People-centred desktop design and manufacture: a review of web enabled open source tools for localised community focused inclusive design

Design innovation no longer occurs within the 'silos of knowledge' located in individual disciplinary domains. With the developing social web, disciplinary boundaries are shifting, allowing for the establishment of open source co-creative communities that solve design problems at the local level. This paper argues that such changes may enhance inclusive design innovation through web facilitated communal approaches to design and innovation that is 'bottom up' rather than 'top down'. In this approach local communities have access to global tools, web based technologies and timely access to lead users facilitating innovative and localised design approaches. To show how this can be accomplished, this paper offers a review of the literature and published designs across a range of areas. The aim is to show how innovation occurs through web enabled localised design approaches and techniques that avoid the limitations and often, exclusionary approaches of traditional practices. It does this by showing how, digitally connected community based design allows for an inclusive, flexible, yet individualised approach to meeting specialised needs of local populations on a global scale. The paper concludes by exploring the future possibilities of impending approaches to people-centred interdisciplinary, practice based, collaborations by highlighting innovative methods and exemplary case studies.