Design that Matters:

Open source collaborative prototyping studio

for design with real-world communities

 

Media Lab Design Studio, Spring 2001  (Credit arranged via independent study)

 

New: Global Design Network, Spring 2002

New: Design that Matters (dtm02), MIT, Spring 2002

ThinkCycle: Open Collaborative Design, www.thinkcycle.org
(Please visit the site to review all ongoing dtm projects)

Time: Lecture - Monday 2:00-4:00 PM, Studio - Friday 4:00-5:30 PM

Location: Room E15-135 (Conference Room in the Media Lab Cube)

 

Primary Instructors/TAs: Saul Griffith, Nitin Sawhney, Yael Maguire and Ben Vigoda. (with support from Mitchel Resnick and Bakhtiar Mikhak)

New Updates

           

Description

 

The Internet allows us to link millions of people worldwide and solve computationally intensive problems by using spare processor cycles of thousands of computers. We have, however, not developed an analogous method of using the creative “thinkcycles” of people everywhere to work on the challenges of our communities and the environment.

This design studio seeks to engage students in design and engineering challenges posed by real communities in the developing and developed world. At the heart of the studio is an evolving database of reasonably well-posed problems that come from within communities, solicited by Non-Govermental Organizations (NGOs) and student interactions with these communities.

This exploratory studio is aimed at having students design, prototype and document open-source solutions to these real world challenges.  By nature this studio will be testing concepts of distributed and collaborative design, where student teams must work with NGOs and communities separated by distance and having diverse cultural values.  This will first require gaining some understanding of the social settings and practices of communities within which the design solutions are proposed. Several prototypes will be iteratively developed with feedback from individuals in the participating communities and peer review. This studio will also be testing notions of open source hardware design, borrowing from the LINUX models of software development we will look at how documentation or “commenting” of the design process can lead to more effective design iteration.

The studio is project based and assessment will primarily be on the documentation of the design “source code” as well as final built and specified prototypes.  The latest rapid prototyping tools and techniques will be employed.  Projects will be solicited from an external NGO community who will become the clients for the final products.  A new software documentation platform “ThinkCycle” will be used and developed throughout the studio.  A mixture of graduate level or advanced undergraduate students with backgrounds/interests in product design, engineering, HCI, architecture/urban planning or development-related work is encouraged.

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Studio Setup

This is an experimental studio offered for the first time at the Media Lab. It is being developed by an inter-disciplinary team of graduate students across several groups at the lab, with guidance from faculty, Mitchel Resnick and Bakhtiar Mikhak. In terms of the key learning objectives, we will emphasize participative design methodology as well as hand-on prototyping, peer review and documentation. Working closely with NGOs on real-world problems will be a key component of the process and evaluation. The goal is to develop an understanding, design process and methodology for such challenging real-world problems as well as demonstrate several examples of working documented prototypes by the end of the semester.

We are currently in contact with a number of NGOs to help define challenges and interface with the students in the studio. These include Oxfam America, AID-India, Doctors without Borders, and the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation). We have documented several concrete challenges in a number of domains such as alternative power, sensors for health care, farming and low-cost communication. We expect students in the studio to take initiative and develop challenges as well.  We expect to attract around 10-12 graduate students or advanced undergraduates with primarily engineering backgrounds as well as some with experience in product design, HCI or community-development.

The studio will be divided into a two hour weekly lecture with around 50% from invited speakers followed by a one-half hour “prototyping studio” in which design exercises and projects will be brainstormed, built, debugged, and documented, with weekly peer review and technical support.

Students will be asked to form multi-disciplinary teams (2-3 persons) and work closely with an NGO or community throughout the studio. The instructors will be assigned to mentor each team through the design process. The end-result will be both a series of iterative prototypes and evolving documentation of the design specifications and design process on a shared website. Peer reviewed comments and feedback from the community will form an essential part of the documentation and evaluation.

Studio Structure, Readings and Weekly Notes

Week & Date

Lectures

Design Studio

 

Week 1. Feb 12

ThinkCycle: Open Source Design

-          Motivation for studio and approach

-          Introduce NGOs & problem domains

Collect source materials around problems.

-    NGO contacts

-    classify problem types

-          Design Lab on Programmable Bricks (Bakhtiar Mikhak)

Lecture

Thinkcycle tools & concepts: Saul Griffith, Yael Maguire, Nitin Sawhney, Bakhtiar Mikhak

Class Notes, Feb 16

Assessment

Request students to write personal motivation and skills

Readings

Victor Papanek, Design for the real world

Vannevar Bush, As we may think

 

Week 2. Feb 20

Real World Projects: how it happens? (Tuesday)

 

Review NGO and project case studies. Brainstorm on design concepts.

Lecture

Amy Smith (Lemelson Prize Winner, MIT, 2000)

Class Notes, Feb 20

Assessment

Write-ups on Interests and Problem Domains

Readings

Baygen case study, water drum case study, malnutrition band case study.

 

Week 3. Feb 26

Rapid Prototyping & Fabrication Processes

Use of rapid prototyping where appropriate in projects.

Intro to laser cutter, 3D printing, hand sculpting, CAD, water jet.

Lecture

Saul Griffith

Assessment

Design Matrix, prior art, virtual (CAD and mock) prototypes.

Introduction to CAD and software tools

Readings

CAD/CAM Resources – posted by Saul, 2/26/01

Machine Controlled “Printing” – Saul thesis chapter

 

Week 4. Mar 5

Water Filtration and Indigenous Materials

Application of indigenous materials / methods for student projects.

Build a familiar object out of indigenous materials (e.g. wood, banana leaves etc..) 

Lecture

Susan Murcott, MIT – worked in Nepal

Susan’s Talk Slides

Friday: MS Swaminathan Talk at Harvard, 4:00 PM

Assessment

Design Matrix, prior art, virtual (CAD and mock) prototypes.

Submit Prelim Project Proposals for discussion

Readings

Case Studies on Banana skin cars. Coif composites. Recycled fiber composites. Bamboo bicycles / scaffolding.

 

Week 5. Mar 12

Human Generated Power & Modern Materials

Application of modern materials / methods for student projects

-    build water filter

-    build composite materials

-    power generation 

Lecture

David Wilson - human generated power

 

Assessment

Design matrix, mechanical, chemical, electromagnetic, biological systems

Readings

Water filtration, electro-mechanical conversion papers

 

Week 6. Mar 19

Design for Social Settings using Ethnography

Designing a brief “locally-conducted” ethnographic study and methods

Ethnographic exercise: Social practices around paper vs. PDAs

Discuss case study of Voting practices

Lecture

Guest speaker: Keith Hampton (Prof. Sociology, MIT)

Design Studio: Nitin Sawhney (MIT Media Lab)

Assessment

Materials and processes selected for project.

Readings

Lofland and Lofland. Analyzing Social Settings. A guide to qualitative observation and analysis.

Hampton and Wellman. Examining Community in the Digital Neighbourhood: Early Results from Canada's Wired Suburb, in Digital Cities, 2000.

Mackay. Is Paper Safer? The role of paper flight strips in Air Traffic Control.

Paper Voting vs. Electronic – MIT/CalTech Study

Extended Summary of Ethnographic Session

Institute holiday Mar 26-30 (Spring Break)

Week 7. April 2

Collaborative Design Process & Documenting Practices

Problem Selection and brainstorming

-    building from instructions

-    creating instructions

-    documentation software 

Lecture

Philip Greenspun and the Ars Digita community system

Assessment

Having chosen problem, NGO, collected background material, initiate documenting process.

Readings

Collaborative Design: Bush, CSILE, CSCW Papers

Case Studies: Documentation examples and video documentary techniques

 

Week 8. Apr 9

Use of Electronics in Prototypes and the design process

Use of electronics where appropriate in projects.

Introduction to micro-controllers, simple RF communications, transducers.

Lecture

Yael Maguire, Ben Vigoda

Assessment

Peer review of ethnographic exercise & design of project ethno study

Readings

Refs. Case studies: telephony in India,

Documenting / sharing of circuit design

 

Week 9. Apr 16

Innovation and Product Design for the Masses

Refining prototypes for everyday human usage.

Making designs durable (testing)

Lecture

Dr. Ian Berger, Low cost Eye Prescription Devices

Assessment

Review functional prototypes and design issues.

Readings

Don Norman. The Design of Everyday Things.

Case studies on Product Design (IDSA)

 

Week 10. Apr 23

Manufacturing: local and remote

 

Manufacturing processes and issues.

Lecture

Slocum Person or Ted Selker?

Assessment

Product Design specs, Discuss ergonomics and affordances.

Readings

Case studies of product design & manufacturing specs

Media Lab sponsor events Apr. 30-May 4, 2001

Week 11. May 7

Development Planning and Ethics

Lecture

Speakers from NGOs

Assessment

Final project: Preliminary Project Reports for Review

Readings

Case studies from Development Planning, Sanyal and NGO projects

Crew and Harrison. Whose Development? An Ethnography of AID.

 

Week 12. May 18

Project Discussions and Critique

Design Review

Group Presentations, Preliminary Reports & Peer Review

 

Week 13. May 25

Final Project Presentations

Assessment

Final Projects will be shown to the MIT Community and General Public for critique and review. All functioning prototypes, final papers and posters must be completed. 

Note: The readings and speakers for specific sessions are subject to change.

Potential ThinkCycle Projects

Note: This is an old archive of projects.

New ones posted here: Topic Domains and Challenges at ThinkCycle (May 18, 2001)

Projects from Non-Govermental Organizations (NGOs)

Summary of all projects – updated, Feb 22

Vigyam Ashram, Pune, India

Electronics Projects in Rural India – posted Feb 22, Neil Gershenfeld

Contact: Dr. Shrinath Kalbag

Amy Smith’s “Designs for Developing Countries Seminar”

Health-related Diagnosis Projects

Contact: Amy Smith, MIT

Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation) in Eastern Europe

Educational and human rights / journalism projects such as: (more details available)

-          Interactive language toy for Roma pre-school children

-          Human Rights Monitoring Data Collection Device

-          InfoBus Personal ReaderWriter

-          Simultaneous video capture and broadcast device for the field

Contact: Stephanie Hankey, Information Program, Open Society Institute.

Riders For Africa

Rural healthcare by motorcycle ambulance in southern Africa. – posted Feb 16, Saul

Contact: Barry Coleman and

Pedal-Power Initiative for Rural India
Goal: Design efficient pedal-powered prototypes or other human-powered concepts.
About AID-Boston and the Pedal Power Project
Pedal Power Prototype - Evolving Design & Challenges (email correspondence)
Contacts: Ramkumar Krishnan at MIT, Tarun Jain in Boston and Ravi Kuchimanchi in India.
Websites for AID-Boston and AID-India

Deliverables and Assessment

-          The studio will enroll 10-12 Students (Upper level undergraduates and graduates)

-          Weekly Design Exercises and Studio Participation – 40% (assigned via Peer Review)

-          Final Project – Design 20%, Participative Process 20%, Documentation 20%

-          Grading is optionally assigned for those receiving independent study credit.

Primary Contacts: Saul Griffith, Nitin Sawhney, and Yael Maguire

Document Last Updated: March 28, 2002