OpenDesign: Analyzing Deliberation and Rationale in an Exploratory
Case Study
Fabr
´
ıcio Matheus Gonc¸alves
a
, Alysson Prado
b
and Maria Cec
´
ılia Calani Baranauskas
c
Institute of Computing, University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil
Keywords:
Open Phenomena, Open Design, Open Source, Deliberation, Design Rationale, Organizational Semiotics,
Actor Network Theory.
Abstract:
The open phenomenon coming from the free-software movement has gained several fields, including services,
digital and physical products. Nevertheless, some authors point out the limited availability of supporting
methods and online tools to face the challenges of distributed collaboration of volunteers. They claim that
online collaborative platforms are still needed for supporting co-creation. In this paper, we investigate the
deliberation and design rationale in an (open) design process using the OpenDesign Platform. A case study
conducted with 22 participants of a Conference illustrates the use of the platform to cope with a proposed
design challenge. Results illustrated with graphical representations based on concepts of the Actor Network
Theory provide a visual representation of the network constituted by both the participants and the artifacts
(boundary objects) they produce and interpret. Further studies are pointed out suggesting new possibilities of
features and platform enhancements.
1 INTRODUCTION
The open phenomenon to systems design comes from
the free-software movement and got spread over sev-
eral fields including the open data, open science, open
governance, to name a few. Its origin goes back to
the 1970 decade, with the political movement that
occurred in reaction to the proprietarization of soft-
ware source code, chaired by Stallman through the
‘GNU Project’ (Stallman, 1985). The open-source
software, as defined by Warger (2002), p.18 “an ap-
proach to software development and intellectual prop-
erty in which program code is available to all partic-
ipants and can be modified by any of them”, focuses
on the process of software code development and in-
tellectual property. Since then, the open concept has
been widened to reach other domains, including the
broad cycle of product design (Boisseau et al., 2018).
Open design, in its broader sense, has been
pointed out as promising and disruptive, although ac-
knowledged as a phenomenon that has been yet little
studied by the scientific community (Boisseau et al.,
2018). One of the main reasons for this effort seems
a
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1479-947X
b
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5804-950X
c
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4830-5298
to be the democratization of design; design here re-
ferring to physical as well as digital products, and
services. The motivations of stakeholders to get in-
volved in open initiatives range from ideological to
the direct and indirect benefits perceived by partic-
ipants. In this sense the open phenomenon shares
some principles and can learn from Participatory De-
sign (PD) practices and related issues (Schuler and
Namioka, 1993). An example of this match is the
user’s role bringing his/her expertise to the design
process, going beyond the object-for-money trade re-
lation to other forms of contributions in the process
and product of design. The tradition of participa-
tory design is to ensure that end users are involved
in the design process bringing the tacit and contex-
tual knowledge to help shape design toward the most
meaningful solution (Schuler and Namioka, 1993).
However, changes in information and communication
technology, consumer culture, communities of inter-
est, manufacturing processes, economies and global
markets have brought new opportunities to extend this
tradition (Battarbee et al., 2008). As stated by Frauen-
berger et al. (2018), PD practices must be extended to
increase the democratization of technology design, al-
lowing a broader range of stakeholders to participate
in the design process. Frauenberger et al. (2018) pro-
pose to understand this movement through strategies
Gonçalves, F., Prado, A. and Baranauskas, M.
OpenDesign: Analyzing Deliberation and Rationale in an Exploratory Case Study.
DOI: 10.5220/0009385305110522
In Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2020) - Volume 2, pages 511-522
ISBN: 978-989-758-423-7
Copyright
c
2020 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
511
such as scale and dialectics. Scale asks for ways to ex-
tend PD reach without giving up on its core qualities.
Dialectics is about creating and maintaining spaces
for constructive conflict by networking and linking
with other stakeholders, organizations and domains.
These demands pose difficulties and challenges for
PD practitioners and researchers to conduct practices
synchronously and in a same geographical place.
Achieving larger scale and improved dialectic re-
quires tools which, on the one hand, afford creative
and collaborative behavior, fostering participation of
anyone who feels affected by the proposed construct.
On the other hand, such tools should avoid excessive
or inadequate actions, such as having the voice mo-
nopolized by someone. Moreover, access for anyone
to join the discussion at any point of time must be as-
sured. Online Deliberation - OD - tools address the is-
sues related to online discussion process, helping par-
ticipants to clarify a subject, by separating pros and
cons arguments and opinions from each participant
(Kriplean et al., 2012), equalizing biases and promot-
ing awareness of points of view.
The Socially Aware Computing SAwC de-
sign model (Baranauskas et al., 2014) is a theoretical
and methodological framework rooted on Participa-
tory Design (Schuler and Namioka, 1993), Universal
Design (Stephanidis et al., 2001) and Organizational
Semiotics (Liu and Li, 2014) approaches. Its goal
is to allow a collective construction of meaning, en-
compassing the diverse point of views from people
involved and affected by the design of an information
system or a digital artifact. The convergence of opin-
ions and objectives occurs through a series of the so-
called Semio-Participatory workshops, in-place activ-
ities conducted in face-to-face meetings where discus-
sion and expression of all interested parties are pro-
moted and mediated.
The OpenDesign project [ref] is inspired by the
Open Source philosophy, since this has provided a
number of high quality software products, gathering
and coordinating efforts from people with different
skills and from different places. The project’s objec-
tive is to formalize a community-driven design pro-
cess for interactive system design, and provide tools
for its accomplishment. In the context of this project,
a web platform was developed, intended to enable the
Semio-Participatory workshops from SAwC to be car-
ried out in an asynchronous and distributed scenario.
In this paper, we investigate the importance of de-
liberation and design rationale in the (open) design
process presenting a case study conducted among par-
ticipants of a Conference Summer School (Informat-
ics Research Centre, Henley Business School, Uni-
versity of Reading, UK, 2019) using the OpenDesign
Platform tools. On the scale aspect, once it is not
effective or even feasible to participate in all discus-
sions, the platform provides frames to gather organic
interests subgroups formation around an issue or idea
proposal and their interconnections. To handle dialec-
tics we provide a frame structure that affords cap-
turing benefits and drawbacks of each proposal and
also by mediating discussion into semi-structured ar-
gumentation to collaboratively elicit which pros and
cons resonates more around an idea or issue.
The paper is organized as follows: In the next sec-
tion we present the background and related work con-
text. Then, we present an overview of our proposal
for the OpenDesign Platform and its boundary ob-
jects. A case study on the Platform Usage follows,
with discussion on the main results. The final section
concludes pointing out further work.
2 BACKGROUND AND RELATED
WORK
Bonvoisin et al. (2015) argue that the spread of ICT
and cheap low-size production tools like 3D-printers
led to the community-based and open source devel-
opment of physical products. This innovative orga-
nization of product development (open design) of-
fers a great opportunity for continuous improvement
of products as well as a potential for product inno-
vation and in consequence incubation of new busi-
nesses. The authors also point out the limited avail-
ability of supporting methods and online tools for
helping to face the organizational challenges raised
by distributed collaboration of non-experts, non-
professional and non-contractually engaged volun-
teers. They claim that online collaborative platforms
are still needed with special features to build and keep
the community active, providing mechanisms for the
convergence of the design process, for knowledge
management, and for supporting co-creation. Those
features would be essential to the rise of open design.
In the tradition of PD, some efforts have been con-
ducted with social technologies to increase people’s
participation regarding information production, pub-
lication, and sharing (Hagen and Robertson, 2010).
Hargreaves and Robertson (2012) propose the use of
social technologies (Skype video calls, screen sharing
and email) to allow discussions between researchers
and participants who are remotely located, and pro-
totyping activities to occur at a distance. The in-
teraction among participants is structured in regular
cycles of reflective discussion and prototype modifi-
cation. While social technologies are participatory
by their nature as they require and depend on peo-
ICEIS 2020 - 22nd International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
512
ple’s involvement to take shape, they also have draw-
backs. For instance, regarding power, it is not clear
who exactly benefits from people’s participation, how
to value participation without exploitation. Problems
with privacy, ownership, deletion and sharing of per-
sonal information might be some issues raised when
developing participatory systems. Bringing a partici-
patory approach to the design of such systems is criti-
cal to ensure that people have the ability to negotiate,
control and understand the implications of participa-
tion as they evolve (Greenbaum, 1993).
The OpenDesign Platform, we are addressing in
this work, can be seen as a purposeful social technol-
ogy, where participants voluntarily interact towards a
shared design goal, starting from the early stages of
clarifying a design problem, by identifying the inter-
ested parties, and anticipating their potential issues re-
garding a prospective design solution. By ‘open’ we
mean a design process that allows contribution of the
volunteers to the product design since its conception
(not only in a prototyping stage).
In a study on the open design state of the art re-
view, Boisseau et al. (2018) illustrate that the sub-
ject of open design of products started in the early
2000s and is still a growing phenomenon. They have
shown that the limited number of published papers
suggests the concept has not spread over traditional
design communities yet, still being restricted to a few
research groups. Drawing on the design science ap-
proach, they argue that the subject that designers have
to address is to provide a plan based on a gap (a de-
sign problem), through the development of a solution.
Three elements are proposed to describe the product
design process: a) the phases and activities that con-
stitute the process, b) the boundary objects that consti-
tute the information formalized and carried from one
phase to the next one, and c) the participants (or stake-
holders) taking part in activities of the design process.
We should notice that the boundary objects are used
for sharing a common understanding of the solution
being constructed among the participants and that the
plan is the final boundary object.
Several attempts have already been made to pro-
vide a distributed platform for online collaborative de-
sign. Most of them focus on the support for sharing
the artifact being built - a prototype or a mock-up, for
instance. Heintz et al. (2014) searched for tools to
support such tasks, and analyzed six applications:
GABBEH (Naghsh and Andy, 2004) mimics pa-
per prototyping by enabling users to comment on
the current design by drawing with a software
tool, but its technical requirements made it too re-
stricted.
DisCo (Walsh et al., 2012) supports distributed
PD sessions, but was not publicly available for use
at the time of the study.
Appotate (appotate.com) brings together different
stakeholders, allowing them to give feedback on a
prototype.
MarkUp (markup.io) allows the user to draw and
write on a website; however, it does not offer a
structured way to store and retrieve this feedback.
MyBalsamiq (mybalsamiq.com) mock-up soft-
ware offers a wide range of common interface el-
ements to create feedback on prototypes.
Webklipper (webklipper.com) is an online appli-
cation that enables the user to annotate websites
and share the results.
Most of the mentioned tools mimics paper prototyp-
ing and enable users to comment on the current de-
sign. They also propose a tool that, beyond the al-
ready found features, provides a like/dislike heatmap
and enhanced interactivity.
Fischer (2004) studied design communities and
identified types of common barriers they must cope in
order to work together: spatial (across distance), tem-
poral (across time), conceptual (across different com-
munities of practice), and technological (between per-
sons and artifacts). For spatial barriers, it is straight-
forward to propose the use of computer-mediated
communication as a solution. On the temporal do-
main, he stresses that “long-term collaboration re-
quires that present-day designers be aware of the ra-
tionale behind decisions that shaped the artifact, and
aware of information about possible alternatives that
were considered but not implemented” (Heintz et al.,
2014, p. 155). Conceptual barriers must be overcome
by humans serving as knowledge brokers and by inte-
grating diversity, making all voices to be heard.
Bj
¨
ogvinsson et al. (2012) discussed that a funda-
mental challenge for designers and the design com-
munity is a change of focus from designing objects to
designing socio-material assemblies, which encom-
pass heterogeneity of perspectives among actors who
engage in attempts to align their conflicting objects
of design. In their proposal, the role of non-human
participants in the design process, such as prototypes,
mock-ups, models, and diagrams is to act as “pre-
senters” of the evolving object of design, support-
ing communication and participation in the design
process, potentially binding different participants to-
gether.
We agree with Bonvoisin et al. (2015) in acknowl-
edging the concept of open design as a significant
phenomenon, supported by trends in contemporary
digital technology and organization, which faces sig-
nificant challenges of interest for several scientific
OpenDesign: Analyzing Deliberation and Rationale in an Exploratory Case Study
513
disciplines. For example, they cite (p. 3): understand-
ing the dynamics of online communities, developing
motivation models for contributors, identifying busi-
ness models that allow to create sustainable economic
value with open source products, understanding the
decision processes in horizontal work organizations,
clarifying legal issues of intellectual property, iden-
tifying ways to ensure and validate product quality,
liability and safety, among others.
As for the open design of products proposed by
Boisseau et al. (2018) in the three elements that con-
stitute it (the gap, the process itself, and the plan), the
authors state that the gap is contingent, and the actors
of the design process have no influence on it. In our
approach, the design problem addressed (the gap for
Boisseau and colleagues), is open too, as it is open
to the interpretation and clarification by the interested
parties, as part of the design process. Although our
concept of design may reach the plan (i.e. for ex-
ample, the drawings of a design product), differently
from these authors, we are not limiting the object of
design to a (material) ‘product’ of industrial design.
In our work, we associate to ‘design’ the activities
that precede the code production in a digital infor-
mation system design, encompassing problem discus-
sion, deliberation and clarification, ideation of solu-
tions, requirements elicitation, design rationale. The
next section provides an overview of our proposal for
the OpenDesign Platform and its boundary objects.
3 AN OVERVIEW OF
DELIBERATION/RATIONALE
PROPOSAL IN THE
OPENDESIGN PLATFORM
In this section we present the OpenDesign Platform
based on: a) the phases and activities that constitute
the process (SAwC), b) the boundary objects that con-
stitute the information formalized (the artefacts), and
c) the participants (or stakeholders) taking part in ac-
tivities of the design process.
The Socially Aware Computing model has in-
spired the process which we have incorporated into
the OpenDesign Platform. Traditionally, this model
is inspired by some Organizational Semiotics arte-
facts and consists of three phases, each guided by one
specific artifact. The first phase is the elicitation of
stakeholders, which is made using the artifact known
as Stakeholders Identification Diagram (SID) adapted
from Kolkman (1993). This artifact allows us to in-
dicate all those who will affect or be affected by the
product of the design, which can be categories of in-
dividuals (like developers, designers, etc.), or entities
(such as universities or corporations). SID’s graph-
ical representation usually has five sequential layers
that contain each other, like an onion, as we can see
in Figure 1. The idea is that the innermost layers con-
tain stakeholders that are more directly involved with
the design product. During this phase of the SAwC
process, participants discuss who they believe affects
or is affected by the designed solution, and to which
layer each stakeholder belongs. After ideas of sev-
eral possible stakeholders are placed into the artifact,
a deliberation can be conducted on whether or not the
identified stakeholders are correctly named, catego-
rized or even if they actually should be there.
Figure 1: Stakeholder Identification Diagram.
The next phase is guided by the Evaluation Frame
(EF), a table-like artifact that supports the rea-
soning of problems and solutions associated with
each stakeholder identified in the SID adapted from
Baranauskas et al. (2005). Usually, it contains one
column for raising issues, and another column for so-
lutions or ideas associated to the issues. Then, each
row represents one layer of the SID. On the Open-
Design platform, such format was slightly adapted to
allow users to navigate through the layers from a left-
side menu, as we can see in Figure 2. In addition,
the deliberation aspect of this stage is reinforced by
allowing users to like or dislike entries, and to add
comments justifying their votes. Hence, the platform
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provides a deliberation frame (Figure 3), where par-
ticipants can raise pros and cons about a solution that
was placed on the EF, or they can add neutral com-
ments. The main idea, then, is to provide a way to
document the deliberation process.
Figure 2: Evaluation Frame.
Figure 3: Deliberation Frame.
Finally, the third stage is guided by the Semi-
otic Framework (SF) artifact adapted from Stam-
per (1973), which provides six levels of knowledge,
stacked on top of each other in a progressive manner,
similar to a ladder, as we can see in Figure 4. The bot-
tom three levels are related to the structure of signs,
how they are organized and transmitted. In turn, the
upper three levels are related to how signs are used, in
terms of meanings, intentions, and social impact they
have. Therefore, the SF can be a useful instrument
for identifying and organizing the requirements of the
design product.
Together these three artifacts provide criteria to
promote the process of deliberation and rationale,
where participants are engaged in discussing partic-
ular aspects of the design, which they might not
think of without the artifacts. Furthermore, the plat-
Figure 4: Semiotic Framework.
form instantiates these artifacts in a way that encour-
ages and documents deliberation and rationale. For
instance, beside designers, apprentices and domain
knowledge’s holders taking part in a given OpenDe-
sign session, the participants are prompted to remem-
ber and represent the concerns and hopes of absent
stakeholders. This remembering is facilitated by the
SID boundary object that frames 5 distinct levels of
involvement with the system, from daily operational-
ization to the distant community with spectators and
legislators. The platform aims to give direct voice to
some of these more distant stakeholders to directly
participate in design and feedback about a design
product, instead of being only represented.
The OpenDesign platform can be used following
certain steps. First, a challenge is proposed by one or
more key participants, representing each local group
of users. Not all local groups participants are neces-
sarily operating the platform online, nevertheless they
participate in local discussions and may contribute to
OpenDesign: Analyzing Deliberation and Rationale in an Exploratory Case Study
515
the solutions and proposals. Besides, a video confer-
ence can create another communication channel, sup-
porting all the activities, but mainly the selection of
an issue from the EF to be worked out in the SF to-
wards the design solutions. This dynamics is depicted
in Figure 5.
(A)
(B)
(C)
(D)
Figure 5: Open Design Semiotic Workshop dynamics: A)
a challenge is proposed for key participants in each local
group and then the SID is populated with related Stakehold-
ers; B) evaluation frame and deliberation are carried out; C)
based on the artifacts available at the platform, issues are
discussed and a focal idea of solution is selected for the
next phase; D) semiotic framework is generated, giving rise
to the proposal of solutions and requirements.
4 A CASE STUDY ON THE
PLATFORM USAGE
4.1 Context and Participants
To evaluate the proposed platform we conducted a
case study in the context of a Summer School in
the Organizational Semiotics Conference (Informat-
ics Research Centre, Henley Business School, Uni-
versity of Reading, UK, 2019). The case study took
place as a 3h15’ hands on activity, co-located in two
research centers in two countries (UK and Brazil).
Two conference rooms (9 and 12 participants, respec-
tively) connected also by videoconference, and one
more participant connected from home. The partic-
ipants goal was to learn and practice socially aware
design, instantiated in a pre-given common problem
amplified by technology pervasiveness without cor-
responding human development and training - the
fake news global challenge. Participants of diverse
countries and languages, with backgrounds mostly on
business and computer science, worked in the same
problem, sharing ideas along the hands on activities,
through the OpenDesign Platform.
To the proposed ‘problem’ (the fake news global
challenge), the platform was previously loaded with
24 stakeholders, 13 issues and 7 proposals of so-
lutions, filled by 9 volunteers (5 co-located and 4
digitally-located) in a 1 hour warmup, one week be-
fore the event.
The use of the collaborative platform was orga-
nized into phases: clarifying the problem, raising the
main interested parties, raising issues the interested
parties might have, proposing ideas of design solu-
tions for facing the issues, discussing and selecting
one potential solution to carry on, and organizing re-
quirements for the selected solution idea. At the end,
participants were invited to express their opinion on
the experience with the Platform. Table 1 illustrates
the Agenda of activities carried out in the 3h15’ hands
on meeting.
Table 2 synthesizes the participants’ main contri-
butions using the platform before (warmup) and dur-
ing the workshop. Some participated (6) in both mo-
ments, while in the workshop some participants did
not interact through the platform (4), although they
exchanged ideas with collocated colleagues. The de-
liberation (arguments) and SF filling (requirements)
was performed only during the workshop.
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Table 1: Agenda for the Hands on Meeting.
Boundary
Objects
Time
spent Activity Description
Videoconference 20 Greetings; platform
overview and challenge
presentation
Stakeholder
Identification
Diagram
20 Making sense of
previews entries and
raising new Stakeholders
Evaluation
Frame 1
35 Raising most issues and
arguments
Evaluation
Frame 2
30 Creating solution
proposals and arguments
Semiotic
Framework 1
10 Discussing and selecting
ideas from the EF to SF
30 Coffee-Break
Semiotic
Framework 1
15 Discussing and selecting
idea of solution from EF
to SF
Semiotic
Framework 2
25 Filling the SF with
requirements
Videoconference 10 Wrap-up and invitation
for the Evaluation
Questionnaire
Table 2: Participants and information they formalized
into the platform.
Warmup Workshop Total
Participants 9 22 25 (6 in
both)
Active in
Platform
9 18 24 (3 in
both)
Duration 1h 2h45min 3h45min
Stakeholders 24 26 50
Issues 13 12 25
Solution
Proposal
7 13 20
Arguments 61 61
Requirements 23 23
4.2 Data Analysis
Social networks are not just made up of persons, they
consist of people who are connected by the so-called
social objects (Engestr
¨
om, 2005), which we are un-
derstanding as content in boundary objects. From
this perspective, Engestr
¨
om (2005) argues that what
causes the failure of many social networking sites is
the lack of shared objects acting as hubs for people’s
interaction (Avram, 2005).
In order to understand the interplay between peo-
ple and non-human entities in a social scenario, the
Actor-Network Theory (ANT) proposes to study so-
cial phenomena as heterogeneous networks where
both human and non-human can contribute (Latour,
2005). This approach allows one to acknowledge
the mediation role of objects that propagate human
intentions. Such heterogeneous social networks can
provide a visual representation of both the partici-
pants and the artifacts they produce and interpret. For
instance, scientific social networks are mediated by
publications, and by analyzing both entities together
we can highlight structures of scientific communities
(Prado and Baranauskas, 2016).
In our study, this approach is employed to illus-
trate the interactions between participants and the di-
verse artifacts (boundary objects) used in the Semi-
otic Workshops. Whenever a participant creates or
edits a stakeholder on the Stakeholder Identification
Diagram, an issue on the Evaluation Frame, or a re-
quirement in the Semiotic Framework, a bond is es-
tablished between them. Moreover, issues of the EF
related to each stakeholder are also linked together.
Social relations between participants arise also when
a participant makes an argument on the issues created
by another person. These structures allow us to eval-
uate the interactions afforded by the platform. For
instance, the presence of cliques (short loop with a
single participant) or many disconnected vertices may
indicate a poor discussion, leading to less representa-
tive design proposals. Conversely, a richer discussion
can emerge from associations with no single hubs, nor
disconnected sub-groups.
The visual representation of these social interac-
tions and the mediating artifacts are represented in
Figure 6 through the QUID tool [ref]: participants
are depicted as red circles, stakeholders from SID as
blue circles, issues and solutions pointed out in EF as
blue squares and Semiotic Framework items as white
circles. For the arguments, drawn in green, triangles
mean positive, diamonds mean neutral, and crosses
mean negative.
Figure 6: Visual representation for the network of interac-
tions between people and types of artifacts created on the
platform.
OpenDesign: Analyzing Deliberation and Rationale in an Exploratory Case Study
517
After the hands on activity, the participants were in-
vited to give feedback about their experience with the
platform through an online questionnaire to under-
stand the platform’s boundary objects capacity to pro-
mote deliberation, rationale and awareness, from the
point of view of participants.
4.3 Results and Discussion
From the interaction logs collected by the platform
and processed by the QUID tool, it was possible to
visually represent who contributed and, from the so-
cial objects perspective presented earlier, how their
work build up to the workshop outcomes. Figure 7
shows the main artifacts with which the participants
interacted, and the paths of interactions they create,
prior to the deliberation phase.
Figure 7: Complete graph of relations between participants
(red circles, randomly numbered and labeled as Pnn to
anonymize participants), stakeholders they raised or edited
(blue circles), problems and solutions pointed out (blue
squares) and Semiotic Framework items (white circles).
The main feature of this graph of relations is the
presence of a major connected component compris-
ing most of the vertices, depicting the variety of in-
teractions provided by the platform. Except for P14,
P19, and P20, all other participants engaged in in-
teractions with the content created by others, creat-
ing paths of associations linking most of participants.
This suggests a successful sharing of ideas and con-
cepts among users. Although many participants in-
teracted with their own content - for instance, adding
a problem to a stakeholder proposed by themselves,
creating the “triangles” on the graph - they also con-
tributed to others’ contents. Also noticeable is the
lack of correlation between the physical location of
users during the workshops and their placement on
the graph; for instance, although P03 and P16 were
on different places, they are closely attached on the
graph, as they constructed collaboratively some con-
tent, along with P04 and P06.
Figure 8 shows a detail of the complete graph, for
the sake of a better understanding of what is being
represented. The participant P04 raised the “Public
Figures” stakeholder in the Stakeholder Identification
Diagram; afterwards, participants P21, P03 and P01
edited it, complementing or clarifying its description.
In the next activity, through the Evaluation Frame,
P04 attached the issue “Negative impact on the per-
son’s life” to the shared stakeholder.
Figure 8: Detail of the graph of relations, focusing on an
identified stakeholder and the other entities related to it.
Regarding the deliberation phase, Figure 9 brings a
view on how each argument is related to the issues and
solutions raised in the Evaluation Frame, and to their
authors as well. Node sizes are proportional to the
number of arguments attached to it, revealing the most
active authors and, according to their interaction, the
most interesting subjects.
It is noticeable that most commented problems
and solutions were not proposed by the most eloquent
users, suggesting different profiles of participation,
and showing that the tool provided a balanced discus-
sion environment. Authors also did not try to overem-
phasize solely the positive aspects of their proposals.
The graph including the requirements in the Semi-
otic Framework (white circles) highlights the interac-
tion of the participant P17 who contributed with the
main idea (“May the blockchain tech help”) for the
final phase. This participant registered only this pro-
posal, after engaging in deliberation with other 5 is-
sues and ideas proposed by 4 other participants with
3 positive and 2 neutral arguments Figure 10. This
same behavior is shared by other participants (P16,
P09, P15, P13) while other participants were more
engaged in deliberation (P22, P21, P23, P12) and oth-
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Figure 9: Relationship between authors (red circles), problems and solutions (blue squares) and arguments (green shapes).
Positive arguments are depicted as triangles, neutral ones as diamonds, and negative arguments as crosses. The vertices with
greater number of arguments are labeled.
Figure 10: Complete graph of interactions after the Semiotic Framework and Deliberation phases were carried out. In bold,
highlight of the interaction of the participant who contributed to the idea selected as the focal point in the SF.
OpenDesign: Analyzing Deliberation and Rationale in an Exploratory Case Study
519
ers contributed more to SF but not in the deliberation
(P19, P8).
4.3.1 Getting Feedback through the
Questionnaire
Regarding the platform usage evaluation, after the ac-
tivities carried out through the platform, an invitation
was made only for those in one of the two groups, not
involved with the OpenDesign Project or its platform
design, development or test. Eight volunteer partic-
ipants answered the evaluation questionnaire. The
objective of this questionnaire was to understand the
ability of the platform artefacts to promote delibera-
tion, rationale and awareness, from the point of view
of activists and the hands-on course participants (plat-
form users).
The questionnaire encompasses 28 questions or-
ganized into two different parts. Part 1 with 19 ques-
tions regarding Deliberation, Rationale, and Aware-
ness, and Part 2 with 9 questions regarding Feelings
and Usability. The questions in Part 1 used a 9 point
Likert scale ranging from ‘completely disagree’ to
‘completely agree’ for 13 questions, and included 6
open questions. The questions in Part 2 used a 5
point Likert scale ranging from ‘completely unhappy’
to ‘completely happy’, using a manikin with different
facial expressions for expressing the feeling.
The closed questions of Part 1 resulted in the fol-
lowing mode values (Table 3).
For the Part 2, in the 9 questions related with feel-
ings and usability, in a 5 points Likert scale of satis-
faction with different aspects of interaction (e.g. col-
laboration, self presence in the solution, facility of
use, feeling able to contribute, etc.), five (of eight re-
spondents) gave the highest value (5) to them. The
lowest value attributed to an item was 3 (in 5). In
summary, the mode of the responses for the questions
in Part 2 are as follows (Table 4).
As for the open questions of Part 1, the main find-
ings regarding deliberation,rationale and awareness
were:
Deliberation Aspects
All respondents somewhat agree that those in the
same physical location have discussed regardless
of the platform, but some agree their discussion
was moved by the artifacts and they have recorded
the results of the face-to-face discussion on the
platform. The recording is necessary and hope-
fully sufficient to make what happened out of the
platform to become a fact capable of impacting
those who have not participated in that particular
face-to-face discussion.
Table 3: Mode of the answers for the Part 1 closed ques-
tions.
Statement Mode
The format of the argumentation
(Pros/Neutral/Cons) is useful for collective
decision making
7
The format of the argumentation
(Pros/Neutral/Cons) facilitates collective
decision making
8
Voting (Like/Dislike) is useful for
collective decision-making
9
Voting (Like/Dislike) facilitates collective
decision-making
7
I discussed with another workshop
participant regardless of the platform
9
I recorded the result of a face-to-face
discussion on the platform
8
I considered arguments recorded on the
platform to build my own opinion
7
I can easily relate a requirement to a
stakeholder
6
A solution proposal is always related to
the problem that it seeks to solve.
7
It was easy to relate a requirement on the
Ladder to the proposed solution that gave
rise to it.
8
Arguments of other participants influenced
my opinion about the importance of a
problem
8
Arguments of other participants influenced
my opinion about the importance of a
stakeholder I had not considered
9
Arguments of other participants influenced
my opinion about the value of a solution
6
All respondents agree that the artifacts in the plat-
form allowed them to deliberate on the proposed
ideas. They emphasized the structure of the plat-
form as a key aspect to orient, provide sequence
and overview of contributed information, keep-
ing good flexibility and interaction among people.
Besides structure, they mention aspects of flexi-
bility of use, visibility of ideas and of thinking
processes, e.g.: “They facilitate the visualization
of the ideas”, “ideas and thinking stimulation”.
When asked how deliberation and decision-
making could be improved, they pointed out that
consolidation still happens depending on video
conference support and that could be improved
with mechanisms such as: digital mediator, dis-
cussion turns, focus groups.
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Table 4: Mode of the answers for the Part 2 questions.
Question Mode
Did you feel like collaborating with
others?
4
Did you feel represented in the
discussion?
4
Did you feel the presence of others in
the discussion?
4
Did you feel you achieved something
collaborative?
5
Did you feel you were able to
contribute?
5
Did you feel you free to express your
ideas?
4
Was the collaboration spontaneous? 4
Would you use the system to solve
another problem?
4
How easy-difficult was it to use the
platform?
4
Rationale Aspects
Most respondents agree to be easy to relate a re-
quirement to a stakeholder, a solution proposal to
the issue it seeks to solve and in lesser degree to
link a requirement on SF to the proposed solution
that gives rise to it. Regarding the artefacts, ”They
contribute to build a more complete perspective
of what is being discussed, in different dimensions
that may not have been considered.
When asked what other mechanisms could be
more appropriate for making the rationale visi-
ble, they suggest schemas, maps, visual mind
maps”,It will be helpful if there is a graph net-
work can show the relationships between different
solutions”. This last aspect is something an in-
tegration of the QUID tool to the Platform could
offer, visually facilitating a global view of the hu-
man and non-human actors in the solution track-
ing, as the Figures 7 to 10 show us.
Awareness Aspects
According to the respondents, the platform col-
laborates to understand the others point of view,
making visible their arguments in a non biased
way. Visibility of all ideas and their influence on
the others is mentioned by the majority of respon-
dents, e.g. The ideas are all shown on the plat-
form, which are easy to check out. Nevertheless,
they acknowledge there is still room for improve-
ment:”Yes, in some way because we can see pro-
ductions (stakeholders, problems..) of other peo-
ple and their comments. We can see how prob-
lems, ideas and other productions are related as
well. But the artifacts can improve to make aware-
ness even better.
These results, added to the content generated through
the platform during the activity, has shown the use of
the platform was smooth, and the boundary objects
were valuable as mediators along the process that ini-
tiated with a challenge and ended up with requirement
specifications of an elected idea of solution.
5 CONCLUSION
The concept of open design, with origin in the open
source code for software, has been acknowledged as a
significant phenomenon, supported by trends in con-
temporary digital technology and organization. The
nature of open design presupposes the interaction of
diverse people towards a co-creation of the design
product (e.g. a plan, a drawing, a requirements list for
the intended product or service, etc.), and with dif-
ferent motivations (e.g. to influence the final result,
to voluntarily contribute in the process, to get a ben-
efit of it, etc.). The lack of online platform tools to
support interaction and co-construction in open de-
sign has been pointed out by the research community.
In this work we presented the OpenDesign plat-
form, characterizing it by its boundary objects (arte-
facts), participants and design process. The Open-
Design platform draws on artefacts of the Organisa-
tional Semiotics and Participatory Design, to conduct
a socially-aware design. A case study was carried out
with participants in two geographically distant sites
attending a summer school, interacting through the
platform artefacts to discuss a proposed challenge and
to evolve together a design solution.
Data from the design process, generated through
the platform artefacts, were analysed under the lens
of the Actor Network Theory, through a graphical
representation in which both the participants as well
as the boundary objects are part of the same net-
work. This representation allows us to reveal the dif-
ferent paths the participants weave along the interac-
tion through the platform, the tracks they leave while
discussing, proposing ideas, deliberating, interacting
with the others mediated by different boundary ob-
jects. Also, answers to a questionnaire on the use of
the platform show the participants had a perception of
the deliberation, rationale and awareness in the use of
the platform. A very positive feedback on their feel-
ings and usability were also observed.
Further studies involve analysis of suggested en-
hancements in the artefacts, and the integration of the
tool used for providing the visual map of the net-
OpenDesign: Analyzing Deliberation and Rationale in an Exploratory Case Study
521
work of participants and boundary objects in medi-
ation along the (open) design process.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work is financially supported by the
S
˜
ao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) (grants
#2015/24300-9 and #2018/25972-9) and by the Na-
tional Council for Scientific and Technological De-
velopment (CNPq) (grant #306272/2017-2).
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