Thirteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

Today, user innovation is an important phenomenon that describes the process of competing and even displacing producers in many areas (Baldwin and Von Hippel 2011). However, for almost three decades of research on user innovation, the main focus has been on economically developed settings, while its applicability in other economies remains mostly unexplored. In this paper, we draw from the specific context, i.e., the settings of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, where user-innovation activities (used to and still do) play a role of a compensatory mechanism for non-market economic relations (Fursov et al. 2016). Our research started from design exploration into the archives of the DIY-magazines of the Soviet era, with focus on self-made all-terrain transport vehicles. We present two case studies of DIY ATVs that were originated in the 1960s and are still in use: since their first appearance in a magazine they have spread across the entire Soviet Union and paved the way to new types of machines for traversing roadless terrains of tundra and taiga. By these examples, we trace how the public arenas while contributing to technology-oriented educational legacy have provided for locally embedded design skills under the strict rules of planning economy. Finally, we discuss the very meaning of the environmental and social context in adopting and inspiring entirely new kinds of technology and, eventually, in developing enduring design principles without the participation of design professionals.