The Kiez has been problematic ever since: a diversity of cultural backgrounds, a high rate of unemployment and what comes out of it. There are some initiatives that try to be helpful but don’t really succeed due to reluctance of the inhabitants and lack of funding.

Since the Occupy movement, however, we know better. The trend toward self-governed behavior is gaining in social acceptability. For years now, the creative avantgarde — one almost wants to say Generation Y — has taken a critical, antiestablishment stance, developing recycling design and repair movements, hardware and software hacking, open source projects, DIY and crafting, coworking and file sharing, urban guerilla actions, flashmobs, and much more. Glancing over these terms, it becomes evident that the development is international,thoughshaped,inparticular, by the USA. The world is changing, and in professional design, too, we are prompted to rethink, to reposition ourselves, and to lay a stronger foundation for our true potential — open, critical thought — within our working methods.

What does this mean, then, for the traditional fields of design? How does it transform the designers’ activities and responsibilities? In which areas do we need to learn something new, and in which areas do we need to learn to let go?

Let’s start from the beginning. The design profession is an invention of industrialization. The designer was charged with creating products, i.e. tending to a prod- uct’s aesthetic. Functionality was given over to the engineers; the designer worked on the outer shell. Today, the designer’s task is much more complex. Ever since the Hasso-Plattner-Institut charmed the corporate world with its creative method, Design Thinking, a method born out of the creative hotbed IDEO, it has become clear that designers, too, are capable of thinking. (Hopefully entrepreneurs realize, though, that thinking is always immanent to design, and that there is much more to the suc- cessful creation of a product or an activity than just sticking a bunch of colorful Post- it notes on a whiteboard.) Besides brain- storming and conducting user surveys, the designer’s thought-process entails among other things a necessary attention to sus- tainability (environmental compatibility, lifecycles, materiality, etc.) as well as a reflection on the usabilty and user friendliness of increasingly interactive products. Technical understanding in addition to knowledge of psychology and sociology have long become undeniable preconditions for good design.

The continually complex demands placed on products and their designers do not just stop at individualization. Although the mass-produced, industrially fabricated commodity has not yet retired from the scene, the wish for everyday things to tell stories, evoke memories, correspond to one’s own ideas, or accommodate one’s personal requirements is continually growing stronger.

Mass customization is a hot topic within business and is increasingly practiced. In the design community it is termed co-creation or prosumerism, and refers to an integration of the customer within the design process. Just a few years ago, critical voices within the art academies heralded this as the beginning of the end of the designer as creative expert. Websites like Etsy.com, Ponoko.com, and Dawanda.com, and venues like Open Design City in Berlin or the global FabLabs have made it clear that the idea initially dismissed as crazy is now in high demand. The all too often underpaid and monothematically under-challenged agency designers should consider dedi- cating themselves to this growing market of do-it-yourself participation. Instead of designing the one optimal product, a designer is confronted with the task of creating a maneuvering room. The designer must employ complex, connected, critical thinking, and mold it into a usable form. This form certainly does not have to be static. It can, moreover, be an almost formless, flexibly defined system or process, in which the creation of form can later take place. When it comes to generative design and programming, it is a matter of defining the general rules, parameters, and conditions that allow the resulting options to function. To put it another way, generative software and con- figurators enable participation and the collaborative co-creation of artifacts. Because of this, production becomes individualized. The designer shifts from shaping concrete form to creating abstract fields of possibility — in one word: metadesign.

Metadesign refers to a non-linear simu- lation of a field of action which encourages users to explore this space and to analyze or determine a specific reality within it. The responsibility that comes along with the creation of metastructures goes without saying: clear, sensible borders must be put in place to limit the infinity of virtual variations. Through preselection the metadesigner narrows down the range of parameters and their combinatorial possibilities. In the next step, a co-designer defines his or her personal favorites. The responsibility of the metadesigner thus consists of a political decision concerning both what and how much. In the ideal case, the metadesigner’s expertise ensures that these deci- sions make complete sense and are arrived at more quickly than by a non-professional.

This new mode of working requires that the designer have both the communication skills and self confidence to perform additional work as consultant and mediator. Instructions and introductions are needed in order for others to take on the act of making. The designer, who promotes autonomy by generating enthusiasm and alleviating fear of contact, has a very promising future.

One stage on the road to open design was my thesis project, isopt. Here the notion of creative participation was played out on a representative, easily understood product. Rapid manufacturing techniques are the latest thing. Because this production method achieves aesthetically pleasing results with ceramic materials, particularly porcellan, the idea of using household ceramics lent itself to the work. Household ceramics are objects we encounter on an everyday basis, whose functions, proportions, and use are at least unconsciously familiar.

Besides creating a novel concept for household ceramics based on the parame- terization and systematization of a product family through interactivity, it was equally important to seek out the functional innovations enabled by this new production mode. The task of designing a metaobject comes hand in hand with the challenge of creating a virtual interface that allows nonprofes- sionals to perform authentic, intuitive interventions in the process.

The interface is a sensitive, referential space distinct from the often cluttered appearance of common configurators. The user can act freely and playfully within its functional framework, thereby taking responsibility for his or her own creation. No longer dependent on a limited range of choices, form can be freely manipulated. As a means of avoiding horror vacui, an automatic metaobject is randomly generated using the given parameters. This object can then be formally altered through the manipulation of parametric curves. Rapid Manufacturing’s great potential for fabricating unique objects comes into play here.

There were a number of aspects taken into account during the development of the interface. The user’s journey had to be enjoyable. The hierarchical structure of decision-making had to be transparent and comprehensible. Interaction had to provide the user with instructive feedback about their choices. And all of this had to occur without frustrating or overtaxing the user with an excessive amount of options. The result is equally interesting and accessible to both the amateur and the professional. One can navigate the structural architecture of the interface and directly manipulate its metamodel whether one has a concrete idea or prefers to meander.

Because the focus is on unique items, every piece has a QR tag containing an indi- vidual serial number and a link to the original file saved on a server. Of course, production only occurs on demand; there are, therefore, no storage costs. Ideally, local ceramic studios equipped with a laser sintering machine would produce the objects and cover subsequent steps in their assembly. In this way, the concept is aligned with emerging tendencies around technofacture (a conflation of technology and manufacture) as well as recent increases in the production of small, individual editions.

The concept is meant to address and challenge the user’s self-reflexive creativity, because, according to studies, 70 % of people are still not interested in asking themselves what it is that they actually want. As the supply of truly customizable products continues to grow, this number will inevitably shrink.

The vessels have two layers to ensure that the outside does not get hot. The inner chamber is made with conductive material so that the vessel can also be used for cooking.

An obvious aspect of the open design debate that often gets overlooked is the interdisciplinarity of such projects. Due to their complex requirements, technology, aesthetics, graphics, interactivity, and functional, haptic form become inseparable. Psychological and sociological aspects, which are just as vital to the development of holistic, state-of-the-art products, are also added to the mix. Recognizing this changes not only our teaching methods, but also our fundamental understanding of what it means to be a designer.

Legitimate questions about copyright, patents, and remuneration come up. Who earns what percentage, and for which activity? Even the designers are confused. The Creative Commons principle is one possible solution to the question of copyright. A fundamental debate about patents is long overdue. The terms of the product world are not the only one that have changed, however. Training, education, and social structures are all in transition. Governments are less and less able to offer necessary services to their populations, and individual initiative is gaining importance. Countless confer- ences and festivals addressing this topic have already taken place. The creatives at knowmads.nl, for example, take on new approaches to education; innovative people are brought together for diverse projects at sandbox-network.com; at edgeryders.ppa.coe.int one can help shape the politics of the future through play.

Yet it is often the same group of people in the playground, without the participation of a wider public. In order to inform and inspire future users, open design needs more publicity, visibility, clarification, and case studies. The 2011 book Open Design1 presents a good summary and introduction to the subject. But who, besides those who are already initiated, reads such a book?

At cookiesncode we work to build a network of activists with diverse professional skills who can collectively design the future of this vision. This is mostly achieved through conferences and workshops. In the event ›Create Your Own Future‹. we were interested in ownership, glossy design, and status as opposed to social interaction, sharing, and a grassroots approach. In other words: do we even want the polished lifestyle that has been presented to us as the supposedly perfect product world through advertising over decades? What part of this suggested desire for status really aligns with our needs, and what part clearly boils down to strategy? In setting foundations for the bottom-up developments previously mentioned and for collaborations on a much greater scale, a broad deconstruction of this material lust is past due. We find it particularly important to work out a holistic understanding for the design of the environ- mentandourfuture,whosetermsandconditions are still evolving. We identify promising approaches and critical questions while also supporting the complex interactions between the state, academic institu- tions, the private sector, as well as groups and individuals.

All questions are ultimately questions of design, if one assumes that design comes about through a series of decisions. We can learn a lot from professional designers, whose expertise lies in finding innovative solutions through unconventional thinking and responsible decision-making on a day-to-day basis. It makes no difference if these decisions refer to form, color, or a future that is worth living. It is each person’s individual and social responsibility to use their critical skills to bring the status quo into question.