RSA Design & Society. Finding the truth in systems:in praise of design-hacking by Scott Burnham. In 1971Californian John Draper received a phone call from a friend,informing him of a fascinating discovery. A toy whistlepackaged in boxes of Captain Crunch cereal could, whenblown, emit a perfect 2600 hertz pitch. The relevance of thiswas lost on Draper until his friend explained that this wasthe exact frequency required to trick the phone exchangeinto thinking that the phone emitting this tone was anoperator, thus enabling the person tomake calls anywherein the world free of charge. All you needed to do was diala certain number and blow the whistle into themouthpieceof the phone, and seconds later communicating withthe rest of the world for free was literally at your fingertips.The world’s phone networks had just been hacked.

Several months after learning of the telephonefrequency hack, Draper went on to build ‘blue boxes’,small devices that mimickedmultiple phone frequenciesto expand the reach and functionality of the phone systemhack. At the height of his infamous ‘phone phreaking’streak, as it was known, Esquiremagazine ran an articlefeaturing his exploits.1

A university student named SteveWozniak read thearticle, and contacted Draper, convincing him to cometoWozniak’s dorm room to teach him and a friendmoreabout blue boxes. Draper tutored them on the techniquesto create the devices and alter existing technologies tohack the phone system.Wozniak credits this phase asbeing instrumental in his career of technology innovation,as did his friend who joined him in the tutoring sessions,Steve Jobs. Fuelled and funded by creating and sellingthe phone hacking blue boxes, Wozniak and Jobs started

ForewordEarlier this year we launched a new account of designfor the rsa: You knowmore than you think you do:design as resourcefulness and self-reliance. It describedthe big gap that industrial progress andModernismopened up between the professional provision ofdesign and our common competence and readinessto see and solve the problems around us. Our two-foldcontention is that we need a new accommodationbetween professional designers and everyone else;and that design is uniquely able tomake everyone– people and communities –more resourceful.

This is not an anti-professional stance; merelyan acknowledgement that there is more designopportunity in the world – a greater volume and varietyof problems to be solved – than will ever be addressedby professional designers alone. Furthermore sincemost individuals are not in a position to pay for theservices of a designer, they would do well to acquiresome of the habits, insights and processes thatdesigners use.

The word “hacking”, which originally denotedbrazen trespasses into closed systems of electroniccommunication, increasingly invokes a broader rangeof stunts and sabotages of security and convention.It has also entered the argot of design criticism.The stereotypical designer – passionately authentic,famously unbending and always in black – is newlyvulnerable to the interference of amateurs. Thehard-won tryst between designer, manufacturer andintellectual property rights, likewise, has few defencesagainst the open-source spirit and an internet whereinno secrets are hid. The brave ones embrace it. Whilecheerful design jam-sessions of professional andamateur go on in cities and design festivals all over thedeveloped world, nothing changes in the favelas andrural villages where necessity has always been themother of invention.

Hacking is the interference in, or corruptionof, the authorship of designers andmanufacturers,usually by amateurs. It happens right there in thespace between the professional and the ordinarycitizen that the rsa is interested in. So we asked ScottBurnham: is design-hackingmerely an introvertedchapter in the history of design, or does it reveal civicingenuity and resourcefulness that a century and a halfof industrially-fed consumerism havemasked? Hisanswer persuasively describes the evolution of hackingfrom the digital to the analogue world and thence,with pregnant illustration, into the civic realm ofstreets andmunicipal regulations.

Meanwhile here’s my own thought: ourcompetence inmaking things as individuals, andinmanufacturing as a nation, is greatly reducedand unlikely to be restored soon. Most of us don’tmake anythingmore complex than an apple pie fromscratch, from raw components, and lack, therefore,the visceral sense of design that our pre-industrialand wartime forebearsmust have had. Is hackingthe newmaking (along with its close cousin, repair)?In the waning of common hand-craft, might wesettle for hacking instead?

Emily CampbellDirector of Design, rsaOctober 2009

3 Finding the truth in systems: in praise of design-hacking

a small company called Apple Computers and set up shop in a garageto start work on their next ‘box’ – one that would have far more impacton the world – the personal computer.

If you trace the iPhone, the iPod, theMac and the first personalcomputer back to their source, you’ll find a hacker.

In any exploration of hacking, there is first a need to clarify theterm. The word ‘hacker’ has a certain infamy in contemporary culture,bearing responsibility for security breaches and online intrusions.As Eric Raymond writes in his textHow to Become aHacker, clarificationis important.2 The practitioners representing the darker side of theterm, says Raymond, “loudly call themselves hackers, but aren’t…Real hackers call these people ‘crackers’ and want nothing to do withthem…Being able to break security doesn’t make you a hacker anymore than hotwiring carsmakes you an automotive engineer.”In short: “hackers build things, crackers break them.”3

But hacking is really just today’s name for the personal creativespirit that has always underpinned human ingenuity. The farmerreworking a piece of machinery to perform a different function thanit was originally designed for, or the housewife cutting the bottom ofa plastic bottle tomake it into a scoop: hacking is our response whenthe resources at hand come up short.

It is only recently that the word has emerged as a collective termfor a personal response to, and triumph over, the limitations of ourphysical world. The term itself was coined by the hobbyists who broughtcomputers out of their academic origins and in the process determinedthat the existing tools and systems weren’t sufficient for their needs,so set about tomake the systemsmore interesting and useful.

Hacking and technological innovation have a long andmutuallybeneficial cat-and-mouse history. The first software companies gavecomputer users the freedom to install various components and tocustomise the settings; but if you wanted to go deeper into the systemto alter the basic functions and foundation of the software or thesystem, you hit a wall. Some went about finding access points thatwould allow entry to the core of the system and enable alternativefunctions to be programmed in. Others set about to build ‘open source’systems to allow full transparency and access to the system. The Linuxoperative system, the Apache web server (which runs themajorityof the world’s websites), the Firefox browser and numerous otherapplications are the results of the open sourcemovement, bornof the hacker’s desire for access and permission.

As the open sourcemovement wove innovation and opennessinto the fabric of the internet, the rapid growth of home computing andpersonal softwaremade it possible tomanipulate existing songs, videos,images and even 3d design schematics with ease. When the tools whichwere once the exclusive domain of professionals were put in the handsofmillions of individual users and consumers, every tweak of a song ormanipulation of a photograph planted the ability to alter the aestheticsof the world a bit deeper.

1. EsquireMagazine, October 19712.How to be aHacker by Eric Ray-

mond, See www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

3. www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

4 Finding the truth in systems: in praise of design-hacking

While desktop applications andWeb 2.0 services were givingus unparalleledmeans tomodify and differentiate our digital world,our physical or analogue world of products and services was reachinga saturation point of sameness, as retail chains, big box stores andglobalised brands proliferated.

Companies and retailers responded bymaking it easier forconsumers to customise their products at the point of purchase,but within set limitations. Henry Ford joked that people could haveany colour car they liked, as long as it was black. The joke has lastedwell, as retailers continue to boast of the customers’ ability to tailorproducts to their needs – as long as their desires are among aspecific set of options.

It is within this climate that hacking has evolved from the softwareto the hardware of our lives.Makemagazine, a leading proponentof diy technology and hackingmethodologies gives the consumera simple test to gauge the actual degree to which they are in control:“If you can’t open it, you don’t own it.”4

If retail andmanufacturing’s response to commercial samenessis to offer a limited range of customisation choices, then hackingis the individual’s response: circumventing those limitations andcreating new options on one’s own terms.When this hacking ethosis applied to our relationship with design, it has amore fundamentalcharge – a return to design as a direct response to real problemsfaced by real people.

In 1969 Victor Papanek argued that the professionalisationof design had separated it from the “real world”.5 Design cannotbe separated from everyday life, he wrote, and by elevating its trainedpractitioners as professionals from those who are not so trained(amateurs), design begins to reference only itself, and fails toaddress real problems faced by real people. In this process of profes-sionalisation, trial-and-error creativity has been lost. Hacking putsit back into the equation.

Hacking is about overcoming the limitations of an existing object,service or systemwhich was set for one purpose, and finding an accesspoint, intellectually or physically, where its original function can beexpanded, altered, or improved to serve a new purpose or solve aproblem. Hacking is not about aesthetics asmuch as purpose – theultimate union of form and function.

“Hackers do what they do…”, says researcher Julian Bleecker of theNear Future Laboratory, “not necessarily because they are designingsomething in the sense of disciplined design. They aremaking a thing– and often that thing doesn’t look finished, which is almost part of thehacking sensibility… Bringing hacking to design can be unstable, butwhat hacking practices can teach are important – rapid construction,an appreciation and understanding of things that go below the surfacefeatures and bringing functionality into the design process.”6

Increased activity surrounding design and hacking has spawned asmall industry of websites and publications engaging with this growing

4. make: Owner’s Manual by“Mister Jalopy” See www.makezine.com/04/ownyourown/

5. Papanek, Victor (1971).Designfor the RealWorld: Human Ecologyand Social Change, New York,Pantheon Books. isbn 0-394-47036-2.

6. Interview via Email, 28 July 2009

5 Finding the truth in systems: in praise of design-hacking

trend. Readymademagazine illustrates the craft and ingenuity of theindividual as he or she goes about various home improvements usingre-used and re-purposedmaterial; while Instructables.org has becomethe de-facto repository for instructions, videos and advice on how tohack almost anything one encounters in daily life.Makemagazinehas taken the hacker’s creed as a call to action. Its manifesto, “TheMaker’s Bill of Rights”, calls onmanufacturers to follow such hackableprinciples as “if it snaps shut, it shall snap open”, and “screws arebetter than glues”.4

One of themost iconic projects to emerge from hacking’s infusioninto the world of design is the global ikea Hacker initiative. ikea Hackeris an unofficial network of design hackers who share a passion forreworking ikea products on their own terms and creating designsikea never planned. Assembling the flat-packed furniture of one of theworld’s most ubiquitous contemporary design brands and interpretingthe language-neutral instructions are a rite of passage of any newapartment dweller or university student. Butwhat if, comes the ikeaHacker project, you assembled the furniture in a different way thanikea tells you?

This simple question has birthed thousands of new creationsfrom ikea’s set range of products. A Fjus bookshelf is assembled‘alternatively’ from the instructions tomake a pet’s feeding andwatering station. Kitchen units are re-assembled to become garageworkshop stations. Salad tongs are fastened together to become lightfixtures, and desks become children’s playpens. Often the hackers willtake the time to document the steps needed to imitate their hacks andmake them available online, enabling an entire alternative productline to run parallel to the one in the catalogue.

ikea Hacker has become something of a universal illustrationof the interplay between hacking and design – ignore the issuedinstructions and devise your own. As well as the personal pleasureof making a unique or idiosyncratic product, there is an intellectualchallenge in thoroughly understanding the intended rules of thedesigned object, then creating your own version according to your ownrules. Phone hacker Draper shared this motivation. Though vilifiedby themedia as theman who almost brought down America’s phonesystem in the 1970s, that was never the intention of his hacks. Forhim, “it was about taking the system apart, tomake the thing better.Tomake it do better things. Cooler things.”7

Of course, both the pleasure derived from subverting ikea’sinstructions and the desire for a system to do ‘cooler things’ comefrom a fairly privileged perspective. Formost of the world, things whichfunction in ‘cooler’ ways are a dream several steps beyond immediatenecessity. In developing nations in particular, function and necessityare the driving principles, usually corresponding to a limited poolof resources andmaterials to work with.

Themobile phone has become the Swiss Army knife of thedeveloping world, an essential tool for conducting almost any form

7. Discovery Channel Documen-tary, “The History of Hacking”.www.video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5464925144369700635#

6 Finding the truth in systems: in praise of design-hacking

of business. Yet in emergingmarkets and nations, the stock supplyof phones are of amuch lower functionality than the users require.In response, a parallel industry of informal local ‘repair’ shops hasemerged to hack upgraded functions and services into the availablephones. The definition of repair is extended from fixing somethingthat is broken, to repairing its limitations.

Nokia’s Jan Chipchase has spent years researchingmobile phoneuse in cities throughout China, Africa, and India looking at the ways inwhich people there use andmodify their mobile phones beyond theiroriginal specification. Far outside the reach of official service centresand sales offices, Chipchase encountersmobile phonemarkets that“stretch across numbers of streets and shopping arcades and includeshundreds of small shops and stalls”.

With necessity as the driver, the repair culture hasmorphed intoa culture of ‘street hacks’, repairing not what is broken, but what thephone lacks. Ancient phones that would have been discarded yearsago bymost in theWest leave the repair shops with dual sim card slotssoldered into switch networks at will, or a reworked handset with newkeys for increased functionality or language accommodation.

Rather than going after the street hackers with lawyers or sendingin the police with bin bags, Nokia’s response to the street hacks andrepair cultures has been exceptional: learn from them. Chipchase’syears of research in some of themost remote cities, slums and favelasbears witness to this strategy. Of greater testimony is the fact thatNokia developed a concept phone in 2008, the ‘Remade’, using recycledmaterials and based on the research and inspiration gained fromstreet-level innovation and developing world users.

“What can we learn from informal repair cultures?” asks Chipchase.“Given the benefit to ‘bottom of the pyramid’ consumers, are thereelements of the repair ecosystem that can be exported to other cultures?Can the same skills be applied to other parts of the value chain? Giventhe range of resources and skills available, what would it take to turncultures of repair into cultures of innovation?”9

In a recent ted Talk, Chipchase summed up his research on streetrepair and hack culture in amessage to the design world: “if you’resmart, you’ll be observing street innovation and applying this to informand infuse what and how you design.”10

Of equal utilitarian value to themobile phone in developingregions is the bicycle. A fundamental tool for transportation, commerce,industry, and even energy production, the bicycle has its own equallydiverse history of hacks andmodifications. Decades of hacking andmodifications to the bicycle are embedded in that staple ofWesternleisure and sporting culture, themountain bike.

In the 1960s and 70s, weekend cyclists began venturing off thepaved roadways on the thin frames and tyres of their road bikes,quickly finding they were of little use and short lifespan off-road. Slowlyand steadily over the years, in garages and backyards, bicycle frameswere reconfigured and re-welded, supports added, tyres enlarged and

“What sets these locationsapart from cities inmore‘emerged’ markets? Asidefrom the scale of what’s onsale there is a thrivingmarketfor device repair servicesranging from swapping outcomponents to re-solderingcircuit boards to re-flashingphones in a language of yourchoice. Repairs are oftencarried out with littlemore than a screwdriver,a toothbrush (for cleaningcontact points) the rightknowledge and a flat surfaceto work on. Repair manuals(which appear to be reverseengineered) are available,written in Hindi, Englishand Chinese and can evenbe subscribed to, but there islittle evidence of them beingactively used. Insteadmanyof the repairers rely oninformal social networks toshare knowledge on commonfaults, and repair techniques.It’s often easier to peer over theshoulder of a neighbour thanopen themanual itself… Theinformal repair services thatare offered are quite simplydriven by necessity.” 8

7 Finding the truth in systems: in praise of design-hacking

handlebars reshaped, until in the 1980s the current hearty butcommercial mountain bike emerged.

The difference emerges again between the ‘leisure’ hacks of thedevelopedWest, and themore direct improvisations of the developingworld. Street vendors in India, for example, have tweaked and altered thebicycle into a seemingly infinite number of variations that have little to dowith sport, allowing them to turn a standard bicycle into amulti-functionalcommercial unit. Helium tanks are welded to the backs of bicyclescarrying balloons and party favours; grills are attached tomobile foodvendor bikes; racks, shelves and platforms are welded onto structuresof leather goods dealers, pot vendors – the list is long and growing.

As with Nokia‘s embrace of the street phone-hacking sector, thestreet hacks on Indian bicycles are stimulating design projects in thedeveloped world. In 2008, New Delhi designer Gunjan Gupta launchedthe ‘cyclerecyclecycle’ design project as part of Urban Play in Amsterdamat the Experimenta design biennale. Gupta installed a version of anIndian bicycle repair shop on the street in Amsterdam, inviting thebicycle-obsessed Dutch tomodify their own bikes in themanner ofIndia’s utilitarian street vendors.

Africa also has a long history of usingmodified bicycles for tradeand commerce with a range of ingenuity on par with India. A new breedof African hackers and innovators are digging evenmore deeply intothe functionality of the bicycle, gaining inspiration from its rudimentarymechanics for a range of uses beyond the simple transportation function.In Kenya amobile phone charging station powered by the rotationof the tyres as it travels from village to village was launched this year.11

In Tanzania, Bernard Kiwia created a “pedal powered hacksaw for thedisabled”, a water pump for his village and a drill press by using thepeddlemechanisms of bicycles.12

ForWilliam Kamkwamba, a 14 year-old farmer inMalawi, the bicycleserved as an inspiring baseline design for a project to benefit his entirevillage. During a drought in 2001, Kamkwamba’s family hit hard times,and he spent his idle time in the local library, where he came across abook on windmills and wind energy. With nothing but the pictures in thebook to guide him, he then visited a local scrap yard to sourcematerialsthat would roughly serve the function of the windmills parts – a tractorfan, shock absorber, pvc piping, and other components.

Kamkwamba set about assembling the parts with the pictures ofadvanced wind turbines as a guide, and at the centre of the home-madewind generator was a bicycle, providing the frame of themachine andan efficient power transfer mechanism – the pedals, chain, and rearwheel of the bike.

Hackingmethodologies have been particularly useful in developingnations for increasing the functionality of mobile phones and deployingthe bicycle to serve other needs. They are equally useful in addressingone of themightiest andmost impenetrable systems inWestern cultureas well – the interlinked system ofmunicipal regulations and townplanning processes.

8. Jan Chipchase, “Culturesof Repair, innovation” www.janchip-chase.com/repaircultures

9. www.janchipchase.com/blog/archives/unitedstates/monterey/

10. www.bbc.co.uk/news/1/hi/world/africa/8166196.stm

11. www.afrigadget.com/2009/08/15/a-pedal-powered-hacksaw-for-the-disabled/

12. Ibid.

8 Finding the truth in systems: in praise of design-hacking

Inmany ways, the city itself is emblematic of the tension betweendictated use and the resourcefulness of the hacker. The physicallandscape of the city is deliberately designed to be a solid, non-malleable terrain of order and structure. Buildings, pavements, bridgesand walls shape ourmovement and define our limitations. But as withany structured system, its limitations can become catalysts for creativity.Enter skateboarders, freewheel bikers, parkour/freerunners, urbanclimbers and explorers. These are the frontline of urban hackers,viewing the city as a literal playground. Stair railings are now ramps.Walls are balancing beams. Rooftops are launching platforms. Thisbrand of hacker creates an infinite amount of space from the finiteconfines of the city. They create new paths of travel, inventing newpossibilities and layering new dimensions on the established structureof the city. The extension of a hackingmentality at work in themodernurban landscape is endless – graffiti artists using the surfaces of thecity as a canvas andmessage board, street vendors viewing the heavilytrafficked and tourist areas of the city asmakeshift commercial zones.

Hacking has now gone beyond these terrain trespasses to beginaddressing the shortcomings of the city’s systems and processes.There are obvious reasons for the rules and regulations at work in thecity, but often they focusmore on prohibition than permission; onwhat you can’t rather than what you can do in and to shared spaces andservices. To invoke Henry Ford again, citizens can engage with publicservices any way they like – within the set list of rules.

A number of individuals and organisations have taken it uponthemselves to engage in what could be called civic hacks: playingwithin the framework of the city’s systems, but altering them at theuser level to perform different functions.

In the centre of Seville, Spanish architect Santiago Cirugedawanted to build a playground for the neighbourhood children.In 1997 he applied for permission and was denied. He then appliedfor permission to install a skip in front of his house on the pretextof clearing some construction debris. The skip was approved. Hethen set about installing a see-saw inside the skip for the childrento play on.13

In San Francisco, the Rebar collective is a group of four friendsfrustrated by the lack of green space in the city. They had petitionedthemayor’s office with their concerns, yet received no response.So one afternoon in November 2005 they gathered some turf, a benchand some trees, pooled together several handfuls of quarters, andhacked the city’s parking system to create a temporary park in apublic parking space.

Their park(ing) project is commemorated annually by enthusiastsworldwide. On 18 September each year an informal network of publicspace hackers hit the streets of their cities armed with the ingredientsfor a diy public park and plenty of change for the parkingmeters.

Rebar are also notable for their work re-purposing San Francisco’scurious breed of ‘popos’ – Privately Owned Public Spaces. These spaces

13. www.recetasurbanas.net/index.php?idioma=ENG&ID=0002

9 Finding the truth in systems: in praise of design-hacking

1. Hong Kongmobile phonerepair station. Photograph byScott Burnham, 2009

1

10 Finding the truth in systems: in praise of design-hacking

2. onbewoond eiland(uninhabited island)by Sander van Bussel, ikea Hacker

3. flammaby Helmut Smits, ikea Hacker

4. gyneaby Sander van Bussel, ikea Hacker

Photography by Leo Veger, 2007courtesy of Platform21

2

4

3

11 Finding the truth in systems: in praise of design-hacking

5. Rebar park(ing)San Francisco, ca, 2005

6.William KamkwambawithWindmill, Masitala, MalawiPhotograph by TomRielly, 2007

5

6

12 Finding the truth in systems: in praise of design-hacking

7. Dispatchwork (workshop)in Amsterdam by Jan Vormann,part of Platform21 = RepairingPhotography by Johannes Abeling,courtesy of Platform21

7

13 Finding the truth in systems: in praise of design-hacking

– courtyards, plazas, rooftop gardens, and corporate atriums –are deemed to be public areas at the planning stage of the property’sdevelopment, but are usually so deeply hidden within corporateoffices or otherwise private buildings that they deter public use.

Rebar researched “the explicit and unspoken rules” of thesespaces within the city ordinances and bylaws, and proceeded toprogram and advertise a series of public community activities in theprivate-public spaces, ranging frommeditation classes tomid-daynapping lounges. When challenged by security guards they had proofthat what they were doing was entirely permissible. Later, the cityof San Francisco enlisted Rebar to create an official map of all thespaces to promote their public use.

Further up theWest coast of the United States, City Repair inPortland, Oregon wanted to turn the intersection of a residentialneighbourhood into a place for people, not just cars. When it lookedunlikely they could get permission from the city, they got a permit fora block party and built tea stands, book trade stations, and communityinformation points all around the intersection. The spirit spreadquickly, and people began giving over pieces of their private propertyto host some of the elements of the larger party. Once the block partyended, the parting crowds revealed a series of temporary facilities forservices the area had been asking for.

The city of Portland instinctively declared the structures illegal,until it was pointed out that through these hacks the city had actuallyprogressed towards its own ‘liveability goals’ without spending anypublic funds. The city acquiesced. In time it granted an ordinancefor the structures to remain, and later to be improved; and for similarstructures to be formally built in other areas of the city. The residents’urban planning hack resulted in the improvement of over a dozenneighborhoods in the city using the ‘block party’ template.

Urban hacks – from brazen temporary space-grabbing to guerillaperformances of music and drama and art installations – inspire a newbreed of civic engagement and take the sense of hacking far from itselectronic origins.

In its essence, hacking exploits the tensions and barriersbetween objects, systems and people. Whatmight happen when thosetensions are addressed directly, and the barriers deliberately opened?

At an industry level, it is difficult to find a company that has beenmore triumphant in both bottom line benefits and brand successby opening up its product than lego. Thismight seem an obviousphilosophy for a company whose product is literally the buildingblocks for other people’s creativity, but the company’s own historyof ‘hackability’ is complex.

When lego began to expand its product line into pre-designedkits for specific objects, they instantly found that the kits were beingcombined with others, augmented, altered and re-designed; andinstructions on how to do so being shared among enthusiast groups.It found itself with a vastly expanding and passionate user base that

“Feeding themeter of aparking space enables oneto rent precious downtownreal estate, typically on a1/2 hour to 2 hour basis.What is the range of possibleoccupancy activities for thisshort-term lease? park(ing)is an investigation intoreprogramming a typical unitof private vehicular space byleasing ametered parking spotfor public recreational activity.

We identified a site inan area of downtown SanFrancisco that is underservedby public outdoor space andis in an ideal, sunny locationbetween the hours of noonand 2pmThere we installed asmall, temporary public parkthat provided nature, seating,and shade.

Our goal was to transforma parking spot into a park(ing)space, thereby temporarilyexpanding the public realmand improving the quality ofurban human habitat, at leastuntil themeter ran out. By ourcalculations, we provided anadditional 24,000 square-foot-minutes of public open spacethatWednesday afternoon.” 14

14. http://www.rebargroup.org/projects/parking/

14 Finding the truth in systems: in praise of design-hacking

was taking lego design into its own hands and has since defined thecompany’s outlook. Shortly after it released a stand-alone applicationto allow customers to create lego kits specific to their own designs,the application itself was hacked by its users.

Owing largely to the embrace of an open designmentality, lego hackshave become creative legend. Outside the plethora of miniaturemoviescenes andmechanisms in homes around the world, the Dutch artist JanVormann uses the bricks to repair broken bits of buildings, and bbc TopGear presenter JamesMay created an entire life-size house usingmillionsof the bricks, complete with bed and functioning bathroom.

The potential of adopting a lego-style attitude is not lost on othermanufacturers who have seen their own products beingmanipulated inunexpected ways. “We know about it,” said an ikea Executive when askedabout ikea Hacker, “but we also realise that we’re having our own ‘legomoment’, so we’re just watching and enjoying”.

As companies allow their customers to have amore direct involvementin the end design of their products, there is an opportunity to re-imagemanufacturing itself along hacking principles. To harness the potentialof an open designmentality, designers andmanufacturers should aimbeyond simply being observers of the hacking to stimulating it as amovetowards a newmodel for design and production.

There is a powerful economic and social argument to bemade foropening the design andmanufacturing process to hackingmethodologies.Whether a sympton of a growing subculture or of resourcefulness in theface of a global recession, ‘Hacklabs’ are appearing in increasing numbersin Europe and the United States. Dedicated to “exchanging knowledge,designing worlds, experimenting with gizmos and devices”16, Hacklabsare publicly-run workshops that provide space, tools and tutoring forpeople to re-purpose and re-appropriate things from their daily lives.Participants are flocking to Brooklyn’s nyc Resistor Lab, London’s MediaHacklab andMilan’s loa Hacklab to learn how to take things apart,how they work, and how to put them back together again, differentlyand to serve another purpose.

Hacklabs and the proliferation of online instructions formodifyingand re-purposing existing objects could be interpreted as anotherindicator that consumerism and globalism have left us jaded withcommercial design. ‘Closed’ products imply that the consumers’ needshave been decided by the professionals: we are being told what the productswe buy are for rather being able tomake themwhat we want them to be.In rebuttal, hacking is coming intomainstream parlance as a way tore-purpose existing designs and objects in waysmore precisely tailoredto the user’s needs and desires.

What if the design andmanufacturing industry responded to this andimplemented hacking as part of themanufacturing process of a product?

For themaker andmanufacturer, the notion of releasing a productwhich allows itself to be altered and re-purposed by the consumerturns one product into the potential of multiple products in the eyesof the end user.

15. “Hacking’s a snap inLegoland”, cnet www.news.cnet.com/Hackings-a-snap-in-Legoland/2100-1046_3-5865751.html

16. See www.hacklabs.org/en

“When lego executivesrecently discovered thatadult fans of the iconic plasticbricks had hacked one of thecompany’s new developmenttools for digital designers,they did a surprising thing:They cheered.

Unlike executives at somany corporations, whowouldbe loath to let their customersanywhere near the innerworkings of their softwaretools, the lego honchos sawan opportunity to lean onthe collective thinking ofan Internet community toimprove their own productwhile bolstering relationswith committed customers.

All it took was beingopen-minded enough tosee that their biggest fansweren’t trying to rip them off;they were trying to improvelego’s products in a way that,just maybe, the company’s owndesigners hadn’t thought of.”15

15 Finding the truth in systems: in praise of design-hacking

So let us imagine going one step back from the release of thefinished product and distributing the product at the design stageto small manufacturing facilities around the world, to localrequirements and using local materials and labour.

Distributed production has been a longtime strategy for manycompanies in order to reduce shipping and other costs. By alsoemploying distributed design and encouraging localised hacks ofthe source product, the local makers andmanufacturers becomethemiddle practitioners in the life of the product. Locally availablematerials reduce the carbon footprint of the final product. At the sametime a local relationship is formed for future repairs or service. Thedesignmay be adjusted for local needs, and/or climate and culturalvariations which are not possible to address at a global scale.

This process of ‘hackufacturing’ is a necessary evolution in theface of globalised commerce and design. The intellectual propertyof the source design remains with the designer, while the alterationand realisation of the final product anchors it in the resourcesand realities of the local manufacturer.

The street-level mobile phone repair shops do this exceedinglywell in Asia and Africa, where globally produced phones are hacked toaddress local needs in ways that could never be addressed at the globallevel. As Nokia does, the rest of the world’s makers andmanufacturersshould look at these hubs of hacker activity not as illegal outposts,but as r&d labs for newmethods of design and production.

Whether provoked by basic necessity or advanced consumer desire,hacking is a response to design falling short, with the hacker steppingin to redress the gap between designer and the real world.

Almost 40 years on since he predicted it, there is little evidencethat Papanek’s warning about professional design distancing itselffrom the real world has not become true. An increasingly self-referentialscene and a global industry of design festivals and conferencesmoveslargely the same audience from one to the next. “Design Art” hasmovedthe discipline further into galleries and away from problem-solving.The distance is growing between design and our needs, as is the abilityfor the proverbial man on the street to engage in a dialogue aboutdesign and his daily life.

This is not the case when you ask someone about their relationshipwithmusic, film, books, television, or even the attractiveness of theirlocal park. Design is perceived as elevated from the daily realities andenvironments of most people, although its effects aremore integralthan almost any other creative discipline.

The way we interact with design differs significantly from howour consumption and relationship with other creative disciplines hasevolved. The radio is awash with remixes and covers of classic songs;television and cinema offers endless adaptations and interpretationsof literary works; and YouTube presents a seemingly endless stream ofvideo remixes, mashups and alternative edits to enrich with the remixculture of the internet. The barrier between themedium and the

16 Finding the truth in systems: in praise of design-hacking

individual has been broken down.When someone hears the remixof a song on the radio, it warms their relationship to themedium itself.It now seemsmoremalleable in people’s minds –more approachable,more open. By comparison, design as a discipline remains largelyunyielding and closed.

The emergence of a hacking culture which is now responding to thephysical rather than the digital is evidence of a public will to re-purposethe objects they own and of a desire for a new relationship with theobjects and systems they buy and use. Hacking represents reciprocitybetween the user and the designer. While it complicates authorship andchallenges the designer’s usual instinct for control, hacking also breaksdown barriers between design and people and yields significant benefitsin the process.

Hacking creates new engagements between the productand the consumer

The dominantmodel for design has placed the designer/makerat one end of the spectrum, and the consumer at the other. Hackingserves as a ‘middle process’ between creation and consumption,creating an opening for new design processes which are not aboutthe use of new resources, but about the ingenuity to expand thepotential of existing ones.

Hackingmandates relevance and necessity in designHacking represents a return to a direct call and response betweenneed and solution. There is nothing superfluous in a hacked productor system.

Hacking is resourcefulHackers are driven by a curiosity to find ways to augment an objector system for improvement, or to find new functions through tweaksand adjustments. By deepening their understanding and creatinga number of possible applications, hackers represent a new approachto problem solving which increases the range of designed responsesto society’s needs.

Hacking creates abundance from limited resourcesTo hack an object or a system is to take it from its original stateand augment, improve, or re-work it to serve an alternative purpose.By expanding its function and form from its original singular stateto one whichmight servemultiple other purposes, hackers createnumerous design responses from one base.

17 Finding the truth in systems: in praise of design-hacking

Hacking finds the truth in systemsThe first thing software hackers do when they gain access to a program’ssource code is explore and share hidden code and functions notdocumented by the original programmers. When design hackers openand take apart products to re-work them, the type and quality of woodfound beneath the paint or the interior parts used are discussed widely.Hacking brings the inner realities of products to the surface. It revealsthe complete aesthetic and exposes secrets.

Ultimately, hacking gives people a voice. Hacking creates newrealities, options and possibilities from those we are given,whether commercial, social or civic. It offers forth the notion ofa democratisation of design, by enabling the end user to be partof the process and not only on the receiving end of it.

Whether themodel is re-working designs in ikea Hackeror expanding the green space in the city through park(ing), thereis a triumphantmessage of individual resourcefulness and directengagement when a hacker sensibility is applied to situations.

Most of all, hacking is evidence of our fundamental self-reliancein spite of professionalism, bureaucracy and industrial supply.Inmany ways, it is a return to, or a rediscovery of, the skills whichsaw us through our pre-consumerist times, when ‘making do’ withwhat you had to hand required inventiveness.

To relegate such activity to the realms of ‘amateurism’ is adangerous dismissal, for it not only further deepens the ‘us and them’disconnect between design and society, but ignores the vast potentialof the creative energies at work outside established channels.

Hacking presents a significant challenge to the power structuresembedded in form and use. Yet as desktop fabricators lower in priceeach year andmore designers’ works are beingmachined from cadsource files, it is obvious that the physical realisation of design willbe increasingly dispersed and localised – why not allow the designprocess to become dispersed and localised with it?

The boom box remixes, loops, hacks and samples which firstappeared on the steps of brownstone buildings in the Bronx decadesago were dismissed asmarginal noise created by cultural outsiders.Today we recognise these same ‘marginal’ players as the forefathersof hip hop. Are the hackers of today laying the foundations for anew design?

14Ways to get hacked

1. Design ingredients insteadof complete products

2. If you create a completeproduct, include an ingredi-ents list

3. Design for disassembly4. If the design was created

digitally, ship the sourcefiles with the product. Betteryet, just ship the sourcefiles. Don’t flatten the layers

5. Include version historiesof your designs

6. Designmodules of largersystems

7. Release your work half done8. Release your concepts as

product. Let others make them9. Design products as plat-

forms, and vice-versa10.Create a plug-in library

for others whowant toadd things to your design

11.Release a ‘flat-pack’ option– it was all just pieces atsome point…

12.Release beta versions13.If self-assembly is required,

provide options for assembly.Create a wiki to allow yourcustomers to do the same

14.If it comes pre-assembled,include instructions fortaking it apart

“Adopt a hacker attitude towards all forms of knowledge: not only to learnunix orWindows nt to hack this or that computer system, but to learneconomics, sociology, physics, biology to hack reality itself. It is preciselythe “can do”mentality of the hacker, naive as it may sometimes be,that we need to nurture everywhere.” 17

—Manuel Delanda

17. Paul DMiller, aka dj Spooky,essay on and interview withManuelDelanda www.djspooky.com/articles/essayonmanuel.html

The authorScott Burnham is a creative director, writer andconsultant. He created Amsterdam’s Urban Play projectin collaboration with Droog Design in 2008 as a city-wide exploration of open source urban design. Anearly proponent of ikea Hacker, he recently broughtthe project to Amsterdam in 2008 and to Oslo in 2009.

Burnham has addressed the InternationalConference on European Policy and theWorld UrbanDevelopment Congress on open source approachesto design and urbanism and is a guest lecturer at anumber of institutions including Central Saint Martinsin London, and the Art Institute of Chicago. His writingcredits include co-authoring the book Visualizing theCity (Routledge Press 2008) and a recent feature onurban design hacks for city in Sydney.

In 2009 Burnham became project director forthe Premsela Foundation’s Design Trust program inthe Netherlands and continues to work with a numberof global partners on design strategies based on opensource and hackingmethodologies. He is currentlycreating theDesigning Inspiration at Cube Lounge eventseries for Nissan.

www.scottburnham.com

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