LEARNING BY DOINGMUSHON ZER-AVIV

He started his own open source project,ShiftSpace.org,

inspired by open source world of software.

but no designers followed him.

DON’T DESIGNERS KNOW HOW GREAT FREE COLLABORATION CAN BE? ARE THEY

TOO AFRAID OF TRYING? DO THEY JUST NEED A HELPING HAND? OR IS THE

PROBLEM THAT WHAT WORKS FOR CODE JUST DOESN’T REALLY TRANSLATE INTO

THE DESIGN PROCESS?

Many discussions confused sharing with collaboration, or were trying to advocate

the use of open graphics software for purely ideological reasons.

More pragmatic way of open design?

He started a class at Parson School for Design, with the warning:

“In this class, we’re going to explore the possibilities of Open Source Design while

learning HTML, CSS & WordPress theming. However, I should warn you that I don’t

have much experience in HTML & CSS, and I will practically be learning WordPress for

the first time along with you guys.”

The first assignment was ‘The Tutorial’.

The students made (non-digital) tutorials on such topics as

‘How to curve a football’, ‘A recipe for banana bread’, ‘DIY 3D glasses’,

‘Finding an Apartment in NY (Without Paying a Broker)’ and ‘How

to Sell Multiple Pairs of Shoes’

Then, he made a platform for students to share their knowledge and code while they

learn HTML, CSS and WordPress.It firstly was

the mailing list,then changed to the Subversion

repository system,then to Github finally.

He has managed to convince the students

why free and open source content available online is relevant to them

and will advance their creative work.

But he has not yet managed to convince them

why they should contribute too, why they should give back to the

commons.

He understood that assigning an arbitrary contribution was the wrong way to go.

The next semester:- WordPress 2.7 icon design challenge

- helping their friends with making online portfolios with Indexhibit

- posting their contributions on the class blog and on the Indexhibit forums.

But aren’t they still altruistic?The students probably were not

actually planning to use after the class ended.

The next semester:- write the kind of tutorials that they would

have liked to find for themselves.

They focused on CSS and WordPress, and not only about technical side

but also about design.

And they received thank you comments from random users on the

web.

But their ‘sharing’ just has been happening post mortem to the

creative act?

Interface linguistics like ‘text’?

“For better or worse, both visual and behavioral languages are not confined within such rigid

structures. Ironically, it is the openness of these languages

that makes networked collaboration harder.”