Citizen Science and Open Design: Workshop Findings

Robert Phillips is a product designer with a wide breadth of experience across mass manufacture over 15 years. He helped establish design, manufacturing and applications for material development company d3o with clients including Quicksilver and Puma to Victorinox, GB athletes and the MOD. Currently he is completing a PhD at the Royal College of Art (Design Products), investigating citizen science and open design, and working in collaboration with Technology Will Save Us to deliver bee hive monitoring devices, as well as collaborating with design research consultancies and the Interaction Research Studio with a focus on user–centered design processes.

Sharon Baurley is Head of the Design Products Programme at the Royal College of Art, London. Her research has attracted $6.13M (£4.5M) funding from RCUK, and has explored the integration of electronic textiles into clothing for social digital applications with Vodafone and HP Labs, and “open design” and how social media and fabrication tools can enable design conversations between consumers and brands/manufacturers with Fairphone. She has consulted for Courtaulds Textiles, Gianni Versace, Marks & Spencer, and Unilever. She has been awarded design awards including the Josef Otten Award for Technical Innovation, and the Ideacomo Award from the Japanese Fashion Foundation.

Sarah Silve is a part-time lecturer at Brunel University teaching “Design for Manufacture and Communication.” Sarah's practice is in silversmithing and jewellery; her PhD is in the area of “Laser forming for creative metalwork.” She is interested in step changes between processes and contextual conversations of the value of the made and the digital for practice. There is an alignment between 'new technologies and the current ideas of 'open design to progress 'citizen science.