The impact of sharing platforms on collaborative design development during emergencies: the case of COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak resulted in an emergency of projects developed, shared and produced by makers, fablabs and open source enthusiasts. These projects are often released in design sharing platforms, e.g. Thingiverse, Github and Instructables, under open source licenses. It is often argued that the release of such projects holds potential for enhancing collaboration, continuous development and design dissemination. These arguments have been subject of recent studies on the structure of maker/Open Design communities and sharing platforms. This study aims to contribute to the on-going debate on the potentialities of such communities. We adopt an explorative approach to (i) identify the influence of the COVID-19 outbreak on the activity volume of Thingiverse, the object of our study, (ii) analyze the designs metadata and its network patterns, and (iii) identify interaction patterns based on real-world localities. Based on our findings we comment on the importance of the maker/Open Design communities to tackle critical situations and highlight the current limitations for a wider dissemination of open source designs. Our findings may contribute to build better tools for designers and enthusiasts of the maker/open culture as well as to studies on collaborative development.

Expanding research impact through engaging the maker community and collaborating with digital content creators

“…Hundreds of designers participated in the rush to create critical open-source personal protective equipment (PPE) [ 31 , 32 ]. The nature of open-source design-sharing platforms allowed for improved collaboration, continuous development, and design dissemination of PPE [ 33 – 36 ]. This trend in open-source hardware mirrors that of the open-source software (OSS) movement, which proved that a network of volunteers can write software code just as well as professional developers [ 37 ].…”

Extending research impact by sharing maker information

“…Emerging technologies and practices 4 empower people to collaborate, create, and turn creative and futuristic ideas into reality 5 . The COVID-19 global pandemic exemplifies the benefits of engaging the maker community by using open-source design-sharing platforms to enhance collaboration, continuous development, and design dissemination of critical personal protective equipment (PPE) 6,7 . Just as the open-source software movement can result in software code competitive with that done professionally 8 , the open-source hardware movement is breaking down barriers as maker technology becomes more accessible.…”