Tools for Collaboration on Open Design

We are using a collection of free and open tools to create content for The Project, including the wiki, the main site, the social network, the Google Group, our Google Code page for the Myopen Project, our http://www.instructables.com/group/openprosthetics/ [Instructables page], and probably a couple more we've abandoned. It’s not perfect. We've made appeals before "for someone to help us build a fantastic Sourceforge-type project management and collaboration tool with social networking capability, as well as the next generation of collaborative open source CAD tools to drive this and other open design projects," but there are limits to what volunteers can do.

The meta issue here is how to conduct collaboration on open physical design and research in general for any underserved market. Open Prosthetics is a prototype attempt at addressing this core mission of our non-profit, the Shared Design Alliance. Success in effectively engaging more and a larger variety of stakeholders would increase the impact of so many of the other things we're trying to do. In order for the overall mission to succeed, and for us to facilitate efforts similar to those of Open Prosthetics on behalf of some other underserved market, we'll need to have an integrated package of tools that solves as many of our problems as possible, with one-stop project creation. Content is certainly applicable to other problems, and we would also like to easily allow cross-pollination among projects. because This cross-pollination is perhaps the greatest potential advantage of the sharing of physical designs. This talk by David Rowe points out several advantages of using open hardware in product development—imagine if there were an efficient way for people to make these connections between hardware projects.

A complete toolbox would include many of the things already in the Sourceforge tools, but some of which are not. We've settled on the wiki as a great tool for organizing and allowing user-contribution of content. Lacking from the wikispot site we use is the capability to share files, and any kind of version control. These capabilities are present at Google Code and [sourceforge.net/ Source Forge], but are mainly focused toward software, and not binary picture or CAD files. Because many CAD formats are encrypted, they don't support many of the cooler version control features, such as merging changes. This may not be a problem—concurrent editing is not a real issue with our small numbers of participants—but is one that could be solved with an open source CAD package.

We have used Google Groups to run our list serv, but unfortunately this site has been hacked several times and our users spammed with porn. Not optimal. Also, the Groups tools don't allow users to easily edit each other's content, and the organization is basically linear, and focused towards broadcasting messages whenever somebody makes a post. Sourceforge's mail tools might actually allow this functionality as well.

While I enjoy the wiki for adding and organizing content (and I'm like the only one), the site that we have that is most successful in many ways is the ning site. One of the most appealing things that we have done seems to be to allow people to connect with each other. It's just a shame that this site doesn't allow us to do some of the other things we'd like. As I mentioned, Google Friend Connect seems like a good solution to adding cross-portal social net capability to any web page, but we haven't heard back about our application yet.

The original site was created with textpattern blogging software, and is run off of our own server. It has proved not entirely adequate to what we're trying to do either, although we kludged our way through.

So—I think that what we need to do is create a specification for our ideal tool for facilitating the sharing and collaboration on physical designs, and from there maybe we could get some help sketching out the framework for an open source project to solve as many of the problems as we can. We might get some Summer of Code help if we have a functioning project started, but we're a ways from that.

It's most certainly worth looking at existing ways to solve these problems, and Instructables has goals like ours and one solution, there is Sourceforge, all the existing tools we've mentioned, Django-based tools, and probably many more.

Add features here, and vote for them. In fact, a voting tool for implementing a W L Gore type system of assigning value to different ideas, pages, or people would be fantastic addition. It's often surprising how frequently Half-Bakery figures in searches for prior art.

People seem to like using whatever social net they use, and it would be convenient if they were integrated through the Open Social API or some such mechanism, like Open ID.

Broadcasting messages to the entire group or a subset is likely a desirable feature, albeit old-fashioned.

Sharing physical designs involves the sharing of a wide variety of files, including pictures, sketches and drawings, and CAD models. Version control issues are different than with computer code, because CAD files are usually encrypted, and the number and relationship of files is different. Simply being able to check out, edit and check files back in would be great. Easily linking to files related to a specific idea would alo be good.

Being able to collaboratively sketch for brainstorming would be nice, as well as archiving the results. Microsoft netmeeting used to allow this, and Scriblink offers the same sort of whiteboard capability.

Having sub-projects with their own front pages, managers' blogs, and task assignment and tracking would be helpful. Given our small numbers of participants, dealing with hoards of volunteers is a problem we (unfortunately) haven't had to deal with. Here is a good overview of project management tools.

How great would it be to click a single link and get a ranking of shopping carts from parts suppliers for all of the stock parts for X number of a design from places like McMaster? Maybe with an option to order all of the parts or their equivalents from different suppliers sorted by price with shipping included? An API for vendors to suggest equivalent parts and to provide access to their inventories? Octopart is actually a step in the right direction for electronic components. McMaster Carr has a pretty good web interface, although

This is I think the most successful way that we have of organizing information. Integrating it with other features, such as file sharing, commenting, social net, etc., is the real challenge.

User feedback is very important to designing any product. An additional benefit to this is that survey tools can help with compliance with some regulatory issues. The Amputee Preference Census we're working on uses [Survey Gizmo] as a tool for administering and reporting the results of the surveys. They additionally provide HIPAA certification, such that a survey could be used for record-keeping and complaint tracking, as required by regulation. It may be that these last portions are best left to commercial entities that wish to profit from the manufacture of the devices.

There's already stub for a page on the CAD problem, which would be great, but is likely a much more challenging problem that is a separate issue. That said, as Mako Hill pointed out to us, perhaps an open source CAD program could make some headway if it offered a collaborative aspect in the same way that Google Docs does, causing users to overlook its limitations. I would call the availability of a free and open CAD package a near second to the problem of overall project management, organization and communication between participants.