Design practices and the SAwD tool: Towards the opendesign concept

Abstract

The main idea behind the Open Source model of software development is to promote open collaboration in a decentralized process of coding. Varied endeavors have taken place in order to encourage, support and maintain the Open Source initiative, always focusing on the programming part of software development. Little to none has been said regarding decentralized, open collaboration in the system design process as a whole. Aiming at understanding what an OpenDesign initiative for information systems design would be, this article further explores the SAwD tool in a case study that considers the context of designing IoT solutions for airports. Organisational Semiotics and the Socially Aware Design constitute the theoretical basis of this work.