Ürün tasarımında çevrimiçi platformların potansiyeli: Zanaatkarların tasarım sistemlerine entegrasyonu üzerine bir çalışma

Since the appearance of design as a profession from the beginning of the industrial era until today, the profession's advancement has been parallel to the development of the industry based on industrial manufacturing. With the post-industrial times the main factor of growth is shifting from manufacturing to services & information based activities. This shift brings various problems for designer as they have to adapt to the post-industrial conditions. Since the manufacturing industry is not growing as it used to be, the jobs created by this industry is in decline. As this is a bad news for the industrial era design which heavily relies on the industrialised manufacturing, post-industrial design has to find new areas of activity by utilising alternative manufacturing methods or shifting to more popular industries such as service industries. As the community of professional industrial designers continue to grow each day, the role of those alternative manufacturing methods gets more important due to the declining employment options of manufacturing industry. There are modern small scale manufacturing methods like 3D printing, CNC or laser cutters getting developed thanks to the advancements in the technology. Internet is allowing the development of new businesses and production of new products by providing the necessary infrastructure such as funding, marketing, distribution through online platforms of various scales. So the combination of digital manufacturing methods and infrastructure provided by online platforms can lower the barriers of entry to entrepreneurship in physical goods drastically, providing new opportunities for designers in the post-industrial era. Forming ecosystems combining digital manufacturing methods, online platforms and design provides innovation. Quality of digital manufacturing methods are still not par with traditional methods of small scaled manufacturing and they are not accessible by many people, especially the ones in developing countries due to issues like their cost or operational difficulties. As another small scale manufacturing method, crafts can be an alternative to digital manufacturing methods in a similar fashion, forming hybrid ecosystems combining traditional manufacturing methods, online platforms and design. Development of such a model will allow designers to design and manufacture high-quality products in low scale through local resources by relying on minimal amount of actors to split the revenue. This process might eventually increase the perception of the crafts and craftsmen economic status, giving craftsmen the opportunity to adapt to the post-industrial economy and develop his craft to survive instead of disappearing in an industrialised economy. Formation of such an ecosystem requires integration of crafts into design system as a functional part of it. As both of them works as networked systems formed by many type of actors and interactions between them, integrating crafts into design systems requires the understanding how those systems function in their current context. As crafts disappearing due to the modernisation of manufacturing, the ones who are still out there are mostly found in developing countries where the industrialisation process has not finished yet. Istanbul as a regional hub, and Turkey's design capital, houses one of the biggest and oldest craftsmen population in the country. Although those craftsmen are under threat of disappearance because of the urban policies, gentrification processes and competing with industrial manufacturing. Istanbul also being a global hub, creates an ideal environment for integrating crafts into design systems. The study starts by discussing the status of design and crafts in post-industrial era, and then proposes development of an online platform for integrating those two, this decision is based upon how problems related to design solved by online platforms in the post-industrial era, and how those platforms can help for solving the problems introduced during the integration of crafts into design systems. Followed by the explanation of the initial study, as the idea of integrating crafts into design systems was inspired by studies made in "EUT 550E - Mapping Design In Istanbul" course of ITU's Industrial Design Programme. The course started as mapping the design system around the Grand Bazaar region of Istanbul, as an attempt to map Istanbul's Design System, drawing inspiration from the book "Milan Design System". The scale of this study increased in the upcoming years to map the design system of whole city, eventually evolving into a project called "Istanbul Design Map" as part of "Creative Istanbul Workshops" by Istanbul Kalkınma Ajansı – Istanbul Development Agency (ISTKA), involving seminars and workshops and publishing of the conclusions as a booklet. Action research is chosen as the base methodology, as it aims to initiate a change involving multiple actors, and the structure of the problem does not allow a trial-and-error based approach. The study is designed as an initial step of bigger study due to the scale of the problem, focusing on increasing the visibility of the craftsmen among public and design professionals in order to discover the mechanics behind their relations. Study is divided into three sections based on division of sections in action research cycles as (1) Plan-Act, (2) Evaluation and (3) Conclusion. Plan-Act chapter is divided into three phases as (1) Teaser, (2) Release and (3) Exhibition. Teaser section explains the development of the identity of the online platform in detail and development of the teaser web site. Release phase describes the formation of a map for users to navigate craftsmen in the craftsmen database, formation of the database, and the launch process of the "Istanbul Craftsmen Map". Exhibition phase covers the featuring of the project in the 2nd Istanbul Design Biennial, development of the idea of exhibition as exhibiting modern products crafted with tradition methods accompanied by video documentaries and walking maps, as a proof of the potential of the integration of crafts into design systems. Evaluation chapter presents the data collected during the study under four groups as (1) Internet Traffic and Site Usage, (2) Press Appearances, (3) E-Mails & Direct Feedbacks and (4) Survey. Inspecting each group under its own chapter to evaluate the data collected under that group. Internet Traffic and Site Usage is evaluated under two titles as (1) Visitors, (2) Map Usage, trying to understand the characteristics of the traffic received by the website and other parties interested in the subject. Press Appearances lists the appearances in local and global media to understand the approach of media to the subject. E-Mails & Direct Feedbacks chapter analyses e-mails sent to the publicly available e-mail address of the project as direct feedbacks, and contains couple of meetings which were requested by e-mails. In the Survey chapter, a survey which was sent to registered users of the website, designed with the purpose of how users are using the site is evaluated. As platform manages to increase the visibility of the problem among public and individuals with the help of online and offline channels, it was lacking critical capabilities for increasing the accessibility of the craftsmen for designers, allowing the discovery of requirements for such a process though the feedbacks of users. Users requested more crafts and more craftsmen to be added into the map and phone numbers of existing ones with purpose of finding the craftsmen they are looking for and reaching to him or her quickly through phone. Along 96 participant who have filled the survey only five of them have contacted a craftsman, and none of those five decided to work with them. Most popular reasons for not contacting craftsmen among survey participants were "Couldn't find the craft I need" and "I don't know which craft/craftsman to contact". The problems for not working with craftsman were trust and communication issues. Evaluation of the data collected through the research, revealed two possible routes of development. First route is increasing the coverage of the craftsmen database. Second route is developing the platform to actively assist and become part of the designer and craftsman collaboration. As increasing the coverage of the craftsmen database is an ambitious task, distributed methods such as crowdfunding for gathering resources for such an operation or crowdsourcing for distributing the effort among volunteers can be utilised. Such a process involves development of a framework for mapping special entities in a digital space, as this framework can be communicated through materials such as guides, it can also be applied to other locations or subjects. The other issue preventing the designers from contacting and working from designers were the problems caused by their lack of knowledge in the domain, preventing from them from finding the craft or craftsman they need, or causing trust or communication issues. As this problem requires a solution based on active communication with both parties, it needs a commitment of significant resources as effort, time and funding. This can be done in a regular fashion by collecting fees for such services, or a different approach involving online platforms can be applied, where the platform itself becomes a stakeholder in the process through additional values which can be provided such as sales channels, or commissioning as forming an ecosystem utilising online platforms for creating a hybrid production and business model combining crafts as traditional manufacturing method, and modern design approach.