Serena Cangiano

Open Sourcing Wearables

Wearable technology is the “next big thing” in tech industries. Analysts forecast a consistent growth and this sector is becoming appealing to many corporations. Aim of this chapter is to present the field of wearable technology and to highlight unexplored issues generated by the relation of such technologies with the domain of proprietary versus open source businesses. If wearable technologies sell the promise of an augmented self by providing access to bio data, we can witness the emerging of a contradictory scenario: while we acquire knowledge about our bio-self through body borne devices, we also feed voluntarily a powerful data stream whose commodification and, subsequent marketability, represents the core element of the current business models related to internet connected services and social media platforms.

Open resources for thinking with computational artefacts at school

This workshop will address the theme of open resources for learning. A small series of case studies at the intersection between the world of education, technology, and making will be presented with the aim of discussing the opportunities and challenges of open source materials for practitioners. The case studies consist of projects developed across different European countries, focused on different aspects of learning and dedicated to different school levels. Nevertheless, these projects share the use of open source resources and the aim of contributing with materials and examples to the resources available for educators and designers. The workshop will combine the case studies presentations with a round table.

The growth of digital social innovation in Europe. An Open Design approach to support innovation for the societal good

Abstract Built upon the definition of social innovation, the umbrella expression “digital social innovation” was introduced to describe a wide range of projects that use digital technologies, community engagement and collaboration, co-creation strategies and bottom-up approaches to solve societal needs, in opposition to the centralized proprietary solutions owned by a few companies. Assessing how digital social innovation projects can scale in order to have a better impact, is crucial to provide a concrete European model to innovation creation that considers values beyond economic factors. This paper presents the results of a one-year training program aimed at supporting the scalability of digital social innovation projects in order to have a better impact. In particular, it describes the application of an open design approach to the design of a P2P mentoring model, and a sustainability toolkit that faces the issue of generating capacity building in emerging community of tech social innovators.

Open Sourcing Social Robotics: Humanoid Artifacts from the Viewpoint of Designers

The aim of the paper is to define a remit of interest for design and designers in the field of products and services employing human face as an interface with users. From the point of view of design culture, humanoid artifacts, are at the intersection of product design, visual communication, and interaction design. The release of open hardware platforms, such as Arduino Robot, as well as the diffusion of fabrication laboratories (fablabs) and open design practices are the early manifestations of a wider interest toward social robotics accompanied by the possibility of building working prototypes of humanoid artifacts. The use of human face as interface in human–computer interaction adds analogic content to interaction processes in an unmediated and unobtrusive way, transferring human–computer interaction to the field of interpersonal communication. Nevertheless, the field of anthropomorphic artifacts is generally neglected by designers and rather controlled by engineers and experimental psychologists. Starting from a definition and taxonomy of humanoid artifacts, the aim of this chapter is to describe the paradigm of human–computer interaction through case studies of humanoid artifacts and to define criteria for the evaluation of humanoid artifacts from the perspective of design practice.