About

do•doc is a free and open-source tool for documenting projects, driven by a community of designers, teachers, artists, trainers, makers and documentation enthusiasts in general. It is used in a wide range of contexts: in classrooms, in fablabs and community spaces, and as the engine of online resource platforms.

The design and development of this tool have been carried out by the collective l’Atelier des chercheurs since the very beginning, in 2014, but anyone can follow or take part in this work through the forum.

do•doc (pronounced “doo-doc”) makes it easy to produce digital content. Starting from recordings made with the software (images, videos, sounds, texts, stop-motions, SVG…) or from imported files, do•doc lets you edit, mix and lay out a wide variety of digital documents, from the simplest to the most complex (illustrated text, captioned image, flyer, poster, tutorial, photo report, recipe, report, class diary, project log, diagrams, portfolio, newspaper, audio clip, video clip, animated film…) and publish them, online or not. Both digital and physical, the tool is designed and developed to be modular: it can be reconfigured to best fit the situations in which it is used.

It combines a software component with a physical one. At a minimum, the software can be installed and used locally on a computer (Windows, Mac and Linux). As a collaborative tool, it can be used by several people at once from any connected device (tablet, phone). An online version also makes it possible to work and share content asynchronously and remotely.

The aim of this application is to make it easy to produce shareable multimedia stories, collaboratively. Content can be edited by several people at the same time, from several devices connected locally. Different physical stations make it possible to fit the tool to the situations and activities it supports: shooting setups (like photo studios), collaborative work, fixed or mobile workstations…

do•doc thus enables collaborative writing while remaining adaptable to a variety of activities and to the equipment available.

Our approach is developmental: for us, design is a situated, continuous and socially distributed process. Used by people from very different backgrounds, do•doc gains new features through its partnerships, which then benefit the rest of the community. During residencies with our partners (a kind of action research), we test working prototypes in situations we set up with them, without presupposing needs or solutions (see the logbook of a residency in a nursery class and the teacher’s perspective on this experience, both in French).

This approach lets the tool evolve with situations and activities, version after version, and allows the people who use it to make it their own. This form of contributive development makes it a tool of choice for certain communities, especially educators and makers.

do•doc supports activities (educational, documentation, cultural creation…), and we design and run workshops in different contexts, each of which uses it in an original way. A few examples (in French):

• Feuille de choux, a newspaper made by children from single-class schools in the Drôme

• Workshops making science videos

• Digital fabrication workshops

• Reports on sexism based on the Computer Grrrls exhibition at the Gaîté Lyrique

• Typography workshops at the École Lacordaire

L’Atelier des chercheurs — We thank everyone we work with for taking part in the development of this project and for their valuable feedback over the years.

Feedback on use or collaboration requests are welcome on our forum, on GitHub, by email, at fairs and in the workshops we run.

GNU AGPL license: free for everyone.