Conference Agenda

Open Design has been a set of practices and an ethos having an impact on professional practice, design activism, including maker culture, education, and design research, as particularly documented through several key European publications in the previous decade. In this Conversation, we aim to revisit open design and problematize how openness is framed, enacted, and claimed by designers and design researchers today, inviting critical examination of its assumptions and implications for equitable participation and inclusion.

To explore this topic, we approach the conversation format from the following themes:

1. Perspectives: How different lived experiences, disciplinary backgrounds, and cultural worldviews shape what becomes visible, valued, or relevant in open design.

2. Positions: The explicit stances, commitments, and value-laden choices designers adopt in open design projects, signalling different forms of agency.

3. Practices: The contemporary abilities, methods, and orientations designers use to engage with open design today, including the shifts, interventions, and systemic levers through which they influence trajectories, redistribute power, and reshape design ecosystems.