About Platformdesign.org
We are a bunch of designer/buinessmen/artist/engineers that are both vocal and passionate about getting more uniqueness and diversity in design. We want to make it easy to create both ethically and technically.
Platform Design is an emerging subset of design. Both closely related to the innovation craze of the past few years and overall global awareness of design as a medium. We want to support this trend as much as possible. Both by participating in and facilitating the dialog.
Many different aspects to customization have become popular in the past few months. Concepts like downloadable design are a good example of how influential this approach to making products will be in the future. All of these concepts fall in one way or another under mass customization and or personal fabricating machines. Platform design weighs in on the side of a designer and or people that want to design for themselves but don’t have the skill or wallets to do everything from scratch.
Industry as been doing platform based design and development for most of the industrial 20th century, we want to help them learn how to transfer this knowledge so that designers can learn from this history and bridge this divide and deliver platform designed products for mass customization. Platformdesign.org is our way of nurturing this new and unique industry.
For platform design to fulfill it’s goal it has to be made available to the public, not just to buy or use, but to create, to be a voice. We want to help anyone with a desire to do platform design to get their message out there and get seen. It doesn’t matter if it’s clothes or flatware or cars or toys or furniture. We want to help!
The Platform design team
Contact platformdesign.org
Send e-mail to pd /at/ platformdesign /dot/ org
or fill out our contact form.
Platform Design Basics
Platform design (PD) is phase in between classic products and mass customized products, but it teaches people to get ready for the full monty. The basic idea is that very few people feel comfortable with a blank piece of paper set in front of them and asked to draw what they want, they freeze. It takes designers, artists and writers years to get those skills (some few are born with it yes). So PD give you a set of parts that are flexible to mix together and create something that inspires you. Once people are comfortable with this process then I think mass customization is possible.
The platform design method has 3 criteria:
- 1. The author creates a design system with the intention that other designer will be using it. The system should solve most or all of the basic performance criteria. If it’s a chair then you have to be able to sit in it, it can’t fall over, it should be as comfortable as possible etc.
Also the author specifies the material(s) and manufacturing process. In this way the author can also then control the ethics of the product. It’s not made in sweatshops, made from environment materials, and the waste from the manufacturing to handled correctly. I call this inherent ethics. - 2. The system is then released into the wild world and offered up to designers initially then eventually the general public. If designers get inspired by the system you’ve created then it’s a good piece of platform design, not to restrictive but liberating in that they do not need to deal with technical issues like jointing. Also if you did a good job on the system then designers will use it in ways you never expected (that’s where the real beauty happens).
- 3. The product once designed my the designer must then be customizable by the end user/customer. The customer does not buy a finished piece of work. The customer can choose to (easily) express his/her taste in the product. For example with the anything chair, the end customer can assemble the chair in more than 100 different ways. So it’s always the customer (that has to live with the product) that decides it’s fine expression.
Mass Customization
The time is right for mass customization to start taking hold. Mass customization is well beyond trying to make it’s way into the business world, it’s already there today, it’s on it’s way to become mass market. Most of the big consulting companies have identified mass customization as a mega trend for the next century.
I also think that the time is right in regards to technology. Technology has been a barrier and competitive advantage in manufacturing for many many years. The tools have been expensive and complex and geared toward very large volume. But in the same way that classic print shops have lost their position to laser and inkjet printers, so will a large portion of consumer goods manufacturing. Of course raw materials, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals etc will not really be effected. But furniture, fashion, ceramics, housewares, toys etc. will be.
It will take mass customization a very long time to get to the point of being household idea. This is mainly because the general public needs time to unlearn the ideas that you have to take what you are given in classic consumer goods. The cracks are in the wall but this will be a very slow process.
