How do people work together to design open-source hardware products? What is the level of openness, trust and collaboration within such projects? Do the communities share common goals and visions and how do they allocate workloads? These are some core questions related to demystifying open-source hardware projects that Robert Mies and Jérémy Bonvoisin try to answer in the research project entitled “OPEN! Methods and tools for community-based product development“.

As for the digital sphere, there is strong evidence that commons-based peer-to-peer dynamics harness social creativity, collaboration and information sharing in a regenerative way. The question is: can we also unleash the creative capabilities of P2P in the physical sphere?

Experimentation is in the vanguard of open-source hardware projects. Equally important is reflection, with the aim to understand the dynamics and patterns that can lead to constant improvement. Therefore, this survey is a useful tool to help us comprehend how the creative capabilities of commons-based peer production could be unleashed: https://opensourcedesign.cc/Limesurvey/index.php/561438

Please share the survey and, if you are part of an open-source hardware project, are invited to join by December 17th, 2017!