Consider the modern designer and the context of design. Without qualification it can be confused with the design of appearances, so we will qualify with systems, to signify that while appearances are part of the system they are only one part in many. The system designer needs to know all aspects of how things work and have a general understanding of the current state of the art in science and engineering and how the parameters of current research relate to what can be built and how it can be built.

We must emphasize systems because that is where all the change and opportunity is, and all the opportunity for rapid progress is in the interactions between synergetic development across fields. Increasingly, the tools of engineers who design and prototype the next generations of products are available in desktop models that are affordable by educated amatuers in Maker Community They are already experimentally building cooperative research networks by sharing not only open source software, but design products of all types. These can be boards in systems, or chassis standards whose design is freely shared. Small buisinesses can make a living by selling prototype quantities to other makers in a peer to peer ecosystem of producers of components. The knowledge sharing processes can lead to a rapid distributed development process. Prototypes can lead to production products where most of the core intellectual property of the systems design is shared by a production network.

Some commercial chip IP producers work with open designers and will produce ASICs and SoCs based on open IP where their integration into systems is largely based on open tools that can be freely shared by maker networks. For a great example of how this can work out profitably, look at Cummulous Networks and companies in the ecosystem created by their open source software products.