Unfolding Openness: Critical reflection on the open design projects in Turkey

Abstract

In recent years, Open Source Sharing and Maker Movement have become popular and have triggered a community of people who are enthusiasts of learning, making, creating projects, and sharing these projects and knowledge with others. These movements' development and maturation can be affected by local circumstances as well as the availability of resources and infrastructures, and people's approach to openness for such processes. The question is, then, who are the individuals and communities that identify themselves with these practices, and how able are they in their endeavor of open design? Are the open processes really open to anyone and applicable everywhere? Through a critical reflection on six open design projects produced in a graduate course, the makers' characteristics and local conditions' effect on open design processes are examined as a case. Therefore, the first aim is to analyze different perspectives and degrees of openness using (Balka, Raasch & Herstatt, 2010) terms of transparency, accessibility, and replicability. Although projects fulfilled most of the aspects, they failed to achieve accessibility due to the economic and social conditions in the local setting. The secondary aim was to analyze the open processes by considering the changing roles of the researchers as project makers since the processes are highly affected by the makers' backgrounds and knowledge. The making process is experienced as if it was an amateur pastime (Von Busch, 2012) or productive leisure (Atkinson, 2011) since making flawless products was not the only and direct aim of the class.