Been "on it"

Doing
I am sorry that I have been quiet, I have had some writing deadlines. We presented a poster at the horizon conference in Aberdeen. The poster was looking at inputs and outputs of open design, this is starting to ask the bigger question of what is open design. The most important word in there is design, ie giving people a set of choices but also limiting them in some way so that the outcome is a positive one. This would change for different skill sets. It is abit like Nike ID a simple interface that lets you design a shoe and other apparel. This is a good formula... but you only can create a shoe, you do not get the data or the files to use to make something else. This is a mass customisation tool not really open design but we can learn many lessons from it. Keep thinking about where and the level of detail that you want to be open for a project to be successful... does it have to be all of it?


Reading
Chris Anderson, Makers the new industrial revolution. This is a good read mainly full of anecdotes of how he has made things for his children and a history of how his relatives would have changed their approach to making and entrepreneurship. This is a great overview of "making" but it does also bring up and discussion... just because we have access to it does that mean we can "design" with it. I do not mean style but optimise on materials and processes from knowledge... in a world where things are costing more and material prices are going up is this software's time to help the optimisation of FEA for the Layman?

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