Hacking, Mashing, Gluing: A Study of Opportunistic Design and Development

This paper is about opportunistic practices in interactive system design: about copying and pasting source code from public online forums into one’s own scripts; about taking apart consumer electronics and reappropriating their components for design prototypes; about “Frankensteining” software and hardware artifacts together by joining them with physical and digital hot glue and duct tape. It is about the hacks and prototypes of lowbrow experimentation, as opposed to highbrow design and engineering from the ground up. We combine these opportunistic practices under the moniker of “mash-up design. ” This paper presents results from an interview study with 14 professional and hobbyist “mashers ” from three different design disciplines: Web 2.0 programmers, hardware hackers, and designers of interactive ubicomp systems. The paper analyzes commonalities and distills themes in opportunistic design through three lenses: first, the way mash-ups modify and combine pre-existing elements; second, the unique characteristics of opportunistic design as an activity; and third, looking at mash-ups as novel kinds of artifacts