17 Feb 02 9823911

ThinkCycle: Collaborative Open Source Design
I’ve just discovered ThinkCycle, an academic non-profit initiative, developed and operated by a group of doctoral students at the MIT Media Lab. The concept is really exciting. Actually making use of the database and captured knowledge could pose an interesting challenge as it grows and evolves. There are future plans for a Temporal Design Journal that would create an historical graphic representation of contributions, design rational, peer commentary, alternative paths and more.

As described by the team:
“The Internet allows us to link millions of people worldwide and solve computationally intensive problems by using thousands of computers (e.g., distributed.net or SETI@home). Could one develop an analogous method of using the creative thinkcycles of people everywhere to work on global design challenges? ThinkCycle is an academic, non-profit initiative engaged in supporting distributed collaboration towards design challenges among underserved communities and the environment. ThinkCycle seeks to create a culture of open-source design innovation, with ongoing collaboration among individuals, communities and organizations around the world.”

See the following paper for more information:
ThinkCycle: Sharing Distributed Design Knowledge for Open Collaborative Design
by Nitin Sawhney, Saul Griffith, Yael Maguire and Timothy Prestero� : MIT Media Laboratory and MIT Ocean Engineering

Abstract: In this paper, we propose an Open Collaborative Design approach for distributed engineering design. ThinkCycle is a student-led MIT initiative to create a culture of collaborative design innovation among distributed communities in critical problem domains. As part of the initiative we have developed a means for distributed participants to capture ongoing challenges, evolving design solutions, rationale, peer reviews and intellectual contributions within a searchable and cross-referenced online platform.

Tags: User Experience