Hacking Design: Kindle Edition

by Avinash Rajagopal

What if you could press a button and have a machine build you any product you wanted? What if we all had the means to modify our physical environment, to tweak and subvert objects produced for us by designers and manufacturers? A new generation of hardware hackers is making steady progress toward making these hypotheses reality, building vibrant communities in the process. And designers are experimenting with open-source creation and customization, trying to come to terms with the hackers’ visions of the future. Hacking Design examines the conflicts and commonalities between hackers and professional designers, and uncovers shared ground on which the two creative communities can work together.DesignFile is the new line of e-books on topics and trends in design published by the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. There will be six to twelve titles published annually, each ranging in length from 7,500 to 20,000 words. Building a consortium with institutional partners and design practitioners, Cooper-Hewitt's series will bridge the academic, museum, design, and publishing worlds. Inaugural members of the e-book consortium are Parsons The New School for Design and the School of Visual Arts.

84 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 19, 2013

Reviews

[Jay French · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short pop-history take on user design as a response to industrial design. It gives examples of where users or designers have modified existing designed products, such as IKEA hacks and product modifications. It also gives examples of design that included user instructions to replicate products, so users could make their own modifications as they saw fit. It is a short book, covering mostly the last 50 years or so. There are a few pictures – too few, but the ones there do a good job of illustrating the covered concepts. Interesting for a quick read.