Wearable Open Design

There are good arguments as to why wearables are closely aligned with the growing movement of open design practices. To being with, Johanna Blakley has argued that fashion is predicated on “free culture”, i.e. that the history of fashion points to borrowing, remixing, and re-inventing known patterns and methods. Other designers, such as Otto von Busch in his PhD dissertation Fashion-able, have looked at hacking culture as a way of creating an entry-point into the often closed commercial system of the world of fashion. Open design concepts stem from two main impetus – a) the desire to make things “open” and commercially free and b) the need for multiple inputs from many participants to develop complex systems (i.e. a software). It could be argued that open design will become a facet of all technological production and dissemination as the added value of multiple participants becomes undeniable. Two mainstream examples: Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has announced that the site is rethinking its design so attract less tech-experienced users, and has initiated an “adopt a user” program to expand and diversify users; the Arduino platform – which is at its base a reconfiguration and popularisation of existing hardware is also open sourced. It turns out the future is wide open!