Designing on the blockchain, Dalle collaborative platforms, verso il platform cooperativism

Summary

The aim of this research is to introduce the opportunities coming from the application of Blockchain technology to the field of collaborative services, which in these early years has contributed greatly in bringing innovation at both an economic and social scale -proving the ability to intercept and answer in an efficient way the needs of people -but highlighting also problems related to the themes of competition, rights and tutelage. The Blockchain based on safety, transparency and distributed control principles, could be the infrastructure and the playing field for these Collaborative Platforms that would start becoming Cooperative Platforms. The thesis tries to demonstrate how these services can be extended and revisited through the opportunities offered by the Blockchain, in order to answer to the new needs. To outline these design opportunities it has been lead a reverse engineering work, starting from already existent projects (or in a development phase) using this technology and by extracting the common characteristics, to later define some scenarios concerning the issue of Housing, Health and Energy. This research work, coming from the consultation and analysis of forum, blogs, white papers, talks and podcasts, is mostly addressed to the Service and Product-Service System Designers that are more and more involved in the planning for new systemic solutions for the social innovation.

Keywords: blockchain; service design; collaborative platforms; social innovation