This blog post explores the collaboration between the latest development of the Distributed Design Platform’s value-based quality label and the EU research project DAFNE+. These two closely connected initiatives share the common goal of supporting and promoting an alternative creative landscape, moving away from the outdated mass production system. 

Join us on this journey as we learn and explore how these initiatives may intersect, recognizing and amplifying the voices of digital content creators within and beyond the Distributed Design community.

Distributed Design Platform’s Quality Label

Over the past year, the Distributed Design Platform developed and started to introduce the value-based Quality Label. This ongoing framework celebrates projects, expertise, practices, and participation aligned with Distributed Design values within the Platform community and extended network. This is achieved through a collaborative effort to understand the needs and ensure the relevance of the Quality Label for individuals, groups, or organizations actively contributing to the existing community and those looking to join.

Still in the testing phase within the context of the Distributed Design Platform, this Label serves as a means of validating, verifying, and acknowledging the professional development of individuals, collectives, practitioners, organizations working closely to the Platform’s values.  This approach includes the implementation of innovative technological mechanism, such as a distributed badges system. External partners can also be recognized through their work, projects and practices demonstrating and pledging their active involvement and engagement with the community. This process aims to establish community trust and credibility by validating professional development and growth according to the Distributed Design Platform community values.

DAFNE+: Empowering Digital Creators through Blockchain

DAFNE+ is a project funded by the European Commission’s HORIZON program, with the overarching mission to empower digital content creators. Its distinctive approach harnesses the power of blockchain technology to create a transparent and decentralized platform for content creation, distribution and monetization. At its core, DAFNE+ champions principles of fairness and openness, aiming to catalyze transformative changes within the creative industries. 

Unlocking Synergies

As part of the initial testing phase, the Quality Label will be conducted alongside the global Distributed Design Platform activities coordinated by Fab Lab Barcelona | IAAC. This phase will actively involve the participation of the Platform’s members and the extended community to ensure a diverse range of perspectives and the incorporation of valuable feedback. The label’s deployment strategy will be tested over the next year, closely connected to the activities, to establish connections and promote the development of the existing partners network, which includes EU-funded projects such as Horizon Europe’s DAFNE+.  

As the Platform aims to continuously improve, refine, and adapt the key criteria and entry points for issuing the badges, ensuring a close alignment with the needs and values of the Distributed Design Platform community, we will be keeping track of how the synergies between activities and projects, including DAFNE+,  translates into potential collaboration.

Co-design sessions with the Platform members supported the definition and development of key elements and criteria for the badges, as well as explored the potential intersection with the Platform’s extended community, including other EU research projects and partners. While the specifics continue to take shape, the following key areas emerge as potential synergy between DAFNE+ and the Distributed Design Platform’s Quality:

• Badges Awarding: Active contributors and participants in DAFNE+ may be eligible to earn Distributed Design Platform’s Quality Label badges. Such badges would signify their commitment to excellence within the DAFNE+ ecosystem and in Distributed Design, fostering a sense of dual recognition.

• Fostering Distributed Design Platform Values: A synergy between DAFNE+ and Distributed Design Platform’s Quality Label can encourage digital content creators to embrace Distributed Design values. This could lead to a growing and vibrant and interconnected community, enriching an alternative Design landscape.

• Transparency and Trust: Both initiatives place transparency at its core, with blockchain technology as their bedrock. Collaboratively, they can provide creators and users with a secure and reliable environment where content validation and distribution are seamlessly aligned with Distributed Design values.

• Alternative Business Model: Part of the research project is to find alternative monetization models for digital content creators. By leveraging blockchain technology, creators in the distributed design ecosystem can explore new ways of revenues for their work while upholding Distributed Design Platform values in content distribution.

New collaborative opportunities

The potential intersection between DAFNE+ and Distributed Design Platform’s Quality Label set an example and hold the promise of recognizing, validating, and amplifying the voices of digital content creators within the Distributed Design sphere. While the details are a work in progress, the bridge between innovative projects and how they could intersect creates new opportunities for the discussion.

As members of the Distributed Design Platform, we remain open to the possibility of a new  collaboration that could benefit the Distributed Design creative community at large. 

If you want to keep up to date with this possible interaction, stay tuned to our social networks:

• Fab City Global Initiative
• Fab Lab Barcelona  | IAAC
• DAFNE+