Getting Started with Collaborative Design on ThinkCycle

What is ThinkCycle?

ThinkCycle in a Nutshell: ThinkCycle is a shared online space for designers, engineers, domain experts and stakeholders to discuss, exchange and construct ideas towards design solutions in critical problem domains. ThinkCycle simply provides a web-based collaboration framework that supports individuals and organizations in seeking, documenting and sharing information about problem domains and emerging design. It is largely a self-organized and decentralized system, allowing individuals to create online communities of interest around specific domains and contribute or learn from ongoing discussion and design activity.

As an academic and non-profit initiative, the goal is to foster a culture of “Open Collaborative Design” among students, industry and organizations worldwide while providing meaningful awareness, resources and design solutions to problems in critical domains. The goals, approaches and policies of ThinkCycle will continue to evolve, shaped by the participants involved and the nature of projects and problem domains tackled over time.

>> To learn more about the goals and collaboration framework, read this journal paper: ThinkCycle: Sharing Distributed Design Knowledge for Open Collaborative Design (Jan, 2002).

Quick-Start Guide

We invite students, faculty, professionals (designers, engineers, domain experts) in industry, non-profit organizations and government agencies to consider meaningful ways to get involved and take advantage of the ThinkCycle community and online system. There are many ways to participate, regardless of your current role and time available. You may get involved in any capacity that benefits you and the community the most. Here are some suggestions (though not limited to the following):

1. Register on ThinkCycle to create an account for yourself. This will provide personalized information, updates on new contributions and allow you to access and contribute to Topics and ThinkSpaces of interest.

2. Browse and Subscribe to Topics: Select topics that interest you, i.e. where you may wish to provide expertise or learn from ongoing dialogue and contributions. Subscribers receive email notifications whenever new messages and contributions are posted on the topic. You may choose to focus on one or two topics, contributing regularly however you can stay abreast of developments in many others that may provide insights in your area. Learn more about Topics.

3. Peer-Review: Give your comments and useful links to existing contributions. Join discussion forums in topics and contribute critical issues and ideas for ongoing projects and initiatives. Community-based peer-review ensures a high quality of useful content and resources in critical problem domains.

4. Contribute Challenges, Concepts and Resources: Provide your own contributions within topics in the form of well-posed challenges, resources, concepts, organizations, papers and so on. Notes contributed can include summary text, attached files, URL links and images. All contributions are indexed in the database and can be easily searched, linked and utilized by members of the community and the public domain. Members can comment on, link and email notes to others. For an example of a design concept contributed and reviewed on ThinkCycle, see Water Table Alarm for Wells, submitted by Mahesh Bandi from University of Pittsburgh on March 17, 2002 in response to a challenge posted on the Topic: Agricultural Technologies.

Submit your Challenge, Concept or Resource

5. Create a ThinkSpace for your design project: ThinkSpaces provide a shared space for members of design teams working within Topics, to share ideas and collaborate towards evolving design concepts. It serves as an informal online design notebook for each design team to use, with peer-review from others. ThinkSpaces may be setup for private access to members of the design team only. For example, David LoBosco setup a publicly accessible ThinkSpace: Low Cost Library focusing on a design project addressing a challenge posted on the Topic: Tools for Education. David has posted many useful resources and files to get peer-review from others as the project evolves.

Optionally if you are an active member you may:

Become a Topic Editor: If you feel that you have expertise in specific areas, you can be a valuable resource as an editor for Topics in ThinkCycle. You can contact an existing editor with your interest, and request them to give you privileges to co-moderate the topic. As an editor you must provide helpful suggestions to focus contributions within topics. You have the ability to move, edit and delete contributions as needed.

Create a New Topic: Though there are many topics created on ThinkCycle, there are many problem domains that need to be well addressed by critical dialogue among participants from academia, industry and non-profit organizations. You can create a new topic on ThinkCycle that seeks to address critical issues and create an online community of interest around it. For more information read The Guidelines on Creating Topics on ThinkCycle.

Establish a ThinkCycle Workgroup in your locality: We encourage members to organize local efforts to bring together students, professionals and local non-profit organizations towards cooperative problem solving and design. One example of a workgroup is that setup in Pittsburgh, as a collaborative effort among students from CMU and U. Pittsburgh, as well as working professionals in the local area. This group was independently established and supports ongoing initiatives, design teams and funding/logistical efforts among members. See, the website for the ThinkCycle Initiative at Pittsburgh. We expect many other such groups to be formed, with active participants from local industry, academia and non-profits. We are currently developing an online mechanism for Workgroups on ThinkCycle.

>> For more detailed instructions, please explore the online Tutorial: Hitchhikers Guide to Collaborative Design with ThinkCycle (Feb 2002 – to be revised soon).

How you can participate?

Universities and Schools: Encourage students and faculty to adopt challenges posted on ThinkCycle as part of existing or independent study courses in various disciplines. In addition, you may consider introducing new curricula perhaps modeled around the Design that Matters courses developed at MIT and other universities worldwide.

Non-Profit Organizations, Communities and Stakeholders: Use ThinkCycle as a resource for research/design in ongoing projects, posting well-posed challenges to the community, mentoring and working closely with design teams on various problem domains and building awareness about critical problem domains of interest to you. In many cases you may wish to establish your own online topics or design projects hosted on ThinkCycle.

Professionals, Researchers and Domain Experts: Join existing topics or ongoing design projects and provide expertise, mentoring and resources. You may wish to establish your own design initiatives with the participation of members in the ThinkCycle community. Your insights are valuable to bring well-developed innovations out to market with appropriate attention to technical requirements and design constraints.

Industry Organizations: Consider an open collaboration with academic and non-profit groups using ThinkCycle in specific problem domains. You can initiate an “open source” product design project hosted on ThinkCycle (like software projects on SourceForge.net), taking advantage of the expertise and peer-review from many individuals and organizations. Though not all product development efforts are suitable for open source collaboration, we believe this approach is more appropriate in specific domains like critical health/community/disaster relief technologies or innovations requiring expertise from multiple organizations. ThinkSpaces on ThinkCycle permit shared online projects with private access to selected members. We are currently considering appropriate intellectual property and licensing frameworks to facilitate such cooperative initiatives.

Foundations, VC Firms and Government Organizations: You may find topics and projects on ThinkCycle that resonate with your organizational mission, guiding and supporting the projects with critical advise, resources, and funding assistance at some point in the design cycle. Your feedback and active role is critical to scale innovations to address problems/opportunities in the real world, along with the necessary expertise for deployment and distribution.

As ThinkCycle is a relatively new initiative, the appropriate mechanisms, best practices and policies will gradually evolve with active participation from individuals and organizations with diverse needs and visions. ThinkCycle seeks to remain a flexible, self-organized and community-directed non-profit initiative.

For questions, suggestions and concerns feel free to

To report technical issues, bugs, and features contact:

http://www.thinkcycle.org/start