OPEN DESIGN RESEARCH

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) General Frequently-Asked Questions
1

Answer on :Opendesign@gmx.de

Dear Sir or Madam, dear creative worker, dear developer and designer

In consideration of growing interest in open development processes and their spreading, we are trying to get to the bottom of the »open design« phenomenon.

In the course of our investigations we are very much interested in your opinion. The survey consists of a few questions related to hierarchy in open projects. At the end of our observation there will be a theoretical study, which all participants may receive a digital copy of, if so desired. (Just note that the final work will be written in German)

First we would like you to answer eight questions according to a given scale. You are free to add a short comment to each answer. Finally there are two questions, which allow for a more detailed answer.

  1. Does "Open Design" have a future?
    (No) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (Yes)
    Comment:

  2. Is there a danger of losing individuality due to the openness of a project?
    (No) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (Yes)
    Comment:

  3. Does the loss of individuality imply a decrease in quality?
    (No) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (Yes)
    Comment:

  4. Which hierarchic structures exist in your project? In which relation are the numbers of initiators and participants?
    (Initiators) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (Participants)
    Comment:

  5. Who has the power to decide which changes to implement?
    (Initiators) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (Participants)
    Comment:

  6. Open processes may result in a vast variety of designs. What kind of rules & restrictions are set that may influence individual freedom in order to maintain a high level of quality? What is your ideal conception?
    (Many restrictions) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (Much freedom)
    Comment:

  7. How much expertise is needed to participate in an "open design"- project?
    (Expert) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (Amateur)
    Comment:

  8. Are there moments when it depresses you that open design projects cannot easily be closed again? What kind of moments are this and why do you still stick to open projects?
    (No) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (Yes)
    Comment:

  9. How are complex assignments broken down to many individual tasks and how are these tasks distributed among the participants? Where are the limits of each competency?
    Comment:

  10. To what extent do you understand yourself as the actual developer of a product, that you are working on together? Which kind of copyright protection is used?
    Comment:

In case you would like to dig deeper in this topic,
we also offer a more comprehensive questionnaire.

Many thanks and kind Regards,
Manuel Milde und Sebastian Piatza

(Faculty of Design - University of Applied Sciences Dresden)

2

The scaling in your questions 1 to 8 is all wrong. Those first eight questions are designed to give quantitative results, the last two, qualitative results (which you'll have to read, and which will take by far the most time to get useful results from) (and of course, ignoring that question 8 is in fact three questions bundled together — separate them first or you'll find it impossible to analyse the data usefully). However, the first eight quantitative results have a scale of one to ten, for what are essentially binary answers. That won't work very well, and the only way of making it work is to leave it up to the interpretation of each answerer, and they'll each interpret the scale differently. For example, there's no midpoint (your scale has an even number of gradations). To do this properly you should look up the “Likert scale”. Then restructure your questions so that they do not in fact pose a question, but instead pose a statement, and what you're doing is to ask whether the interviewee agrees with this statement or not. For example:

1: “I think that this researcher has constructed a very finely crafted and useful questionnaire.”

(strongly disagree) (disagree) (neither disagree nor agree) (agree) (strongly agree)
*
3

I miss the [don't know] [other] and [not applicable] categories at some Q's

4

Why no [don't care] option?

Lefty