Eric's DIY Manifesto:
A Call to UbiComp Researchers

We are at an important technological inflection point. Previously, most computer systems were designed and built by professionally trained experts (i.e. computer scientists and engineers) for use in specific domains and to solve explicit problems. Artifacts often called “user manuals” prescribed the appropriate usage of these tools and implied an acceptable etiquette for interaction and experience. A fringe group of individuals usually labeled “hackers” or “nerds” traditionally challenged this producer-consumer model for technology by hacking novel hardware and software features to “improve” these products while a similar creative group of technicians called “artists” re-directed the techniques, tools, and tenets of accepted technological usage away from their typical manifestations in practicality and product. Over time the technological artifacts of these fringe groups and the support for their rhetoric have gained them a foothold into computing culture and eroded the established power discontinuities within the practice of technology design. We now expect our computing tools to be driven by an architecture of open participation and democracy that encourages users to add value to their tools and applications as they use them. We have seen the “Web 2.0” phenomenon embrace an approach to generating and distributing web content characterized by open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and re-use, and “the market as a conversation”. Similarly, the bar for enabling the design of novel “hardware remixes” and systems has been falling to the point that many non-experts and novices are readily embracing the personally empowering experience of customizing their tools and systems.

But how have we as “expert” practitioners been influencing this discussion? By constructing a practice around the design and development of technology for task based and problem solving applications we have unintentionally established such work as the status quo for the human computing experience. We have failed in our duty to open up alternate forums for technology to express itself and touch our lives beyond productivity and efficiency. Blinded by our quest for “smart technologies” we have forgotten to contemplate the design of technologies to inspire us to be smarter, more curious, and more inquisitive. We owe it to ourselves to rethink the impact we desire to have on this historic moment in computing culture. We must choose to lead a dialogue that heralds an expansive new acceptable practice of designing to enable participation by experts and non-experts alike.

- Eric Paulos (2007)