This document discusses Massimo Menichinelli's doctoral dissertation defense on open and collaborative design processes within the Maker Movement. The dissertation explores meta-design, ontologies, and platforms that support collaborative design. It proposes a framework for meta-design research through design that defines collaborative processes using digital ontologies. It also redefines the roles of meta-designers and their practice of facilitating distributed collaboration through design. The defense took place on November 11, 2020 in front of Professor Lily Diaz-Kommonen and Professor Elisa Giaccardi.

1. Open and collaborative design
processes
Meta-Design, ontologies and platforms within the
Maker Movement
Defence in the field of New Media
11 November 2020
Custos: Professor Lily Diaz-Kommonen, Aalto University,
Department of Media, Aalto Media Lab
Opponent: Professor Elisa Giaccardi, Delft University of
Technology, The Netherlands
Lectio Praecursoria

2. • Meta-Design research and practice on
digital platforms for open, distributed
and collaborative design and making
processes in the Maker Movement.
• Making through bits and atoms and
also the infrastructures that support its
processes.
• An exploration of the role and profile of
a meta-designer.
Introduction

3. Context and
motivations

4. Web-based initiatives and technologies
based or inspired on open source and
peer-to- peer principles practices and
tools that generate diffuse, distributed
and decentralized collaborative networks.
Leadbeater, Charles. 2009. We-Think : Mass Innovation, Not Mass
Production. Profile Books Ltd.
Raymond, Eric S. 1999. The Cathedral and the Bazaar. 1st ed.
Sebastopol: O’Reilly.
Surowiecki, James. 2005. The Wisdom of Crowds. New York:
Anchor Books.
Tapscott, Don, and Anthony D. Williams. 2006. Wikinomics: How
Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. New York: Portfolio
Penguin.
Open, P2P, DDD
Systems

5. If Open Design is the model of a practice,
the general trend and a broad philosophy
of work, Makers are its practitioners.
A global community of distributed
individuals, makers, who share the same
attitudes towards designing and making
with digital tools with open, peer-to-peer,
diffuse, distributed and decentralized
systems.
Maker Movement:
practitioners

6. Labs, events, projects at different scales
and (almost) everywhere:
distributed places
distributed tools
distributed processes
connected by platforms
Maker Movement:
dimensions

7. • From Mass-collaboration to
Surveillance Capitalism
• From an open frontier to few walled
gardens
• From an idea of natural and
homogeneous collaboration to the
awareness of never-ending conflicts
• From a single shared initiative to
multiple processes and communities
Collaboration &
Conflict

8. GAPs
• GAP1. Supporting the makers’
collaborative practices with
project documentation and
organization.
• GAP2. Research for and through
Design in the Maker Movement.
• GAP3. Role of Meta-Design and
meta-designers for the Maker
Movement.
• GAP4. Design with
Open/P2P/DDD Systems.

9. From designing collaboratively to
supporting collaborative design
processes.
From developing efficient and usable
tools (UX/UI/IxD) to developing insights
about supporting practices through tools
(Meta-Design).
Designer/maker to
meta-designer

10. A reflection on meta-designers supporting
the paradigm of Open Design within the
Maker Movement with Meta-Design
approach and tools.
Meta-Design for
Open design

11. An evolving Meta-Design practice in the
emerging phenomenon of the Maker
Movement.
Not an in-depth reflection upon an
established practice, but the broad
exploration of the experiences, skills and
activities that concurred in defining and
supporting it.
An emerging meta-
design practice

12. A first exploratory examination of the role,
practice and profile of the author as meta-
designer facilitating distributed, open and
collaborative design processes in the
Maker Movement through the author’s
personal practice and research through
artifacts.
A meta-designer

13. Methodology

14. Design as a method of inquiry
Design as a method of inquiry with its own
tradition (not science nor art): from the
universal to the particular, real and ideal
with a serving approach.
Nelson, Harold G., and Erik Stolterman. 2012. The Design Way:
Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World. 2nd edition. The
MIT Press.
Design hypothesis: a proposition or
supposition about the relevance of the
artificial nature of a design intervention
towards creating the ideal in the real while
being grounded in real and true.

15. Design Hypothesis
• makers can be facilitated in
collaborating, organizing and
coordinating their work…
• this facilitation can be supported with
the design of digital languages and
maps …
• a kind of new media design that
defines collaborative processes with
the ontology of a data format as a
shared language and its related
platform.

16. Research Questions
RQ0. How can we support and integrate
the research and practice of meta-
designers in analyzing, designing and
sharing open and collaborative design and
making processes within Open/P2P/DDD
Systems?

17. Research Questions
RQ1. DESIGN. How can collaborative
design processes be designed,
documented and shared with meta-design
research and practice on digital platforms?
RQ2. ANALYSIS. How can collaborative
design processes be understood, analyzed
and shared with meta-design research and
practice on digital platforms?
RQ3. PRACTICE AND RESEARCH. How can
we connect the research and practice of
meta-designers in open and collaborative
design and making processes?
RQ4. CONTEXT. What is the overall
context of the meta-design practice and
research regarding design and
Open/P2P/DDD Systems?

18. An exploratory and generative approach
based on an emerging and not established
practice, through artifacts: practice-based
research.
Frayling, Christopher. 1993. “Research in Art and Design.” Royal
College of Art Research Papers 1 (1).
Stappers, Pieter, and Elisa Giaccardi. 2017. “Research through
Design.” In The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction,
edited by Mads Soegaard and Rikke Friis Dam, 2nd Ed.
Interaction Design Foundation.
Zimmerman, John, Jodi Forlizzi, and Shelley Evenson. 2007.
“Research through Design as a Method for Interaction Design
Research in HCI.” In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on
Human Factors in Computing Systems, 493–502. ACM.
Research through
Design (1)

19. An hypothesis-making and hypothesis-
experimenting iterative cycle towards
relevant knowledge for the researcher’s /
practitioner’s motivation.
Bang, Anne Louise, Peter Krogh, Martin Ludvigsen, and Thomas
Markussen. 2012. “The Role of Hypothesis in Constructive Design
Research.” In Proceedings of The Art of Research IV.
A continuum of steps between the
particular (what a design is) and the
universal (what designing is).
Redström, Johan. 2017. Making Design Theory. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Research through
Design (2)

20. The development of design theories of
something that understand design and
designing based on the creation of
definitions and redefinitions of activities
and artifacts through design practice.
Redström, Johan. 2017. Making Design Theory. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Research through
Design (3)

21. A set of design guidelines and concepts for
supporting communities in developing
open and peer-to-peer organizational
forms and collaborative activities through
a design process itself based on such
forms and activities.
PHASE 1:
Guidelines

22. Canvases for sketching and discussing
processes.
PHASE 2:
Toolkits

23. 1. A framework that informs Research
through Design initiatives for design
practice, research and education for
the meta-design of open, collaborative
and distributed processes.
2. A digital platform that enables
multiple actors to collaboratively
design and discuss collaborative
design processes in real-time.
PHASE 3:
Framework-
Platform

24. 1) design of ontologies (ontologies - data
structures - considered as a design
material)
2) Ontological Design (ontologies
considered as worldviews which are
designed by actors in a context and
which designs them)
3) Ontology of design processes (an
ontology of design described through
an ontology)
Ontology
data
social
data
social

25. OpenMetaDesign: a real-time platform

26. OpenMetaDesign: a real-time platform

27. OpenMetaDesign: a real-time platform

28. Articles

29. Three phases

30. Research Methods
METH. 1. Literature review for mapping
the state of the art and related
contributions to each research question
and article.
METH. 2. Design/development of the
digital platform.
METH. 3. User testing of the artifacts
developed in each phase.
METH. 4. social network analysis for the
networks of interactions in projects and
communities the author participated to.

31. Contributions

32. Defining a Research through Design
framework for Meta-Design in the Maker
Movement.
Redström, Johan. 2017. Making Design Theory. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Research in maker laboratories,
communities and platforms.
Koskinen, Ilpo, John Zimmerman, Thomas Binder, Johan
Redström, and Stephan Wensveen. 2011. Design Research
Through Practice: From the Lab, Field, and Showroom. 1 edition.
Waltham, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.
CONTRIB. 1

33. Meta-Design for Defining Design Processes
with Digital Ontologies as a Design
Material.
OpenMetaDesign Framework.
CONTRIB. 2

34. Meta-Design for Defining Design Processes
with Digital Ontologies as a Design
Material.
OpenMetaDesign Framework and its
support to and influence on the lifecycle
of a project.
CONTRIB. 2

35. Meta-Design for Defining Design Processes
with Digital Ontologies as a Design
Material.
OpenMetaDesign Framework and its
impact of the lifecycle of a project and the
role of communities in bridging local and
global worldviews that influence the
framework.
CONTRIB. 2

36. Meta-Design for Defining Design Processes
with Digital Ontologies as a Design
Material.
CONTRIB. 2

37. Redefining Meta-Design within the Maker
Movement.
1. Meta-Design with and for
Open/P2P/DDD Systems.
CONTRIB. 3

38. Redefining Meta-Design within the Maker
Movement.
2. Meta-Design of bits (digital
environments) and atoms (physical
artifacts).
CONTRIB. 3

39. Redefining Meta-Design within the Maker
Movement.
3. Meta-Design as a Metadata Ontology
for Ontological Design.
CONTRIB. 3

40. Redefining Meta-Design within the Maker
Movement.
1. Meta-Design with and for
Open/P2P/DDD Systems.
2. Meta-Design of bits (digital
environments) and atoms (physical
artifacts)
3. Meta-Design as a Metadata Ontology
for Ontological Design
CONTRIB. 3

41. Redefining meta-designers within the
Maker Movement.
Redefining / identifying the profile, role
and skills of meta-designers within the
Maker Movement.
CONTRIB. 4

42. Redefining meta-designers within the
Maker Movement.
Redefining / identifying the profile, role
and skills of meta-designers within the
Maker Movement.
CONTRIB. 4

43. Redefining meta-designers within the
Maker Movement.
Identifying the position and role and skills
of meta-designers within the social
networks of the Maker Movement.
CONTRIB. 4

44. Conclusions

45. A framework for redefining Meta-Design
A framework for studying how design
can integrate data and the social
dimensions in research and practice
in order to improve distributed
agency in collaborative processes.
OpenMetaDesign redefines:
• ontology and meta-design
platforms: the act of
collaboratively designing design
processes.
• Meta-Design: the approach
behind this activity.
• Meta-designers: the role and
profile of meta-designers
working on this.

46. A transitional design theory of Meta-
Design in the Maker Movement
• a practice and research with and for
Open/P2P/DDD Systems…
• in makerspaces, communities and
platforms…
• with the design of bits (digital
environments) and atoms (physical
artifacts)…
• for supporting distributed collaborative
processes…
• through the development of a Meta-
Data Ontology for Ontological
Design…
• the multi-disciplinary and multi-
professional practice of meta-
designers embedded in social
networks.

47. From user needs & desires to user
experience, from simulation of users to
their engagement and collaboration in
design processes, to uncovering their
worldviews, making them explicit and
designing within and for them with digital
technologies.
Ontology has a dual nature of
media/community: data/social design.
Ontologies for
Data/Social Design
data social

48. A reflection about the conventional digital
universalism of the Maker Movement, its
limitations and that a way forward might
be by rebuilding the movement from the
practice with research, platforms and a
focus on ontologies.
Not a single global community (ontology)
but networks of local ones.
New local/global
distributed systems

49. Maker Movement as a popularization of a
new design practice and research:
Design of/with software, hardware, and
now also of/with/within ontologies.
Software,Hardware
…Ontology

50. Maker Movement as a popularization and
democratization of a new design practice
and research:
Design of/with software, hardware, and
now also of/with/within ontologies.
Software,Hardware
…Ontology

51. Massimo Menichinelli
Open and collaborative design
processes
Meta-Design, ontologies and platforms within the
Maker Movement
Defense in the field of New Media
Lectio Praecursoria
11 November 2020
Custos: Professor Lily Diaz-Kommonen, Aalto University,
Department of Media, Aalto Media Lab
Opponent: Professor Elisa Giaccardi, Delft University of
Technology, The Netherlands