I recently received a mail from Alex Mamalyha, web community manager for i.materialise, announcing the launch of a new service from Materialise NV. i.materialise is a rapid manufacturing service aimed at designers, and the beta site gives a good idea of the way the service will work. Obviously there are many web-based rapid manufacturing services these days, and the announcement of a new one is a fairly regular occurrence which I usually just ignore. But given the extent to which Materialise have supported and encouraged designers’ use of RM technologies through their .MGX initiative, I thought this was one service that deserved further investigation.

The ‘manifesto’ of i.materialise claims the service makes “3D printing as easy as printing on paper”. Obviously such claims owe more to hyperbole than fact, but the i.materialise interface is presented in a relatively simple and obvious way. A workspace in the centre of the screen visualises the model once it is uploaded, and a number of drop-down menus to the right give the choice of materials, surface finishes etc.

To test the service, I used a model I made previously for Nina Pirhonen, a Finnish designer and creator of the PomPom character and series of books. The model was originally created in Solidworks, but in order to upload it to the i.materialise site it first needed to be converted to .stl format.

3D model of PomPom © Nina Pirhonen

It’s here that some of the limitations of the i.materialise service first begin to show. Whether it’s to simplify the operation, or because limits don’t in fact exist, there’s no information regarding maximum file sizes or number of triangles/polygons. This is fairly basic information that anyone, designer or not, with the skill to create a 3D CAD model will want to know, since it has a fundamental effect on the quality of the manufactured model, and most CAD packages allow the quality of the .stl file to be easily determined. In this instance I used a relatively coarse setting, giving a triangle count of 20,024, and a file size of 1,001,284 bytes. I also imported the file into Rhino in order to export as .3ds, .obj and .wrl formats.

Exported .stl model of PomPom © Nina Pirhonen

Uploading the file is easy – click the upload button and choose your file – and quick; a 1.5Mb .3ds file took about 20 seconds to upload, with a further 8 seconds for the i.materialise software to analyse the file. Exactly what the analysis involves isn’t clear, but I assume the model is being checked to ensure it’s a closed volume. No errors or warnings were given about the model, which suggests it isn’t being checked in terms of the feasibility of it actually being made – the ears, arms and feet/ground of this model would definitely throw up problems, particularly in some of the more fragile material options. Once the model is uploaded it appears in the workspace of the user interface, and can be viewed from different angles.

i.materialise interface © Materialise NV (click for larger image)

Another limitation of the interface is that there’s no option to change the build orientation of the model. Since most rapid manufacturing technologies have different resolutions in their horizontal plane and vertical axis, this can be an important choice, affecting which surfaces have the smoothest finish. For a service aimed at designers it’s definitely an option I would expect to see.

On the right hand side of the interface there are a choice of materials, including ABS, polycarbonate and polyamide, alumide, and multicolour composite. As different materials are chosen the price automatically updates, along with the surface finishing options. Most materials can be painted and some can be mechanically smoothed (similar to tumble polishing). There’s also an extensive ‘library’ of information about materials and manufacturing techniques.

Multicolour Composite material properties © Materialise NV (click for larger image)

Given the nature of the model I was testing the service with, I was particularly interested in the multicolour composite option. Materialise use a Z Corp Spectrum Z510 for this process, which prints at 600 x 540 dpi. The problem was that, as far as I could tell there is no way to specify the colour of the surfaces. Usually Z Corp Spectrum printers use VRML files, but when I uploaded in this format (the system accepts and recognises .wrl files, even though they are not listed as a usable file type) no colour information was retained. The same was true when I tried an .obj file. Looking around the site and through the FAQ’s didn’t give any clues as to what file formats I should be using or whether this option is functional, but obviously this is something that needs to be fixed before the service comes out of beta testing.

All in all, I’m not really sure what to make of the i.materialise site and service. It’s stated explicitly that the service is aimed at designers, though it’s not made clear whether that means just design professionals or includes consumer-designers. Either way, for those with the experience and skill to create their own 3D models it seems a bit simplistic. There’s none of the control you get setting up a model for printing yourself, particularly deciding what orientation the parts should be printed. To be fair it’s possible to contact i.materialise direct, but then the service becomes little different to using a local RP/RM shop (although admittedly, the range of materials and processes is much greater than most shops are able to offer). And of course it should be kept in mind that the site is still in beta testing, the whole point of which is to iron out the glitches. In this respect at least, i.materialise have done a good job – the UI is easy to understand and the whole process of uploading a file, choosing a material and ordering is easy to follow.

Finally, one tantalising option, which isn’t possible to review but which is suggested in the FAQ’s, is the future possibility of ordering some of the .MGX designs. Quite how this will work is unclear – will it simply be possible to choose from a catalogue and hit ‘print’, or will it be possible to modify the design? But this is obviously one area where the i.materialise service can offer something unique, over and above similar web-based services or a local RM shop.

Update: Since posting this article I have swapped a few emails with Alex Mamalyha; my questions and his answers are reproduced below:

1. Is there a maximum file size, and is there a limit to the number of triangles or polygons in a model?
2. How are colours specified when choosing the multi-colour composite option (using the Z-Corp Spectrum printer)?
3. Will you attempt to make any model, or will you advise if an uploaded model is unsuitable?
4. What is your returns policy?

Finally, I noticed that it’s possible to upload a VRML (.wrl) file and the system will recognise it, but this isn’t listed in the ’supported formats’ list.

1. There is no limitation on the file size or number of triangles in the model.
2. Colors should be stored within the uploaded file, so if you choose Z-Corp we will print it in color (I realize it is a bit confusing since the preview generated images are in single color, but we will improve that bit shortly).
3. We did some testing with Blender users. If the uploaded file is not suitable for printing we will fix it ourselves, unless it requires severe design changes (after all we don’t want to print cube when the person is ordering sphere) in which case we will contact the designer and explain what has to be changed. We will not attempt to print something that is not printable. Additionally, we are developing plug-ins for major CAD programs that will provide designers with the info on problems with the file before they even upload it.
4. Once we print and ship the model, it cannot be return for obvious reasons (usually it’s one of a kind design)

About VRML support. We are still in a pretty early BETA and some info may not be consistent in all parts of the website, but we will do our best to provide support for a number of different file types.

Are there plans to add functionality which would allow the designer to choose the orientation of the part in the build chamber? Or maybe make it clearer which is the Z-axis so the part can be oriented in the modelling application?

We are working on functionality, so that preview window on the website will allow designers to rotate the model, rather than have screenshot generated (as it does now). It does not matter how the file is located during the upload process, we have support engineers, who check all incoming files and position them, we don’t expect people to know how the model should be oriented for printing purposes.

This post deals with the results and conclusion of the user trial discussed earlier. The findings of the study can be divided into two main areas: the results of the drawing exercise and the success of developing the drawings into a 3D CAD model, and the results of the two CAD modelling exercises. It’s important to stress that in both cases the objective was not to judge or analyse the quality of the design, but rather to gain subjective feedback from participants about which activities they enjoyed or disliked, and which approach resulted in the product they were most happy with.

Drawing exercise and 3D CAD model development

The table below shows an analysis of the drawings returned by the participants:

All drawings were analysed and coded according to the following criteria:

I(i). Number of sheets – How many sheets of paper were used in the exercise?
I(ii). Number of drawings – The total number of sketches made during the exercise, including sketches of ideas which were rejected.

II(i). Understanding of Safe Model concept – Did the participant understand and follow the instructions regarding the images of the safe model?
II(ii). Inconsistency between drawings – Did sketches exhibit inconsistent or contradictory information?
II(iii). Understanding of orthographic projection.
II(iv). Use of annotation.

III(i). Evidence of design iteration – Did the participant develop and test the validity of a design through sketches?
III(ii). Number of different designs drawn.
III(iii). Final design identified – Did the participant make obvious which was the final design?

IV(i). Functionality – Did the participant design a functional element in addition to the basic functionality of the USB memory stick?

Attach (A) – A method of attaching the product
Grip (G) – A feature which allows the product to be held more easily
Retain (R) – A method of keeping the cap in place
Other (O) – Any other form of functionality

IV(ii). Functional detailing – Did the participant include functional details such as screws or split lines in the design?
IV(iii). Cosmetic detailing – Did the participant include cosmetic details such as fillets or chamfers in the design?
IV(iv). Colour and Texture – Did the participant include details whose colour or texture were specified?
IV(v). Manufacturing constraints – Did the participant consider details imposed by manufacturing such as draft angles or material wall thicknesses?

V(i). Existing Designs – Did the participants look at the envelope of existing designs before, during or after the exercise?

VI(i). Degree of interpretation – a measure of the degree to which the CAD operator had to interpret the participant’s drawings in order to build the CAD model. Measured on a scale of 0-5, where:

0 = no interpretation needed, the drawings were accurate and fully resolved;
2 = some interpretation needed, the drawings were accurate but some details were unresolved
5 = significant interpretation needed, the basic idea was communicated but details were unconsidered or unresolved

The three most important findings, highlighted in orange in the table above, relate to design iteration, functionality and the degree of interpretation required to translate participants’ sketches into 3D models. The sketches showed that only four participants drew more than one design option. Even fewer (three) engaged in any form of design iteration, i.e. a process in which a design idea was modified. The most common form in which drawings were returned was a single idea, drawn from multiple viewpoints. As such, the ability of the participants to engage in design exploration through sketching was extremely limited.

This finding is supported by existing research into the manner in which designers use the activity of drawing. Designers tend to use drawing in two ways: firstly as a means of ‘exploration and manipulation,’ and secondly as a means of communication. The first is a creative activity in which multiple sketches are used to develop a design from the first idea to the ‘best’ idea. Such sketches do not need to be accurate or even realistic provided they offer an insight into the problem or possible solution. A communicative sketch, by contrast, is a method of explaining a (partial or full) design solution.

Drawings returned by participants appear to show an inability to utilise sketching as a method of exploration. Instead most participants attempted to draw the ‘correct’ design immediately, i.e. they tried to communicate a final design without testing whether it was, in fact, the best solution. There is a ‘randomness’ within design exploration which can be attributed to a lack of inhibition among designers to the act of drawing. Designers are often taught that mistakes when drawing have value and can lead a design in new directions; in contrast a number of participants’ drawings showed evidence of the use of an eraser to remove ‘wrong’ sketches. This inhibition or discomfort with drawing was further borne out by responses from participants, nine out of ten of whom preferred the process in Part II where drawing was not involved.

Sketch returned by one trial participant showing a lack of design iteration

Although their sketches showed a lack of design exploration, the need for design iterations was implicitly recognised by all participants in their reactions to the CAD model representation of their design. Initially all participants believed the CAD model to be an accurate interpretation of their drawings. However, all participants subsequently accepted the invitation to modify the CAD model, and all believed that the design was improved by this process of modification. Participants perceived the CAD model as a ‘sketch’ or work-in-progress which required development, and recognised that design iteration was necessary to arrive at a better design.

The results clearly demonstrate the value which participants attached to their self-designed products: a clear reason for this was the ability to introduce additional functionality to the product. All ten participants added additional functional elements to the USB memory stick, for example, details which enhanced grip, or methods for ensuring the cap was not lost. One participant shaped the device such that it could act as a bottle opener, whilst another attempted to decrease the possibility of the product being knocked and broken when plugged into a computer. This value placed on functionality rather than just aesthetics, together with a preference for a design which more closely fits the consumer’s needs, also coincides with findings from mass customisation literature.

Design with a method of retaining the cap when removed

The degree of interpretation required to translate a participant’s sketch to a 3D model is also a factor which needs to be highlighted. The drawing below shows a not-atypical sketch returned by one participant.

A ‘final’ design sketch from a trial participant

The drawing shows no indication of the preferred design, nor does it show design ‘refinements’ such as fillets or curved faces. Thus as the trial went on, it increasingly became obvious that one of the tasks, when translating a sketch to a 3D model, was to ‘read between the lines’ and second guess what the participant might want, rather than attempt to faithfully reproduce what was drawn. When presented back to the participant, the model which was built from the sketch showed a hook feature, as well as small fillets and slightly curved side surfaces. However the model was built and constrained in such a way that it could be updated to ‘close’ the hook, thus making the feature a loop. This was, in fact, what the participant had intended, and after modifying the model the final design is much more rounded than the original sketch.

The 3D CAD model produced form the sketch above

The final design after reconsideration and manipulation by the participant

3D CAD Model Modification

Results in this area refer to the tasks within both Part I and Part II of the trial which involved modifying the CAD model. The results largely consist of a comparison between the design process of Part I and Part II, and which process yielded the most favoured design. Opinions of participants were recorded during and immediately after the trial, and are summarised in the table below.

Discussion of Results

The most significant finding from the trial comes from the paradox highlighted in the table above. As previously mentioned, nine out of ten participants felt uncomfortable with the drawing exercise, preferring to modify a CAD model representation of a design. However every participant believed the drawing exercise ultimately led to the best design. When questioned, the main reason given was, as might be expected, that the design more closely matched their needs and wishes than the pre-existing model. Three participants stated that they would like to imagine their design was unique, and did not feel certain a pre-existing model would not be modified in similar ways by others. One participant said he would be proud to show the product to friends and explain to them why he had designed it in the way that he had. Thus the trial shows that the best results, in the participants’ own opinions, came from the less enjoyable process.

Conclusions and Future Research

The trial clearly shows that participants placed significant value on the ability to design their own USB memory stick. Products which were self designed were valued more highly than those which were customised from pre-existing designs, despite the fact that most participants felt uncomfortable with the process of self design and preferred the process of customisation. Participants were generally unable to engage in design iteration through sketching, and used drawing as a method of recording and communicating a design rather than exploring it. However, when presented with a CAD model representation of their own design, participants recognised the value of developing that design through iteration in order to arrive at a better solution. Participants placed a high priority on the ability to incorporate additional functionality into the basic usage of the memory stick.

The trial raises a number of questions which would benefit from further research. Of most interest to me is the question of how to resolve the apparent paradox between the preferred design process and the preferred outcome. Participants unanimously favour self designed products over modified or customised pre-designed products, however a clear majority did not enjoy the drawing task required to initiate the self design process. In a setting outside of a user trial it might therefore be expected that consumers would not engage in self design at all, and thus never arrive at a point where they were able to assess the value of their self-designed product. Future research should therefore investigate ways of capturing consumers’ design intent without requiring the consumer to sketch or draw those ideas.

A further question stems from the issue of how to interpret a consumer’s design intent, particularly when that intent is not well explored or developed, or when it is physically impossible to meet all criteria. In the trial this was overcome by the use of a designer/CAD operator, who was able to use experience and intuition to ‘second guess’ what the participant wanted to achieve with their design. In a commercial setting this scenario would likely be impossible, as it would require the input of a professional designer for every consumer created design. This would suggest the need for an automated process which would replace the designer’s intuition, or more realistically, which applied certain rules to constrain and condition the consumer’s design. Such a system, whilst inevitably limiting creative freedom to some extent, would also give the consumer confidence that the self designed product would always be manufacturable. Such a system, therefore, could be considered an advanced form of customisation toolkit, one which enabled the consumer to move beyond configuration and engage in freeform design.

In general participants understood the need for design exploration and iteration, even though this was rarely displayed in their sketches. Within the CAD model manipulation tasks, some participants were helped by the use of Genoform, which was able to suggest new directions for exploration which the user was otherwise unable to see. It may be that an automated iteration would be of benefit to some users in improving their designs.

A final question arises from the value which participants placed on adding additional functionality to their design. The trial was able to recognise that a participant valued their design of, for instance, a grip detail. However it did not ask the participant to compare that grip detail with, for instance, a method of retaining the cap when removed. The results do not record whether the participant considered a cap retention method but rejected it as less important than a grip detail, or failed to consider a cap retention method at all. Thus the trial could not disclose whether participants saw value in added functionality in general, or only in the added functionality that they had designed. Such knowledge would be valuable, particularly if a future trial were based on a more complex product.

From Configuration to Design: Capturing the Intent of User Designers is the title of a paper I recently presented at MCPC 2009 in Helsinki. It details a user trial conducted as part of my PhD research, which sought to understand the extent to which non-professional user-designers are able to engage in design exploration and to communicate design intent. The paper itself, together with the presentation given at the conference, can be downloaded from the Papers and Presentations page of this site. Much of the background argumentation to the study has been made in previous posts, therefore what follows is an edited version of the paper, focusing on the design, conduct and conclusions of the user trial. This first post deals with the design and conduct of the study, a follow-up post will concentrate on the results and conclusions.

Design of the Study

The focus of the trial was the design of a USB memory stick. This was chosen as a relatively simple product whose functionality was easily recognised by those who took part in the study. The trial was intended to investigate two main research questions:
What is the best method for consumers to conduct design exploration?
How well are consumers able to communicate design intent?

It built on the observations of a number of researchers with regard to the way designers and architects use drawing as a way to generate and evaluate design solutions, but sought to place such observations more specifically within a mass customisation scenario. It also sought to understand the practical difficulties of expecting non-designers to use drawing in the same way that trained designers do. The intended outcome was to better understand what future tools will best enable consumer-design, which will form a major part of my future PhD research.

I should make clear from the beginning that within the user trial, neither modelling exercise (in Part I or Part II of the trial) was intended to test or replicate a co-design exercise. Within design research, co-design can be described as a subset of user-centred design (also called participatory design), in which the user takes part in the actual design of the object in question as part of a design team. This contrasts to user-centred design itself, in which the user contributes experience or opinions, but the designer carries out the design task. In both user-centred design and co-design however, it is the designer who is perceived to hold ‘expert’ knowledge and who has the ultimate power of decision, and the user is relegated to the position of contributor. In contrast, this trial sought to investigate a situation in which the participant had the ultimate power of decision over his or her design. In all situations where the participant worked with the CAD operator (described below), care was taken to ensure the CAD operator did not offer opinions as to the value of any design or decision. Advice was given only on the capability of the CAD software to achieve a desired outcome, rather than the value of that outcome. Thus the role of the CAD operator was that of a facilitator between the participant as designer and the requirement to create a 3D CAD model.

Two Methods of Design Exploration

The study was divided into two parts. In part I, the participants were first required to undertake an unobserved drawing exercise, followed by a design modelling exercise with the assistance of a trained CAD software operator. In part II, they were required to choose one of six pre-existing designs which was then modified with the assistance of the CAD operator. Participants were placed in one of two groups; group one conducted part I of the exercise followed by part II, whilst group two conducted the exercise in reverse order.

The first method of design exploration, addressed in part I of the study, could be classified as unconstrained concepting. Participants were free to explore issues of functionality and aesthetics with no constraint other than that the design should be bigger than a minimum volume (the minimum size required for the electronics to fit inside). This meant that the first method was close in scope to the design process of a trained industrial designer. The second method of design exploration, addressed in part II of the study, can be classified as constrained concepting. Participants were able only to modify a pre-existing design within the constraints allowed by the CAD model, the idea being that the task was closer in scope to a MC toolkit experience.

Part I – Sketching Exercise

Participants were briefed as to the task and requirements of the exercise, but conducted the exercise unobserved so that they were in a more natural environment and worked in a less time-constrained manner. Participants reported spending one-and-a-half hours on average on the task, though most reported thinking about the task over a period of days before beginning. Participants were required to complete the sketching exercise within one week of having been briefed.

When being briefed, participants were told to create drawings on an A4 marker pad supplied to them. A number of images were supplied of a ‘minimum volume’ USB memory stick (see the section headed “Concept of the Safe Model” below), and participants were shown how to use these images as underlays over which their own designs could be drawn. Participants were instructed only to use the drawings pads and pens, pencils, markers etc, and specifically not to create designs using a computer. It was also made clear that the purpose of the study was not to judge drawing skill.

Sketch design by one participant in the trial

Participants were instructed to design the body and the cap of the memory stick, and to imagine they were designing a personal product, i.e. not to consider the needs of other consumers. It was stated that participants should not copy an existing design, and that the more personal the design (in terms of either function or aesthetic) the more useful it would be to the research. Participants were also supplied with a sealed envelope of existing USB memory stick images, and told they could open the envelope at any time during the exercise.

Sketch design by a second participant in the trial

Part I – Modelling Exercise

Participants were required to return their drawings by mail such that no verbal explanation could be given about the design. This made sure that their ability to communicate through sketching only was tested. The drawings were used as the basis for construction of a 3D CAD model by a CAD software operator experienced in making industrial design models; the CAD operator was therefore required to ‘read’ the drawings, ‘interpret’ the participant’s design intent, and develop the 2D drawings into a 3D model

Finally, participants were told that whilst they could work on any number of designs, at the end of the exercise they should have one final, favourite design. Participants were instructed to return all drawings, even those of discarded ideas. It was also emphasised that when submitting the final design, participants should consider how well it could be understood by someone looking only at their drawings.

In some instances what was drawn was not physically realisable in 3D. This is sometimes referred to as a ‘failure of reinterpretation’ – where the person making a drawing has failed to reinterpret and understand the logical implication of their own drawing. The image below shows such a failure of reinterpretation: the indentation in the top surface is shown as breaking the side surface in one view but not in another. In these cases the 3D modeller’s task became one of intuitively judging the participant’s intent, rather than trying to faithfully reproduce was what drawn.

Sketch design showing a failure of reinterpretation

3D CAD model from the sketch above

3D models were built using Solidworks 2007 (Service Pack 2.0) CAD software. Solidworks is a hybrid (it allows the use of both solid and surface modelling techniques) parametric CAD modeller, in which features are primarily created from constrained, dimensioned sketches. One of the skills of the CAD operator lies in understanding how to constrain sketches such that dimensions can be altered and the model will update. Sketches which are not appropriately constrained will cause the update to fail, which can then result in significant time spent “debugging” the problems. The software and version were determined specifically by the use of Genoform, an automatic iterative design program that formed part of the study (see the section headed Genoform below).

Participants were invited back to conduct the modelling exercise approximately one week after having submitted their design. They were asked to review the model and to comment specifically on how well it captured their design intent (i.e. did it look the way they expected). Attention was drawn to specific aspects of the model, particularly where the CAD operator had interpreted a difficult-to-understand drawing or feature. Participants were then asked whether there was anything they would wish to change about the model either to improve the design or to correct mistakes in the interpretation of their drawings.

When the CAD model had been modified to a state the participant felt reflected their aspirations for the design, the Genoform software program was used to generate alternative design options. Initially ten options were generated but participants were free to generate more if they wished. Options which were liked or perceived as interesting were imported back into Solidworks; these reimported options were then compared to the originator model. In a majority of cases the participant requested changes to the originator model, based on ideas stimulated by the Genoform options, however in no instance was a Genoform option chosen as a ‘most favoured’ design.

Part II – Modelling Exercise

In this part of the study, participants were shown six pre-designed CAD models. The reasoning behind each design, e.g. why it was a certain size or contained certain features, was explained; the extent to which it might be modified was also made clear. Participants were then asked to choose one of the six models as the basis for the rest of the exercise.

6 pre-designed models presented to the trial participants

Having chosen a model, participants were asked which aspects of its design they wished to change. Where it was possible to modify the model by changing a feature’s dimensions or parameters this change was accepted. However any request which involved adding new features was not accepted. For example: with the ‘grip’ feature on model 1, the number of grip details could be modified, however a similar grip feature could not be transferred to any other model. In such a way participants were deliberately constrained in their ability to influence a given design. The CAD model was again modified by the CAD operator in front of the participant according to his/her instructions.

When the chosen model had been modified to reflect the participant’s intent, the Genoform program was again used to generate alternative designs. Ten options were generated initially but participants were able to request more options. Again, those options felt to be interesting were imported back into Solidworks and compared to the participant’s own modified model. In this exercise Genoform was less able to suggest new ideas or directions, and a majority of participants preferred their own modified model to the Genoform derived options. In those who found the Genoform options useful, none chose a Genoform option as the ‘most favoured’ design, preferring instead to modify their own model further.

Concept of the Safe Model

Most industrial designers understand the safe model (sometimes also called a ‘keep away’ model) concept. It’s used to understand and visualise the minimum possible size of a product, whilst taking account of internal mechanisms and electronics, thickness of materials, tolerances, etc. A safe model of an MP3 player for example, would be created by ‘expanding’ the dimensions of the internal electronics by an amount equal to the thickness of the materials used in the outer casing, plus the distance required between the electronic components and the inside of the casing. It can also incorporate considerations of safety, ergonomics, marketing, etc; thus the safe model for a family car would be affected by the need for crash crumple zones, headroom in the passenger compartment and size of boot. A safe model does not dictate the final design of the product (though it does influence the final design), rather it indicates the absolute minimum volume a product can be when all other requirements are met.

Safe model of a touch-screen mobile phone

Example of a safe model highlighting a potential problem. In such a case the designer would need to redesign the product in this area, or ascertain whether the internal components could be moved

The concept of the safe model was used in two ways in the user trials. Firstly, having calculated a safe model for the USB memory stick, images of this safe model were given to participants during briefing of the drawing exercise. Participants were shown how to use these images as underlays which acted as guides during design. Provided the participant’s drawings were not smaller than the images of the safe model, their design would be realistically manufacturable. The safe model was also used in the two modelling exercises. By modelling the safe model inside Solidworks, any design could be superimposed to check if it satisfied the minimum volume requirements (Figure 4). Furthermore, when setting up the parameters for the operation of the Genoform software, the safe model placed lower limits on the extent to which Genoform could modify the design.

A participant’s ‘final’ design, with the safe model also shown

Genoform

Genoform is an iterative design exploration tool which operates as a plug-in module to Solidworks. It is produced by Genometri, a design technology company which develops specialised software, which was created as a spin-out company from the National University of Singapore. Genoform works by varying the dimensions of a Solidworks sketch; the designer can assign which sketches Genoform can manipulate, which dimensions within those sketches, and the degree to which the dimension can be varied. Thus it is possible (for example) to instruct Genoform to vary a dimension of 10mm by plus or minus 25% (i.e. a range of 7.5mm – 12.5mm). It is also possible to set maximum or minimum values, thus the designer may decide that the 10mm dimension can never be reduced, but can be increased by 45% (i.e. a range of 10mm – 14.5mm). In this way Genoform will run through the structure of a Solidworks CAD model, altering dimensions by a random factor within limits decided by the designer, and creating new iterations of the original CAD model. Genoform will create between one and one thousand variants, as the designer decides. The image below shows variants of a single design created by Genoform. My earlier post goes into more detail about how Genoform works, and you can download a trial copy here.

Design iterations created by Genoform. The original model is in the top left

Trial Participants

Ten participants were recruited from within the postgraduate student body of Loughborough University in the age ranges as shown in the table below. Participants were required to be computer literate as defined by daily engagement with five out of seven of the following activities: web browsing, e-mail, social networking, chat, VOIP (e.g. Skype), Microsoft Office software, other software. Participants were also required to self identify as “being interested in design and new technology”. As such, the profile of participants fitted with the findings of e.g. Bauer et al. (2007) and Füller and Bartl (2007) regarding the types of consumer most likely to engage in mass customisation. Furthermore, the trial excluded participants who had trained or were working as industrial designers.

The results and conclusions of the trial are discussed in the following post.

“We, the people, the untrained majority, are the future of design. We have the tools and we will be the masters of our personal environments… We’re not dumb consumers, we’re creative consumers… We won’t buy anything that isn’t uniquely specified by ourselves.” So begins an essay in July’s edition of Icon magazine, written by the editor Justin McGuirk.

Icon is a ‘glossy’ design mag in the same vein as something like Wallpaper, as such, whilst it’s read by designers, it’s aimed primarily at consumers. And so the article is something of an overview, and doesn’t go into enough depth to reveal anything which those with an interest in consumer design won’t have heard before. Nonetheless, there are some interesting opinions which clearly set out the ‘for’ and ‘against’ camps, and it demonstrates the extent to which fabbing, and consumer design are beginning to appear in the mainstream of design culture.

McGuirk begins by introducing sites such as Ponoko, Etsy, Shapeways and Materialise, and outlines how the cost of manufacturing is dramatically reduced when you move from mass-manufactured tooling to rapid manufacturing technologies. The article explains how the initial high investment which mass manufacturing requires leads to a fear of unpopular products, and thus to a design culture which seeks to minimise risk. At this point I felt like I was reading the introduction to my own thesis, so closely does it tie in to some of the things I’ve written in the past. McGuirk quotes Will Wright, designer of The Sims, who says

“It’s always surprised us [that] whenever we’ve given the players the opportunity to participate in the creation process, in every case they’ve exceeded our expectations. What they’ve done with the tools that we provide is always so far beyond what we thought was possible… When you have a million players all out there making stuff, against a small number of smart people always trying to do there best, it seems [the million] always win.”

The article also includes an interesting quote from Philippe Starck, the epitome perhaps of a ‘design superstar’, talking about the Mydeco venture (of which he is co-chairman). Starck’s feeling is that

“it doesn’t matter that 99 percent of design produced by the public is tat, because one percent will be brilliant – the kind of thing that professional designers are too well trained to come up with.”

It was at this point that I started to recognise a familiar flaw in the argument, one which professional designers are quick to spot. Because Mydeco is not about design, except in the sense that cheap-to-make TV programmes showing which colour to paint your lounge and which cushions fit are about design. Mydeco isn’t really about problem solving either, and it certainly isn’t about innovation; probably the best that can be said for it is that Mydeco encourages self expression. Not that self expression is a bad thing, but equating it with design just impoverishes and devalues what designers actually do. It doesn’t help consumers understand or become involved in design to imply that the most they can hope to achieve is the purchase of a more tasteful sofa.

Sarah Jessica Parker’s living style by Hazel Whittaker, voted the most popular room on Mydeco © Mydeco

The Starck quote also betrays an attitude which most designers (myself included), find difficult to shake off, namely that they are guardians of the right to decide what is ‘good’ design and what is not. By proposing that 99% of consumer design is tat and 1% is brilliant, it pre-supposes an ability to determine what is worthwhile and what is not, over and above the opinion of the person who created it for no-one except themself. I look at the image above and see a cute, anodyne pastiche, but at some point I have to confront the fact that this room has an average five star rating from those who’ve voted for it. Does my understanding and inculcation in the canon of modernist industrial design give me the authority to tell those voters whether this design is tat or brilliant?

McGuirk continues this theme by quoting from Jonathan Ive and Marc Newson, who spoke together at the London launch of Objectified. When questioned, Ive said that

“It sounds egalitarian to say in future people should design their own stuff, but that’s the designer’s job – to solve problems.”

Newson backed him up by claiming of digital design tools

“They’re just tools, they’re not the things that enable you to design something.”

Whilst I’m sure both Ive and Newson probably are quite dismissive of consumer design, to some extent the article is selectively quoting to strengthen it’s argument. Both were actually much more scathing of the way in which professional designers work, rather than untrained consumers, decrying the “awful arbitrariness of form” and the way in which a disconnection from the object results in designers doing “a lousy job”. I’m not sure that either would agree with the assertion that only professional designers are able to

“sit down and rethink a product from the inside out with a new approach to the way it’s used.”

And of course Eric von Hippel has a lifetime of research showing that often it’s only those consumers who really understand and push a product’s functionality who are able to innovate in ways which designers discount as irrelevant or unfeasible.

Consumer design concept for the iMac Mini © The Apple Collection

One of the more surprising quotes in the article comes from Bruce Sterling, who opines that

“People just don’t have the extra time in their day or the emotional energy for design…[Consumer design] doesn’t use design principles: it’s not user-centric, it doesn’t consider serviceability, it’s not going to clear anyone’s legal department.”

Sterling is a person who clearly loves designers… In Shaping Things he talks of Harry Bertoia and Marcel Breuer, of Raymond Loewy and Henry Dreyfuss and the Eames. He recounts meetings with Tucker Viemeister who said a lamp that Sterling designed was “good”, of his awe at Michael McCoy’s description of a chair, and of how Laurene and Constantin Boym’s book is “wittier and cleverer” than his own. Sterling claims never to have met a designer he didn’t like. Even when criticising the affectation of ‘designeriness’, Sterling can’t help defending designers by asserting that “a conspicuous lack of charlatanry and pretension means that little is happening in the designer’s cultural battlefield”. So it’s probably not surprising that he imbues designers with a certain mystique, believing they are capable of creativities out of the reach of normal mortals. But to argue that non-designers don’t have the emotional energy, that they can’t be bothered to design things, seems totally against the spirit of the future which Shaping Things describes. Indeed, the front cover of the book proclaims

“…this book is for designers and thinkers, engineers and scientists, entrepreneurs and financiers, and anyone else who might care to understand why things were once as they were, why things are as they are, and what things seem to be becoming.”

Shaping Things, MIT Press, Cambridge MA

So Sterling seems to be saying that people should be interested in what designers do, in the way that what designers do will change, and what that will mean for the way everyone experiences objects in future, but they should have no interest in actually trying these things out themselves. This, despite the fact that he predicts a time when fabricators “will rule the earth.” I just can’t understand how Sterling’s thoughts in Shaping Things are reconciled with his view of the public as passive consumers of design. Sterling distinguishes between great guitarists and “the vast majority of people who play the guitar [to] amuse themselves and a few friends”, why will the same distinction not be possible in design?

The article continues by considering what a future in which rapid manufacturing dominates will look like. It again picks up on some of my favoured themes, by predicting a time when products exist primarily as 3D data, downloadable, customisable, printable and repairable. Naomi Kaempfer of Materialise MGX suggests that rather than everyone owning a 3D printer, consumers will take their files on a memory stick to a high street copy shop. Adrian Bowyer of Rep Rap fame explains

“It’s like when we moved from an agricultural to a an industrial society. The manufacturing industry will go the same way as agriculture: it will account for very little of our economic activity”

Bowyer’s more interesting quote however, speaks of the uncertainty of what may come

“When people first thought that everyone might have a personal computer at home, what they envisaged was that people would do their accounts on it, not watch pornography and talk to their friends.”

This reminds me of something I read in Wired many years ago, though unfortunately I have no idea who originally said it. Talking about the introduction of the motor car, the piece told of how people imagined in the future everyone would be fat and unhealthy, by never walking anywhere. What no-one imagined was that people might drive to gyms in order to get on a machine which allowed them to walk in the same place for an hour. The future is usually no respecter of how things have been done in the past, and that’s what I find so strange when reading designer’s reactions to these new technologies. Over and again I see phrases like “designers will always…” and “people will never…” But ‘always’ and ‘never’ are so definite, they allow no possibility of an alternative, and as such they sound slightly desperate.

Which brings me, finally, to the one person in the article who doubts the future of rapid manufacturing for reasons other than ‘things have never been done like that before, so they never will in future.’ Tony Dunne is professor of Design Interactions at the RCA, one of the best known disruptors of conventional design thinking and, incidentally, my personal tutor when I was a student. Dunne sees 3D printers as the future equivalent of fax machines – technologies just waiting to be made obsolete by the equivalent of e-mail.

“[Fabbing is] a conceptual in-between stage that helps us understand products not coming from shops. The shift to biological technology – growing design – is more likely, but that’s still a long way off.”

Given that there are already laboratory experiments into the ‘printing’ of biological organs, he may be right. But how long do we wait for biological design, before saying rapid manufacturing isn’t an in-between stage, it’s a conceptual shift in its own right?

Customised fruit © Sarah King

Sarah King is a graphic designer living in London and a member of the graphic design collective Evening Tweed. I can’t really explain why I like these so much, it’s partly to do with the graphic style but also I think it’s to do with the incongruity – why bother customising something that’s cheap and will naturally degrade in a short space of time? Actually I could imagine a commercial version of this in the future: logos of suppliers laser marked on the fruit instead of those stupid little stickers they use today. But I’m sure the result won’t be something as beautiful as these.

Customised Nitto and Campagnolo bike components © Kosuke Masuda

I suspect these will divide the opinions of cycling enthusiasts, there’ll be some purists who hate the idea of messing with high quality components, while others will appreciate the time and skill involved. They’re not to my taste, but I like the way these intricate and decorative patterns mess with the ‘normal’ paradigm of sleek, serious engineering.

Customised shirt © Jody Barton

I can remember customising schoolbags by writing the names of favourite bands on them, and I can remember friends signing their names over each other shirts when we left school. Neither looked as accomplished as this though.

Customised Adidas tracksuit © Kasper Strömman

Kasper Strömman created this tracksuit for an exhibition, and draws on the colours and patterns of traditional Sami costume. It was hand-coloured using felt-tip pens and took a week to complete. My first reaction to this was that it’s somewhat insulting of a minority culture’s traditions, but as I considered it more I started to think that actually this is far better than non-Sami people dressing up for tourists, for example. Sami culture doesn’t exist only in a museum, it’s people are part of the modern world and maybe there are some who would think an artistic collaboration with Adidas would be kind of cool. But it’s difficult for me to know, I wonder what others think?

Customised Vans © Yuko Kondo

Customised Adidas © Atypyk

Sports shoes are maybe the one product which offers consumers more customisation possibilities than any other. Yuko Kondo’s customised trainers wouldn’t look out of place on sale by Ryz, but Atypyk’s customised sports shoes would be certain to attract the attention of both Nike and Adidas. I wonder if this counts as a pro-Nike or an anti-Nike statement (or pro- or anti-Adidas for that matter). I once worked in a studio which only allowed its designers to use PC’s, a number of them indicated their feelings by customising their laptops with vinyl stickers of Apple’s logo.

Customised body hair © Eduard Xandri

Finally, I don’t think there’s many people who could look at this without smiling. Less permanent than a tattoo, and admittedly not an option for everyone.

These are just a few examples from Customise This, there are many more from the designers shown as well as others I haven’t mentioned. If you’re looking for an overview of commercial customisation examples, this book isn’t for you. However as an introduction to the creative opportunities which customisation makes possible, it’s a great place to start.

This entry recently appeared on the FluidForms blog; many thanks to Andreas Jaritz for the opportunity…

In 2006, Fast Company published a debate article entitled Can Anyone be a Designer? Andrew Keen and Joe Duffy argued the pros and cons and in the end neither one managed to convince the other (the title of this piece was one of Keen’s closing arguments), but the article raised some interesting questions which services such as those offered by FluidForms are increasingly bringing to the attention of professional designers. Questions not only about who has the right to call themselves a ‘designer’, but also about how design itself is defined.

Joe Duffy began the debate by claiming that

“…everyone plays the part of a designer. Design decisions are made by most everyone, everyday – what should I wear today? What kind of car should I buy? What color? Which options? What about the new sofa for the family room? What design style? Which color and fabric? These actually are design decisions…”

This is an argument I used in an essay early in my design studies. I thought it was insightful at the time, but then I was only 17. Of course, it’s totally wrong. These aren’t design decisions, they’re consumer choices. As Douglas Coupland said in Generation X, shopping is not creating. Arguing that choosing what car to buy is a design decision is like arguing that taking an aspirin is a medical decision, and that therefore I’m playing the part of a doctor, as one CSven argued on ProductDesignForums recently.

Fiat 500 customisation toolkit © Fiat

Even if there might be a philosophical debate to be had about whether these are design decisions, it doesn’t really help in deciding whether anyone can be a designer. But I don’t believe most consumers see these as design decisions anyway; in my experience most people think of design in terms of taste and aesthetics, and believe that in our post-modern world, everyone is entitled to an opinion on what constitutes good or bad design. In one sense they are right: one of the things that distinguishes design from art is that design is primarily about solving problems. And so to know whether a particular design is good or bad, you have to ask the people who have used it. But expecting consumers to have an opinion on whether a design is ‘good’, on whether one design solves a problem better than another, is a long way from claiming those consumers are themselves designers.

In Duffy’s definition though, design isn’t about problem solving, it’s about consumer choice, and in his opinion this is a good thing.

“As Americans act more like designers, they learn more about the design process, and in exploring it on their own terms, they gain a greater appreciation for the talent that it takes to practice it at the highest levels. They also achieve a better understanding of its importance in their lives.”

If people really were to act more like designers, they might indeed come to a better understanding of why design is important, both aesthetically and functionally. But this is where FluidForms, and other companies which offer customisation of products, raise some interesting questions. By offering tools to consumers which make the unique design of products easier does this raise the consumer’s appreciation of the designer’s skill?  After all, people don’t usually come to appreciate things that are easy, they appreciate the skills involved in doing something they themselves find difficult.

Customised PC by Katsuya Matsumura

This opinion, that design isn’t actually that difficult, is one that understandably raises the hackles of design professionals. On a recent thread on Core77, a website and forum for industrial designers, one poster insisted that most design is much, much simpler than gourmet cooking. That sparked off a whole debate, much of it quite disparaging, about consumers who ‘self-design’ products. Some of the comments included:

“A small percentage of consumers may want to choose colors on their sneakers, or push and pull a few points on a nurb surface for a cell phone, but you comment comes off as pretty ignorant as to what design actually is.”

“The rapid prototyping machine in many ways is no different than the hot glue gun, it allows crafters to exercise their wimsy and their perspective, some of which is good, most horrid.”

“Myspace is a perfect example of what happens when you put design into the hands of everyone. A huge percentage of the pages on myspace are unusable/unreadable. Personal fabrication will be no different… on balance… a big, ugly mess.”

“It comes down to this, 75% of people are herd beasts, and buy what others in their social groups have/want.”

The way these comments are so dismissive of consumers-as-designers to a large extent demonstrates the degree to which professional designers feel their work is misunderstood. In the field of mass customisation this is also very common, sites such as NikeID (‘toolkits’ in the mass customisation jargon), are regularly referred to as offering consumers the opportunity to design their own products. Andrew Keen picks up on this in his arguments in the Fast Company article:

“The consequence of this design democracy is an ugly spectacle of deep purples and electric oranges. It’s a culture of me-me-me: my hideously personalized car, my hideously personalized sofa, my hideously personalized house. It’s that fat woman in the tight dress that only exaggerates her obesity. It’s that loud pick-up truck with the tinted windows and the tastelessly sexualized exhaust pipe.”

Phantasy Landscape, 1970 © Verner Panton

I sense some faux outrage here. But anyway, the question is, whose ugliness? If Wallpaper magazine was insisting deep purple and electric orange were cool, would Keen pick another example? What’s being described here is quite clearly taste, not design. And those who are most disturbed by consumers exhibiting their own choices are always those who consider themselves arbiters of ‘good’ taste, the people who see their own influence waning as consumers increasingly make decisions for themselves.

In the end, the question of whether anyone can be a designer comes down to the way in which design is defined. Professional designers think of it as a process which encompasses everything from consumer research and blue-sky concepting to the constraints imposed by manufacturing. In contrast, consumers tend to understand design as a noun, rather than a verb – something which is added to a product rather than something which fundamentally decides it. New manufacturing technologies, and the companies which are giving consumers access to them, will not turn consumers into designers. But they will allow consumers to act creatively to interact with a product and make decisions about its form and function. For me, that’s better than just shopping.

Note: since this article was written another discussion has taken place on Core77 which covers similar issues, you can read it here.

Following on from Shapeways, which was spun out of a Philips research project, another Eindhoven-based company offering consumers the opportunity to design and manufacture their own products is studio:ludens. Started by Wouter Walmink and Alexander Rulkens, studio:ludens’ aim is to give people “the tools to create by using our skills as designers and our knowledge about the production process.” Like Shapeways, and ZapFab and FluidForms before them, studio:ludens have developed a set of interface tools which guide consumers through the creation of a product. Where studio:ludens shines though is in the quality of those tools, which without doubt are the most elegant and polished of all those I’ve seen so far.

Currently two design tools are available, the first, epa:kato, creates individualised drinks coasters, whereas lux:creator (still currently in development) allows consumers to design their own lamps. Both tools are Flash based which means clicking the browser’s back button will take you out of the tool, losing any designs that haven’t been saved. Causing the tool to automatically open in a new window would be an easy way to solve this.

The start point of epa:kato, the coaster design tool © studio:ludens

On starting the coaster design tool the user is presented with a square with a number of control points. This seems relatively familiar to anyone who’s used Illustrator or something similar, although they work in a slightly different way. As the points are dragged the shape deforms, but symmetrically, depending on which of the tiling patterns have been selected. This means that although you are controlling where the points are dragged, the overall shapes that are created are never entirely predictable. Clicking and dragging on the handle between the main control points introduces a new control point, by which means the complexity of the shape can quickly be increased, while double-clicking a control point deletes it.

As control points are moved the shape updates according to the symmetry of the chosen style © studio:ludens

What also increases the unpredictability of the design is the fact that the coasters are intended to tessellate. Whether this is an intentional design feature, or has been driven by the need to reduce waste when the coasters are manufactured, the result is a tool where you have the impression of influencing the design rather than dictating it. Once I got over the need to carefully control the design, I found myself designing in a much more playful manner, pulling points around just to see what happened. The downside though, is that without an ‘undo’ button it’s easy to make a change to the shape and then not be able to get back to a previous state.

Crossing lines highlighted in red © studio:ludens

The instructions for epa:kato explain that thin sections of material and lines which cross (producing ‘orphan’ objects) aren’t permissible. The tool has a nice way of showing where lines cross: a glowing red circle which highlights the offending area. However there doesn’t seem to be any indication of how thin a section can be, and of course even if a section is manufacturable, it may break easily in use. Designs which are submitted for purchase are checked before they are produced, but an indication of too-thin sections would be a good addition to the tool.

Snakes in a Plane, a design in the epa:kato gallery © studio:ludens

Registering at the site allows users to upload designs to a gallery, and is necessary before purchasing a design. It’s also possible to choose another user’s design and either modify it or buy it unaltered. Since launching the epa:kato service studio:ludens have added a feature which allows customers to add laser engraved text in a number of different fonts, further increasing the possibilities for customisation.

Modified Snakes in a Plane, with text added © studio:ludens

lux:sculptor, the second design tool offered by studio:ludens, takes the notion of unpredictable design to another level. On first entering the tool you’re presented with a wireframe representation of what looks like a table lamp. There are two ways to influence the design of the lamp, the first of which is to create ‘waves’ through the wireframe.

The start point of lux:sculptor, the lamp design tool © studio:ludens

There are five wave types to choose from, whose size can be changed using the editing tools. Waves are created using the computer keyboard, the top row of letters (Q, W, E… up to P) make make clockwise rotating waves of increasing frequency, the middle row of letters creates stationary waves, and the bottom row of letters creates anti-clockwise rotating waves. What really adds to the unpredictability is that keys can be pressed simultaneously, which will overlay one set of waves on top of another. As you remove your fingers from keys the waves die away, and designs are ‘frozen’ by pressing the space bar.

Waves percolating through the wireframe © studio:ludens

There is something quite compelling about creating the waves and watching the effect they have on the animated wireframe lamp. However as a design tool I found this even more difficult to like than epa:kato. For one thing it’s very difficult to combine the different wave shapes, you need to be pressing keys with one hand whilst also clicking a wave shape icon with the mouse. What’s more, I kept noticing forms that I liked, but the nature of the tool is such that the ‘design’ is already fading away even as you notice it.

The lamp’s profile is changed by dragging control points on the highlighted curve © studio:ludens

The next stage is to shape the profile of the lamp. This is very similar to the idea first implemented by FluidForms, whereby control points on a profile can be dragged to change the overall shape. Personally I found the order of the process (wave forms, then shape) a little illogical, given that the shape of the lamp is a ‘macro’ consideration, and the shape of the waves is a ‘micro’ one, though I’m not sure that this would bother everyone.

lux:sculptor is still in development and so not all features are working fully. As with epa:kato there is a gallery of designs submitted by other users, but currently these can’t be loaded into the design tool and modified. It’s also not completely clear how the lamps will be manufactured; at first I had assumed some kind of additive process such as SLS or SLA, but later it occurred to me that the lamp could be built up from a series of laser cut pieces, which would explain the wireframe style of the design tool.

Whether studio:ludens can build a successful business from this type of consumer design remains to be seen. I can’t stress enough how impressed I was by the quality of the tools – they’re fast, easy to understand and look good –  and I enjoyed interacting with them to create objects. But I can’t help wondering whether consumers will be frustrated by not being able to control the fine detail of their designs. Somehow epa:kato and lux:sculptor feel like experiments in the process of design, which isn’t a bad thing at all, but might not be what consumers are looking for. If that’s your kind of thing though, take a look at this post on the studio:ludens blog: an experiment to create a 3D form based on the ’shape’ of a persons voice.

I was recently interviewed by Duann Scott for Ponoko’s blog. He was kind enough not to edit my replies which meant the complete interview was spread over three posts. But now it’s been on Ponoko for a few days I’m putting here in it’s entirety:

What specifically brought on the idea to start incorporating consumer involvement into product design?

I’d always been interested in designing for people who are at the fringes of mainstream consumerism. When I was at the RCA my personal tutor was Tony Dunne, and he got me interested in the idea of looking at how people subvert products, (ab)use them in ways that weren’t intended by the designer. A mundane example is using a screw driver to open a tin of paint, a more ‘colourful’ example is using a vacuum cleaner as a sex aid. His theory was that you could learn a lot by looking at the way people invent new uses for products. Nowadays this isn’t particularly controversial, Eric von Hippel has written a lot about how mountain biking and kite surfing were ‘invented’ by people abusing existing products, but at the time it seemed very new, at least to me.

Gary Fisher (right) and friends were instrumental in the invention of the mountain bike © Trek Bicycle Corporation

When I first started at Nokia there wasn’t much opportunity to put these ideas into practice, at least not at first. But Nokia was the first company to introduce customisation into mobile phones in the form of user-changeable covers. That led to a lot of concepting exercises in the design team, thinking about how customisation could be expanded further. I guess that’s where I first started to realise the logical conclusion of consumers customising products is consumers designing their own products. But at the time there didn’t seem to be any way it could be possible.

What from this experience inspired you to undertake your PhD into consumer created designs?

To be honest, that wasn’t the focus of the PhD when I started. It began with me looking at the way rapid manufacturing technologies would change the industrial design process, and I was thinking more along the lines of consumers working alongside designers, what’s usually called user-centred design. Again whilst I was at Nokia, I had run a project where we worked with professional sports people to design a range of products; we interviewed them at the beginning of the project, and then repeatedly asked them to review the designs and models and to give their feedback. But as my PhD research continued, I started to realise that the user-centred design process is still a process where the designer is in control, where the designer is the ‘expert’ and has the power to veto features or suggestions from the user. And it became clear that the reason for this is that the designer has access to the means of production, ie factories and machines, which the user does not. Rapid manufacturing changes that completely. When 3D printers are available to consumers, they will begin to design and make their own products whether professional designers like it or not.

Current rapid prototyping techniques seem to be the starting point for consumer driven design outside of the current standard paradigm which in most cases is really just multiple choice. What do you see the major limitations of an RM model once the cost is reduced/out of the equation?

There are two main ones, which both come down to the question of ‘quality’. The first is that the surface finish of parts made by rapid prototyping or rapid manufacturing is relatively poor compared to mass manufactured products: they tend to have ridges, or rough surfaces, and the colours are limited. But these are gradually improving, and it’s worth remembering that injection moulding is a process that’s 140 years old. 3D printers and other rapid manufacturing technologies are still in their infancy by comparison. The second limitation is the tools that consumers have available to design their own products. This is hard enough in 2D, which is why I imagine Ponoko has introduced Photomake, for people who can’t use Adobe Illustrator. 3D Computer Aided Design is much harder to learn, most designers take at least three years to get good at a single CAD package. So there needs to be much simpler modelling tools, and that’s now a significant part of my research. But again there are signs that things are moving: Google SketchUp and 3DVia Shape are undoubtedly consumer-oriented, and Shapeways Creator and FluidForms show some interesting approaches. I also think there’s a hell of a lot to learn from Spore Creature Creator, in the way it both helps and restricts you in designing new creatures.

‘Spike’ by Thanos Bakopoulos (my eight year old nephew), created with the Spore Creature Creator © Electronic Arts

One thing that’s important about ‘quality’ though, is that it depends how you view things. Consumer culture is primarily visual, and we judge the quality of products, at least in the first instance, by how how they look. We’ve come to judge the quality of a product by it’s appearance, and in that sense the production values of mass manufacture are a lot higher than those of rapid manufacture. But think of another category such as film. Blair Witch Project or 28 Days Later or Dogville had much lower production values than a typical Hollywood blockbuster, but people ignored the rough edges and focussed on the quality of the idea rather than the polish of the celebrities or special effects. I think that when we can make products in much lower volumes, they will be better able to meet the needs of individuals rather than the mass market which products are aimed at nowadays. And it could be that if a product is designed specifically for you, especially if you’ve designed it yourself, those rough edges won’t be as important as the idea behind the product.

The Blair Witch Project cost only $22,000 to make © Artisan Entertainment

What do you see as the best examples of mass customisation currently available?

It’s not one that gets mentioned very often, but I find the Build-A-Bear concept really interesting. It seems to understand the target market very well, and offers the right degree of customisation, what I mean is the level of complexity is just right for the target audience. The experience of using the website is entirely consistent with the company’s overall branding, which in many other examples isn’t the case. Also the fact that there are both web-based and physical stores. It starts me wondering whether one day you’ll be able to visit an Apple store and design and make your own iPod right there.

© Build-A-Bear Workshop Inc

Another example I really like is MySpace, which isn’t often though of as an example of mass customisation. But actually it offers a platform for people to design their own sites, so I think there’s a lot to learn from the way it’s used. People aren’t designing pages based on what a mass audience will like, it’s for a very limited audience – the user and their friends. When graphic designers or usability experts look at MySpace they recoil in horror! And it’s true, most of the pages are terrible. But as far as the user is concerned it’s perfect, they couldn’t care less what the ‘experts’ think. That kind of ‘punk’ attitude of just going out and doing it appeals to me a lot.

How important is the retention of brand integrity in the equation of product aesthetics if consumers have the power to fundamentally alter a products design? ie. when does a customised nokia phone cease to be a nokia??

It’s a really important question, and I think there are two ways that brands can go. As I said, when consumers gain control of the means of production, they will start to do these things, design and customise and alter a product’s appearance, whether designers and brands like it or not. So one option is for brands to try and stamp it out, by making it harder to do those things, and by enforcing copyright etc in the courts. But my feeling is that option is doomed to fail – when people can distribute CAD files as easily as MP3 files, for free, brands will find themselves in the same situation as record companies. And we know that DRM and threatening P2P hosts has had no effect on file sharing. So the other option is to find a business model which embraces it.

One way is similar to the NikeID model: build a ‘platform’, then make it easy for people to design a unique product but use restrictions to ensure brand integrity remains. Depending on which shoe you choose to customise, Nike restrict the colour options such that it’s harder to make a ‘mistake’, and harder to compromise the brand’s integrity. Another model is to open things up, allow people to do what they want, but make it clear the brand bears no responsibility for the outcome. This is similar to computer games companies releasing software developer’s kits, which make it easy to mod the game, but with the result that some mods are rubbish, some don’t work, some infringe other companys’ copyright, and some are really good. I’m sure there are other ways to do it also, and different companies will take different approaches. But we should probably understand that modern-day branding is a result of mass manufacture and mass consumerism (one of my favourite quotes is that cowboys invented branding because all their cows looked the same). We shouldn’t expect the same rules to apply when it’s possible to make products in extremely low volumes, even one-offs.

NikeID © Nike

Do you see the role of the industrial designer fundamentally changing or do you believe it will only be in niche markets where mass customisation processes will need to be incorporated into design practice?

It’s always tempting when imagining the future to think that new technologies will kill off old ways of doing things. But that’s rarely true, and even where it is it takes a long time. There are still a lot of people writing letters, despite e-mail and text messaging. TV didn’t kill radio (and the internet has made it stronger), and industrial farming didn’t kill off organic farming, either in the rich first world or the poor third world. So I would be reluctant to say that all industrial design practice will fundamentally change. But having said that, the job of some designers will be very different to their job today. Some will be niche, designing only for small specialised markets. Some will be designing the platforms that allow consumers to design their own products, deciding which elements of a product can be changed and which are fixed. And some people will practice industrial design even though they may not be trained and it may not be their full time job. Mass production will be around for a long time though, particularly for ‘low value’ items such as packaging, and those objects will likely be designed in a similar way as today.

Do you believe that the future of mass customisation for the consumer market will be primarily to modify/develop product use/function or aesthetics/form.

That’s a really difficult one, and I’m not sure I know the answer. In many ways it’s easier to change the way a physical product looks than the way it functions, because you can visualise a product’s appearance on a computer screen, but you need to use it before you know if the function has improved or deteriorated. Then again there’s a lot of research which suggests consumers place much more value in a product which works exactly as they want, rather than one which looks the way they like. So I could imagine groups or forums or wikis springing up, dedicated to finding the best way to improve a product’s function, posting findings and results and tips for ‘noobs’, with different solutions solving different needs. But improving function is more likely to be a group undertaking I think, rather than one which individual consumers carry out.

So in the same way that only a minority are actually involved in the coding of Firefox, compared to those who download it (and change its appearance), maybe only a minority actually work on improving the function of a product compared to those who download the CAD file, change the way it looks and print it out. In that sense there might be much more customisation of appearance, but the value that is appeciated the most is in the improved functionality.

Without giving away any IP or compromising your research, what do you see as the future of consumer driven design?

I guess, unhelpfully , I would say there isn’t just one future but a number of different ones. One will be the idea of the corporation or brand encouraging users to design on top of its platform – the NikeID model; another is where consumers run riot doing whatever they can get away with – the MySpace model; and yet another is where consumers collaborate and share skills – the Wikipedia crowd sourcing model. I don’t know which of these will survive or if an entirely new way of working will emerge. I’d say Ponoko is closest to the MySpace approach, and I’d say this is a good thing though others may disagree! Probably my broad statement would be that when you put the means of production in the hands of consumers, they do things which traditional manufacturers cannot even dream of.

Shapeways, the consumer-oriented digital manufacturing service, has received a lot of positive press since it was recently spun out of Philips Lifestyle Incubator. Originally in closed beta testing limited to 500 participants (though this seems to have been relaxed – I had no problems registering), Shapeways allows users to upload designs and receive a quote for the model’s manufacture in a number of different materials. Accepted file formats include .stl, .dae and .x3d, and the maximum file size is 64Mb which seems pretty huge – I very rarely create a full assembly in .stl which is even half that size. However the maximum number of polygons is 250,000 (due apparently to the processing time and the need to display models on computers without high-end graphics cards), and the problem of a model not being accepted occurs quite frequently in the Shapeways forums. But given that Shapeways is still in beta it seems to be working well, and the enthusiasm with which it has been received by some users is encouraging for those of us who argue that there’s a demand from consumers for the ability to design and manufacture their own products.

Nonetheless, one of the requirements for using Shapeways is a knowledge of CAD in order to output a 3D model in one of the formats mentioned above. As I have argued previously, knowledge of CAD is the gateway to manufacture (assuming we are not talking about craft production), and without that knowledge it doesn’t matter how easy it is to upload and pay for a model to be produced, it’s not going to be embraced by consumers without the time or interest to learn a 3D modelling program. This is one of the strengths of Ponoko, whose laser-cutting manufacturing method allows users to supply files in .eps format from 2D drawing programs which far more people are familiar with. But it seems Shapeways are attempting to address this issue with the launch of their Creator service.

Light Poem lamp © Shapeways

Essentially, the Creator service allows users to customise the shape of a pre-designed object. Currently only one product is available, what Shapeways calls the Light Poem lamp, which is based on Philips’ Imageo LED lamps; this in itself is an interesting approach, since it could be thought of as an early instance of a manufacturer encouraging the consumer modification of its products. Creator runs as a Javascript application, and on opening the Light Poem model the user is presented with a 3D model of the lamp, with a default text of “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”. The lamp is customised by changing the text, and by choosing from a number of fonts.

Default Creator Light Poem configuration © Shapeways
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The first thing I noticed when running Creator was how crude and unpolished it looks. This may be due to the beta status of the project, but the rectangular boxes and non-anti aliased text give it a distinctly un-Web 2.0 feeling. The model can only be rotated using the arrow navigation symbols, rather than left click and drag with a mouse, and although a mouse wheel will zoom in and out, the model ‘freezes’ if you get too close, which then requires the view to be reset. Worst of all in my opinion, clicking ‘Help’ takes you to a web page which contains no articles relating to Creator.

The first stage in customising the lamp is to create your own text, which is typed in the box at the top right of the screen. Although the model updates quickly to show how your text translates to the 3D object, I immediately became frustrated by the limitations placed on the text that can be used. To begin with, only upper case and numerals are allowed – lower case and punctuation won’t work. ‘Foreign’ letters and those which use accents are similarly prohibited, and whilst the text editor will accept spaces, it won’t allow carriage returns. I can understand the probable reasons for this: one of the manufacturing problems is trying to ensure the structural integrity of the product, and lower case letters with their ascenders and descenders would make this difficult. Punctuation would cause similar difficulties – a full stop or comma has a lot of surrounding space which might weaken the structure – though it is harder to understand why accented letters are not allowed, particularly as this pretty much limits the appeal to only those who want to write in English. In short, without punctuation and the ability to start a new line, what is written never feels like poetry, more like a slogan.

Creator warns if the model is likely to be structurally problematic © Shapeways

The choice of fonts is relatively limited, there are five, but the inclusion of Gill Sans means you can start to subvert things a bit. Without serifs, ‘1′ appears as a block when written, thus the model below:

Light Poem from a pattern of ‘1’s in the default font
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changes dramatically when the font is changed to Gill Sans:

Light Poem from a pattern of ‘1’s in Gill Sans
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Having decided on the text, the next stage is to decide the ‘Wrapping Style’ – is the text horizontal or spiralled? This is a fairly simple choice, but again it demonstrates how the Creator service has been poorly implemented. In some instances, swapping from spiral to horizontal, or vice versa, will create problems where a structurally sound object in one configuration becomes unsound in another (as gaps appear, or letters hang in mid-air). To fix this means going back a step, when it would have been perfectly simple to include the wrapping style choice in the first step, along with the choice of font. This is particularly annoying if you continue to the third stage – choosing the material – and then decide you want to change a word or the font, because stage one will have been frozen; the only option is to exit the application and restart it. And this is even more frustrating when you realise that actually there is no choice of material, all that’s on offer is ‘white, strong and flexible’.

Text can be oriented in a spiral or a set of rings
Click image to view full size

If this sounds like harsh criticism that is unfortunate, because I would very much like to see this initiative succeed – if nothing else it will make some of the central arguments of my thesis easier to sustain! And if these are issues which beta testing is intended to highlight, then it could be they will be attended to quickly. But I find it difficult to understand why the Creator service looks and performs poorly, when the Shapeways site in general has none of these problems. The Creator is intended for those with no 3D modelling skills, and who likely have no experience of rapid manufacturing; it seems to me these are exactly the people who will be put off by a frustrating user experience. A bit more time spent polishing the user interface might have highlighted and resolved these concerns earlier.

One of the issues I am continually running into in the course of my research is that of brand image, and how manufacturers might try to protect or control their brand in a future where consumers can manipulate and control a product’s form. And it’s easy to demonstrate what brands might be up against using Creator. First of all, what does a manufacturer define as an acceptable product?

Light Poem profanity
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Nike gained a fair amount of unwanted publicity when MIT student Jonah Peretti tried to order a pair of NikeID trainers with “Sweat Shop” stitched on the heel, a lesson they apparently learned as it is now impossible to specify “Sweat” (”Shop” is okay), along with profanities and, apparently, words from gang culture. The schoolboy in me was happy to discover that Creator has no such filters, and will allow you to design a lamp with as much swearing or offensiveness as you like. Whether Shapeways would actually make a product to such a specification is another question. In a reply to a forum question about X-rated designs, Joris Peels who is Shapeways community manager suggests such models would be okay, provided they were not publicly shared, but I could imagine this attitude might change if a media campaign were started of the type that the internet seems to attract. Then imagine a future where it is possible to custom design sex toys or replica hand guns, and it seems inevitable that Shapeways or other services will have to employ a significant degree of censorship.

The second question, of course, concerns copyright. Shapeways terms and conditions make no reference to copyright infringement, though apparently a legal framework around the service is being drafted. I have little doubt that copyright infringement will be prohibited, but this is obviously easier to spot in some instances than others, and I wonder who would bear responsibility in cases where copyright was infringed? Or more bluntly, who would be sued – the customer who has paid for the object, or Shapeways who have profited from selling it? Perhaps Prince, who seems to have an aversion to anyone using his work, would take offence to a Light Poem lamp which used the lyrics to “Let’s Go Crazy”. In which case, judging by past behaviour (YouTube, Ebay), he would go after the ‘host’ rather than the customer.

Light Poem from the lyrics to “Let’s Go Crazy” © Prince, reproduced under the provision of “Fair Use”
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For other examples of user customisation of a product’s form, visit Zapfab and FluidForms.

First of all, Spore has released it’s Creature Creator in advance of the full release of the game in early September, available as a trial version or for purchase. I’ve talked about Spore previously for the way it will introduce consumers to 3D design tools, as well as indicating a direction CAD software might take to simplify and guide the user through the creation of a product. But what’s also interesting is that the creatures being created by users now will be used in the game when it’s launched. In other words, the players of the game are creating the content of the game, and what’s more some of them (those who buy the full version of the Creature Creator) are paying for the privilege. It’s another example of the degree to which consumers are willing to engage with a brand’s product creation process if the experience is compelling. There’s a good discussion about the Creature Creator at Product Design Forums, plus a YouTube movie which shows how to design your own creature.

Second is an opinion piece entitled ‘Home Manufacturing in the Future‘ by Terry Wohlers, author of the annual Wohler’s Report into the state of the rapid prototyping / rapid manufacturing industry. Wohler’s view is that the future won’t see consumers printing products (or parts of products) at home because a) it’s cheaper to go buy a new product, b) the printer won’t be capable of using the right materials and c) the 3D data will be too complex to create or download. Instead, Wohlers believes, home manfacturing will see the rise of ‘mini factories’, in which start up businesses are able to build low-risk manufacturing plants in their basements or garages.

The example Wohlers uses is perhaps prejudicial to his argument: a toaster, which isn’t likely to be an item consumers see as highly desirable in terms of customisation, and which requires high performance plastics to withstand the heat. But primarily my problem with this viewpoint is that while it may actually be right, it’s for the wrong reasons. Home fabrication will fail to take off if the quality of product it’s possible to produce doesn’t match that of other manufacturing methods. That may be quality in a production sense, but also quality from a design, engineering or branding perspective. And even if that’s the case, it doesn’t exclude the possibility of consumers designing or customising based on existing products, and using these local factories purely as service providers to supply their bespoke parts.

Still on the theme of rapid manufacturing, July 9th and 10th sees the third International Rapid Manufacturing conference at Loughborough University. Speakers include Frank Piller on the theme of ‘Making Mass Customisation Work’; Dr Ian Campbell, who is my PhD supervisor, and whose presentation is entitled ‘Design for Rapid Manufacturing in an SME Environment’; and Lionel Dean of Future Factories, who’ll be discussing ‘the business issues surrounding the use of RM in design led consumer products.’

If you’re an industrial designer the chances are you’ll know of the Core77 website. A couple of weeks ago someone asked a question on the Core77 forum regarding ‘Personal fabrication and how it will impact ID‘, which sparked an interesting discussion. By which I mean the reaction of some of those posting was interesting: although the comments became a little less hostile as the discussion progressed, the overall tone was almost entirely negative. Here’s a few examples of the opinions expressed:

“A small percentage of consumers may want to choose colors on their sneakers, or push and pull a few points on a nurb surface for a cell phone, but you comment comes off as pretty ignorant as to what design actually is.”

“The rapid protoyping machine in many ways is no different than the hot glue gun, it allows crafters to excercise their wimsy and their perspective, some of wich is good, most horrid.”

“Myspace is a perfect example of what happens when you put design into the hands of everyone. A huge percentage of the pages on myspace are unusable/unreadable. Personal fabrication will be no different… on balance… a big, ugly mess.”

“you might be able to “design” a 1/2 decent product (brick, rock, ashtray) but can you spec, prototype, debug, and the rest of the whole list…nope didtn think so unless its in the ashtray world.”

It’s hardly surprising that practising designers believe themselves able to design better products that untrained consumers. But what I wasn’t necessarily expecting was the barely concealed contempt with which designers regarded those consumers’ attempts at creativity. These are, after all, the same consumers who are buying the results of those designers’ work; what does it say of a designer’s skill if products are selling to creatively illiterate users?

The other thing I found interesting was the refusal of some (though not all) to acknowledge that these technologies might change the way designers worked. I’ve always believed that it’s essential for designers to analyse and understand trends that will affect future society, but a number of posters seemed unwilling even to contemplate change in their own profession. Is the comment below a well considered opinion or just the hope that this is how things will be?

“Designers are not going anywhere and given the complexity of modern objects from footwear to gadgets, i don’t expect RP or other technology having any effect on democratizing design to a point where “everyone is a designer”.

Finally, on a somewhat lighter note, M&M’s have just launched an updated version of their custom candy service. It’s now possible to upload images, which a ‘graphic specialist’ will tweak in order to create an image which will print well on the small sweets. There’s not too many examples yet, but the My M&M’s service continues to be the best example I know of how customisation can add value to low cost items.