photo and get drinks with customised labels - http://www.myjones.com/
• Custom messages on M&Ms – www.mymms.com
• Customise your Mini Cooper - http://www.mini.co.uk/html/ecom/ecom.html

With the world’s reliance on and access to information growing ever faster it is important to explore new ways of presenting and interacting with it.  Apple have introduced perhaps the most high profile new interaction experience with the multitouch capability built into the iPhone and Macbook.  That said Apple certainly isn’t the only company looking into the future of interaction design.  Perceptive Pixel’s Multi-Touch Wall has also been picked up by the press, most recently at the TED talks. This video shows Microsoft’s latest multi-touch offering, a spherical display designed to be used by several people simultaneously. The really interesting thing about this device is the interaction stories it seeds between users, where people across the globe from one another can operate in relative privacy while a group viewing from the same area can share the display without a ‘master user’.

As the price of multi-touch technology drops over the coming years it will be interesting to see how many of the existing interaction artifacts will remain. The possibility of a tablet Macbook may signal a move away from the traditional mouse-keyboard-monitor combo that we’ve been used to.

Having spent the last few weeks alternating between sitting at my computer and working on a prototype in my garage, I decided it was time to take advantage of the freak sunny day and take my new camera for a walk.  I’ve been putting off buying a digital SLR for so long because “they just take all the skill out of the photography”, or maybe “it doesn’t matter how many megapixels it has, it just doesn’t handle the light”.  To be honest I’m not really sure which excuse I used to use, having not picked up a camera in a couple of months now, using my new EOS 40D is a real pleasure.  

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to fall out of love with film, in fact this foray into the digital world has me eager to get back to the darkroom, but I love the immediateness of the digital process.  Whereas with film an hours walk with a camera means two and a half in the darkroom just to get a set of prints to scan through, with digital I can have the images sitting on my desktop, with those that merit extra attention ready and waiting within ten minutes, with two-and-a-bit hours worth of ‘processing time’ left.

So digital isn’t the monster I may have thought it was and maybe I’ll be dragged into the modern world yet, but I still can’t help feeling embarrassed that I shot over 200 pictures in that one hour walk – better put some darkroom time in!