New Paths in Small Manufacturing: How is Digital Transformation Shaping Collaboration Between Designers and Craftspeople?

Both Craftspeople and Designers Have an Equitable Role, With No Clear Hierarchies

The challenge of the workshop was to create innovative products based on a real problem. When asked to comment on their experience, all participants said interaction was equitable (meaning no hierarchical position) and they saw no role distinction in their respective groups, with no social, economic, academic or age-based distinction. In similar collaborations, the designer tends to be more proactive in terms of initiating the project and consequently, it is almost impossible to establish a situation of equality (Murray, 2012). We believe that SH’s dynamic, involving designer and craftsperson as equal members from the beginning of the design challenge is the main factor that puts both roles in an equitable position. As other authors mentioned, collaboration surges between pairs (Perret-Clermont, 1984), but it can also be understood as a staging that an expert creates to an apprentice in order for them to appropriate capacities and skills necessary for a task. Traditionally, similar collaborative projects situate the designer as an expert and the craftsperson as an apprentice.

Another particularity of the workshops is the process of learning through collaboration. An important aspect of collaboration is the commitment of all participants, avoiding egoism, resource appropriation, making pertinent use of these resources and sharing technical knowledge. This is consistent with Wenger’s definition of a CoP (Wenger et al., 2002) and with other authors who mention that the core of collaboration is sharing the significance of the task (Lalueza et al., 2009).

When looking at the specific role of the designer, they are expected to provide the theoretical knowledge and the expression of ideas that were not previously visible to a person unschooled in this branch: “The ladies propose ideas only based on what they know, I tell them ‘good, now let’s give it another look ’ (…)” (D1, interview). As for the craftspeople, their role is to contribute with abilities and manual skills, obtained through experience: “(…) the lady that was older (…) she is really good at sewing, really good. Experience has a great value…” (D2, interview).

Young designers are digital natives and they have been using technology during their formal education, while craftspeople had to adopt technology for personal and entrepreneurial purposes. They became mobile heavy users even if they had only a basic knowledge of working with a computer—one of them even mentioned a family member was helping with Excel for accounting. We notice that the massive adoption of communication platforms such as Whatsapp in Chile (and in Latin America in general) but also the practice of using social media to communicate with potential clients, has been an enabler for collaboration between these two different worlds. Building on this interest to adopt digital platforms is a strategy allowing to mitigate resistance to change, a challenge related to digital transformation in manufacturing industries (Albukhitan, 2020).

There is a Need to Revalue the Utilitarian Craftspeople

Despite an “egalitarian perception” of both roles, when they were asked to fill in the agreement for research participation, a relevant number of seamstresses declared they were housewives instead of craftspeople or small manufacturers. In both scenarios, this requires further analysis, as it might be a determining factor in terms of communicating the community’s profiles and filtering future applications during recruitment sessions or spontaneous applications. On the other hand, during interviews, designers highlighted their need to have a professional counterpart from the small manufacturers, as in a lot of projects, they design artifacts they need to produce, and this production process has to be professional. Indirectly, this finding might suggest that formal training should be provided to the craftspeople, so that they professionalize their technical and technological capabilities. In this context, mobile communication and social media actual adoption for communicating with clients and business partners is a first step to approach this challenge.

Everyday Conversation Allows for Personal Involvement to Enrich Professional Participation

The use of instant messaging applications allows people to create narratives, which makes them become storytellers by creating content continuously, not only with text but also with other types of content, for example, images. Ultimately, Whatsapp becomes a way of dwelling (O’Hara et al., 2014). In our research, everyday conversations were present in the WhatsApp group mainly on topics related to greetings, birthdays, acknowledgments, sharing personal messages or asking for support. Sometimes, this goes beyond greetings and short messages. The interaction requires the members of the group to take action or participate when someone requires it. A typical case is a craftsperson involved in a local neighborhood initiative against violence—they would ask people to vote online so their project would get financial support. These interactions enrich the CoP with a more personal approach that seems to strengthen the relationships between members. Three examples of these types of messages are provided below:

Business Opportunities Arise and Need for a Formal Follow-Up Process

We observed that most of the mentions of new business opportunities came from the coordinator (8 out of 13), while five came from three craftspeople. When a new opportunity was mentioned, some craftspeople would show their interest. Based on the interview with the project coordinator and content review of the SH website and Facebook page, during the 11-month period, only one specific follow-up was made on a requirement received from a local design studio. This process showed no concluding result, as the design studio did not answer to follow back communications. Regarding the other 12 opportunities, in some cases the group did not react, the thread was lost between the rest of the themes, as WhatsApp is a channel that requires immediate reaction, especially in large groups in which conversation flows are important. In other cases, someone showed interest, but because of the scope being too large for one person and the SH coordination and reaction time too slow, the opportunity got lost. The following are three examples of this issue:

There is a Need for Specific Communication Channels for Specific Purposes

Participants shared thoughts on the communication channels used to promote SH activities and products, such as Facebook and the website:

The coordinator also created other WhatsApp groups for specific projects, like a quote for a possible client. This idea of creating a parallel group, might suggest that one standalone WhatsApp generates an overdose of notifications for members who are not actively involved in all activities. Collaboration allows them to capture more value on the market and compete with other small and medium manufacturing local companies. This is a core value of SH: allowing local small businesses to grow through innovation and collaboration. Digital systems like Whatsapp help SH in performing their mission. Using existing technology that users are already familiar with—like Whatsapp and social media—is one of the first steps in embracing digital transformation.

Product Design Narratives Surge Beyond the Workshop Dynamics

Product design statements are related to the design challenges of the first workshop where the participants met, to interest in developing new products based on the old ones or to a product idea that one has in mind and wants to share with the community:

Ongoing Projects Could Articulate Future Collaboration in Small Teams

Narratives on ongoing or pending projects were actively shared by the community members during the 11-month period:

Additionally, some of them shared information on public funding for future projects, as a way of contributing to community growth. This theme is both related to the everyday conversation and the opportunities one. As a matter of fact, informing the community about ongoing projects is a way of enriching the everyday conversation and also a starting point for generating new job or business opportunities.

For Activities and Events to Gain Traction, WhatsApp Use is Limited

The “Activities and events” theme includes statements on the following topics: activity proposal, interest in next activity, details on next activity, event invitation, event details, workshop proposal, narrative on workshop, confirm/refuse assistance, activity inquiry, narrative on past event (“So, when should we have the community coffee?”; “We have someone here from Finland” (coordinator, WhatsApp)).

Activities and events are occasions to generate community networking in a physical space and group reactions in a virtual community. People were quick to indicate their interest to attend activities or their lack of availability. At least one workshop proposal was canceled during the period because of the lack of potential attendance. This proposal was made by the coordinator in the name of a craftsperson—we believe this kind of communication and future notifications could be proactively announced by each community member. Findings show that WhatsApp is useful for communicating future activities and events, but this is not enough for gaining traction and informing organizers who exactly is going to attend. In this context, Facebook seems more appropriate, as most participants could confirm they would attend an event. There seems to be a technological barrier though, as some older craftspeople are not active Facebook members.

Moreover, as mentioned before, a general Whatsapp group is not the appropriate channel to coordinate more specific activities, such as preparing a client quote, as this would create too much noise. Therefore, during this project, the coordinator created other Whatsapp groups that allowed the team to accomplish these specific tasks.

Technology Leap and the Effect of Digital Skills in the Use of Technology for Collaboration

Based on the contribution frequency in the group, the patterns observed during the interview and the online activity of each one of participants for promoting their brands, three relevant insights stand out: (1) craftspeople have high mobile technology adoption; they all use their smartphone to communicate with clients/providers and to promote their work; (2) craftspeople feel less empowered than designers when it comes to the use of computer and they feel they lack digital marketing tools and knowledge; (3) craftspeople had a technological leap from no use of computer at all to being heavy users of mobile phones, which makes them feel everything should be solved through the phone; (4) designers spend more time in front of their computer, have a personal or studio brand presence on social media and feel comfortable manipulating digital tools. In this context, a collaborative system for this CoP should support mobile usage, without ignoring desktop users. Taking into account the specific characteristics of the CoP members would facilitate the adoption of the system, as technophobia and limited computer skills are considered “factors limiting collaboration among members of communities of practice” (Nyagwencha et al., 2011). Technical requirements—as those related to specific devices and operating system compatibility with WhatsApp—were not found to be an obstacle for joining the WhatsApp group, as was the case in other studies on collaboration using this instant messaging application (Willemse, 2015).

Recurrent Face-to-Face Interaction Should Support the Sustainability of the CoP

In terms of motivating future interaction after the workshop, both designers and small manufacturers believe that physical interaction is important for generating long term collaboration: “(…) all people are not necessarily on the Internet, despite the fact that today this is how things work (…) That’s why we need an alternative way to be in contact, like a facilitator or someone that would be online and could make phone calls (…)” (C1, interview). When it comes to group forming, within organizations there are groups that emerge naturally as a response to social contact (Sanz & Pérez, 2009)—the SH community is one of these groups. In this context, SH has the challenge to create physical spaces for group gathering that make the CoP go beyond a virtual community or periodic workshops. This balance between digital and analog communication is currently known as “slow communication” (Serrano, 2014) and it is based on the value of physical spaces versus online, as a way of putting technology to the service of the people.

As mentioned in section 5.3, using an existing technology such as Whatsapp, that users are already familiar with, facilitates the formation of CoPs because it enables building upon existing habits without adding technological frictions and avoiding an additional learning process curve. Nevertheless, Whatsapp as a channel might become limited when it comes to properly articulating complex interactions and deep communication.

Learning as the Main Motivation for Joining the CoP

The main motivation coming from the small manufacturers is the need to learn in order to professionalize their crafting techniques, learn from the designers and acquire complementary skills for their businesses (e.g., digital marketing, promotion or sales skills). On the other hand, designers expect to discover counterparts for future collaboration and they are also emotionally involved with the mission and vision of SH, as they previously knew the coordinator, who is also a designer. Small manufacturers became emotionally involved after their first workshop and once they started to have a permanent link with the community.

There is a Need for a Process to Support Specific Knowledge Creation in Time

Knowledge sharing and expertise sharing have been thoroughly explored in the CSCW literature (Ackerman et al., 2013). One of the characteristics of a CoP is the practice of a specific passion or craft. Therefore, the presence of specific knowledge as a continuous point of interaction between the members validates the creation of a CoP. This theme emerged as a result of several topics: “technical tip,”“ask for technical support,”“technical information” and “share experience.” We differentiate “technical tip” from “technical information,” as the first code includes tips on materials or techniques, and the second one is more related to a specific direction where one could buy the materials—for example, the name of a store, a road, or a subway station, as these three examples illustrate:

The idea of creating and sharing specific knowledge is particularly challenging for SH as a growing CoP. Gathering this content, editing, proofing and publishing could be an activity supported by a permanent SH team member, someone that should have writing skills and a deep understanding of the community dynamics. At this time, this knowledge is rather tacit, which means that “we can know more than we can tell” (Polanyi, 1997). Traditionally, there are two ways of expanding this tacit knowledge from craftspeople: the master/apprentice model and the co-creation model (Chuenrudeemol et al., 2012). The SH workshops are framed into the co-design model, as a particular instance between designers and people not trained in design (Sanders & Stappers, 2008) our findings suggest there is definitely an opportunity to retrieve this knowledge at a larger scale by using collaborative systems. Managing knowledge is a new challenge for CoPs within organizations. Even if CoPs have existed for years, understanding how to manage knowledge as an asset for competitive advantage and how to get along within the knowledge economy are new challenges. Using information technology in this context has been more about creating databases that become “digital junkyards” (Wenger et al., 2002) instead of being valuable assets.

WhatsApp Allows on-Time Information Sharing But Does Not Properly Support Knowledge Creation

Even though WhatsApp is useful for sharing information as a spontaneous communication channel, the flow becomes difficult to manage when the group grows, when there is a need for follow-up (as in small project management scenarios), but also when someone tries to search for past information on a particular technical theme. Even if the group channels on WhatsApp have a search function, this feature is not enough for generating knowledge and it is not commonly used by the craftspeople, although the designers do use it. Considering that the community is currently relatively small but it will be growing through the recently obtained funding and the project is to get to more than 100 active members in the next year, the findings of this research show that WhatsApp does not properly support all the collaboration process in this CoP and there is a need for another collaborative system. Moreover, creating a knowledge base is a process that requires careful consideration, as “computer - supported collaborative environments for knowledge building provide a promising innovation to facilitate teamwork” (Lahti et al., 2004).

The co-design session allowed identifying that a basic need for the CoP is to share information effectively. The participants proposed to create an easy to access “virtual encyclopedia” that would contain technical information such as patterns for product fabrication, prices for textiles, and also work opportunities and notifications for future community activities. As mentioned in other research projects, mobile apps allow accessing significant information and services (Figueira, 2014). A similar initiative aiming to preserve data on crafting was created in Colombia (Pinzón, 2014). Co-designing by involving small business owners is a technique allowing to mitigate the challenges of digital transformation in traditional industries, allowing to reduce the risk of failure or resistance to change their practices. Moreover, when two different groups—as craftspeople and designers—meet, their interest for co-design activities is bigger when there is an existing sense of belonging to a CoP.