Week 18:
Invention, Intellectual Property and Income

This week's work is a bit strange, to my liking, because of how it fits into the calendar. I am quite behind in the development of the project, due to some difficulties in electronics. But to fulfill the assignments I have to do a future exercise in which I imagine how it will be in a few days and in what way I will show it.

In addition to the presentation of the product, we also have to think about how to disseminate the project after the Fab Academy. I think that's the hardest thing for me to imagine this week. At this moment all are doubts as to whether or not I will finish the project for the day of the presentation.

But nothing happens, we will continue working and we will achieve it for sure. I speak for myself and for all the colleagues in the Lab. #TrustTheProcess

The assignments for this week are (there is no group assignment this week):

Individual assignment:

• Develop a plan for dissemination of your final project

• Prepare drafts of your summary slide (presentation.png, 1920x1080) and video clip (presentation.mp4, 1080p HTML5, < ~minute, < ~10 MB), and put them in your root directory

Dissemination Plan

I like this dissemination plan because it is something that we have discussed many times with colleagues while we eat, the viability or not of open source or the need to protect intellectual property.

I personally feel closer to the protection of property than to the free transmission of products. I have that attitude when it comes to product design, but I also have the feeling that other aspects of the product could be in the public domain without issue.

Contests and Awards

If finally the product ends up being viable and works correctly I would not mind at all trying to get some kind of performance out of it in the future. One strategy that I have used with other of my products has been to present it to competitions and awards from different design and industrial organizations.

Below, I show you some of the contests that I would like to present it to if it ends up having a satisfactory result:

Kokuyo Design Award

The KOKUYO DESIGN AWARD is an international competition for user-centric product design, where the best of the best are actually put on the consumer market.

Medalles ADI 2022

ADI-FAD, the Industrial Design Association linked to FAD, is inviting young, newly-qualified design graduates to submit their final Degree, Master’s or postgraduate degree projects for the ADI Medals 2020, part of the ADI Awards 2020.

Created in 1976, parallel to the ADI-FAD Delta Awards, which date to 1961, the ADI Medals were created to build bridges between the academic and the industrial worlds. These awards have a great history in our country’s design scene, and foster the talent of younger generations.

There have been 27 editions of the Delta Awards during the last 44 years, with alternating periods of annual and biannual competitions, always with the objective of recognising and promoting innovative products, emphasising the creative process and research; formal, functional and aesthetic resolution; environmental suitability, social impact and suitable application of technologies and materials.

Distributed Design 2022

The Distributed Design Awards celebrate the best maker and design responses to the post-industrial design paradigm. These awards recognize the most innovative, supportive and sustainably designed projects across Europe.

Sensor Calibration Community

Talking to some of my instructors, they are very close to open source content and free to use, they told me about an idea that keeps going around in my head.

Sensor calibration is complex and there is no one way to do it. That is why the instructors recommended that it would be interesting to create a community of users who use the product and that their way of contributing was to work around the calibration of the sensor.

What we commented was that the users altruistically could reprogram their lamps and try to square some colors in a particularly accurate way. That could then be posted on the project's web page and that all that Brotherhood was gradually making the colors more and more accurate.

I find it a great way to be halfway between proprietary and open source. Then in the next point, I want to make a little reflection on what I think of the intellectual property.

Add it to portfolio

Like all designers, the portfolio is important to me, perhaps more than the CV. That is why this project has to enter that portfolio with force. I consider it one of the most complex projects that I have done independently, outside of work and I want it to serve as a cover letter wherever I look for work.

Intellectual Property Debate

The subject of intellectual property is something that I have thought a lot about during my years at the university due to some discussions among peers and some motivated by the school faculty.

I have always had a certain feeling of mixed feelings: on the one hand I consider that the disclosure of intellectual property is a great social tool, but on the other there is always the fear that someone may take something that is yours and not get any profit from it. all that.

Large companies always close their products to the point of not being able to make any changes outside of what they want. On the other hand, the small makers and open source community always show the last detail of their products. This is where I begin to see the first discrepancies. Many times the open source products are not up to the commercial level (many times they are), and my question is: is it for an economic reason or is it because the community is a utopian organization?

Is it really possible to keep an object, product or service in the hands of consumers and the community without them ending up misusing it? Could it be that all that initial force of collaboration and desire end up turning into disinterest and lack of desire?

In my opinion, and as a conclusion of the debate, I consider that the best alternative is a middle ground. The user deserves to be part of the development of the products, but the people who have thought and launched that product also deserve to be rewarded in an economic, social and personal way. It is interesting to generate an intermediate point between the Evil Corp and the total open source. I think it is at that point where the community can collaborate in the first person, but that there is the figure of Overwatch that continues to fight because the essence of the product remains intact.

License

To accompany my previous words with my actions, I believe that the Creative Commons platform offers a certain flexibility of protection of intellectual property. It offers you licenses from totally "unlicensed" to totally closed "All Rights Reserved".

The licenses can also be combined to find the alternative in which the creator is more comfortable. Check the following graphic to understand what I mean.

For me, the position in which I feel most comfortable is a mixture of the following licenses:

• CC-BY-NC (Creative Commons Atributtion + NonCommercial + ShareAlike)
• CC-BY-ND (Creattive Commons Atributtion + Non Commercial + NoDerivates )

Slide Draft

For now, I've done this quick slide to fulfill this week's assignments. I don't think this will end up being the one I present on June 9, but at least I already have something uploaded to the repo that allows me to move on.

Roughly this is the final idea I have for the slide. A large photograph of the product, along with some notes as if it were an industrial design sketch and finally some information about its manufacture and specifications.

Video Draft

For the video I have not prepared anything definitive yet (because the project is not working properly yet). Anyway, I have uploaded a small sample video to the repo, but I would like to explain to you what general ideas I want the video to show.

• Nearby planes that allow the electronics to be seen in the position of use.
• Appreciate the different pieces that make up the manufacture of the product. Putting special interest in the most difficult to manufacture, the knob
• Several shots of the operation of the lamp without the screen, so that it is understood how it works but showing its interior
• Those same shots but with the screen on. It would even be nice to see how the screen is placed (which at first glance may not be understood)
• See how by pressing the screen, the lamp reads the color you are seeing and turns on the LEDs of the same color
• I would like that the video did not have a voiceover and that only some small texts appeared explaining relevant data

Original Files

Link to Original files from this week.

What to improve for next assignments?

In the same way as last week, everything from now on is based on putting in hours of hard work on the project. Do not lose the good attitude and keep rowing towards the destination!