Open design has become an umbrella term for a wide range of approaches to design and creativity where professional design is challenged. These range from seeing designers as simply irrelevant (in democratized innovation) to an active and creative collaboration between designers and non-designers (co-design) to the dissolution of the distinction between designer and non-designer altogether.

While supporting open design in general, we argue that there are important instances where open design approaches may not be appropriate and that there will be a polarization between casual design activity (for cups, T-shirts and so on) and critical designs (medical equipment, very complex systems like mobile phones).