Unto This Last is a furniture studio and workshop, based on two sites in London. Its name comes from the title of a book by John Ruskin, published in 1862, in which he advocated a return to localised, craftsman/artisan workshops as an antidote to the conditions which industrialisation had imposed on much of Britain’s working class. As a fore-runner of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement, Ruskin’s thoughts were influential, but the rising standard of living which mass manufacturing brought to the West meant that his pleas were ultimately seen as anachronistic. But according to Olivier Geoffrey, founder of Unto This Last, CNC machining and on-demand manufacturing open up possibilities for the craftsman in the community which may yet see Ruskin’s vision realised.

D Chair © Unto This Last

For the last month or so I have been teaching on the MA Industrial Design course at Central St Martins in London, on a project titled “manufacturing and consumption futures”. The project  is intended to encourage students to research the opportunities which new production methods allow for more personalised products, to propose and refine a system of their own, and ultimately to prototype the system itself. I hope to show some of the outcomes in a later post, but as part of the research for the project students were invited to Unto This Last’s Brick Lane workshop, to look around and to quiz Olivier about his philosophy.

Facet Sideboard © Unto This Last

Olivier began by explaining how, if you’re engaged in design, you’re inevitably bound up in the distribution systems of the products you’re designing. A designer working at Ikea, for example, doesn’t design flat pack furniture just for the sake of it, or even because it’s part of the Ikea brand experience. Flat pack systems allow customers to transport their purchases home from the store and then assemble the furniture themselves, which is crucial for keeping costs down. Whereas a designer working for Cassina knows that the assembly and transportation costs will be tied up in the price the furniture, and can therefore rely on skilled craftsmen using specialised tools to build a piece of furniture, rather than an untrained consumer with an allen key.

Honeycomb Shelves © Unto This Last

Unto This Last’s designs are similarly a reflection and a result of distribution systems and logistics. A customer who visits the store can see some examples of the products on sale, but with the exception of a few small gift items, no products are held in stock, instead they are manufactured to order. This reduces the costs of storage and inventory, whilst also allowing the company to carry more than 2000 items its catalogue. Orders are made in-store and delivered pre-assembled, and because the furniture is shipped direct from the store it means packaging is also greatly reduced. In this way, by using digital manufacturing processes and some of the techniques recognisable from other mass customisation initiatives, Unto This Last can offer custom-made furniture at close to mass-production prices.

Nurbs Coffee Table © Unto This Last

Unto This Last uses laminated birch ply for all its products. Clearly the material has properties, both visual and functional, which many designers in the past have found interesting, and it would probably be naive to suggest that the only reason for using the material is its fit within Unto This Last’s distribution chain. Nonetheless, it is remarkably suitable for helping Olivier realise his vision. To begin with plywood is very dimensionally stable, and has uniform properties in all directions (unlike natural timbers, where grain and knots affect the strength and shape of the material). It also doesn’t shrink. This means that parts can be machined on a CNC router with a high degree of accuracy (typically Unto This Last manufacture to tolerances of 0.1mm); such precision also simplifies the process of assembling the finished furniture piece – less finishing is required, and glue dries under the natural pressure of the fit, without the need for clamping. Using laminates also allows Unto This Last to effectively design its own materials – both workshops (in Brick Lane and Battersea) have presses for applying ’standard’ veneers of oak, walnut, maple and a melamine coated surface, as well as allowing experimentation with bespoke surfaces such as fabric, leather and paper.

The CNC router used at Unto This Last’s Brick Lane workshop

The use of birch ply laminates undoubtedly plays a part in the consumer acceptance of this way of working – because the material is relatively uniform it means a customer can be confident that the piece of furniture delivered to them will be virtually identical to the one they saw on display. But the material also has a significant impact on the both the designs of Unto This Last’s furniture, and the process of design which leads to them. Parts are designed which anticipate the requirements of production, they incorporate tapers, chamfers, clearances etc which can be machined rather than relying on a furniture maker to create joints and fixtures by hand. Design elements which are proven to work on one product are reused in new products, and so a vocabulary, both technical and aesthetic, has built up. All of Unto This Last’s products are built in Solidworks, and by using equation driven parameters a design can easily be modified such that changing one dimension will cause all other critical dimensions to update. The company has also put a significant amount of effort into developing custom API’s to calculate the most efficient way of laying out parts before they are machined.

Pierre, a designer at Unto This Last, demonstrates a CAD model of a table

How the constituent parts of a fully assembled piece of furniture are machined turns out to be a significant issue for Unto This Last. Not only does it make sense to save costs by wasting as little of a laminated sheet as possible, businesses in London have to pay per kg of waste, which provides another incentive to make efficient use of each sheet. Typically the workshop will take two weeks worth of orders, computer software then creates a ‘cutting map’ for each sheet of laminate required. Where it’s not possible to use an area of the sheet for furniture that has been ordered, smaller gift items are incorporated into the cutting map to fill up the empty space. Again this demonstrates how Unto This Last are almost obsessive in the use of digital technologies to refine the manufacturing process; this is the key difference, Olivier explained, to more expensive furniture makers where a significant amount of cost is tied up in waste and poorly optimized logistics.

Tea-Light Candle Holders © Unto This Last

Certainly the concept of a craft workshop in the centre of a city, enabled by digital technologies, where customers can see and hear and smell custom furniture being made, seems to have struck a chord: 40% of customers come from the recommendations of past clients, and a further 40% are people who just happen to see the store and are interested enough to look in. But Unto This Last goes against the flow of most mass customisation enterprises, which tend to be impersonal and usually offer no contact with the designer, and where cost reductions are achieved by off-shoring to faceless factories rather than opening an atelier in the middle of London. Just how successful Unto This Last is at realising Ruskin’s vision remains to be seen, but we’d have more interesting cities, and more interested customers, if it showed the way for others to follow.

Thanks to Olivier and Pierre for their time, and Ben Hughes for arranging the visit.

Detail of Tapered Ply Table © Unto This Last

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.

Day two of the conference started with a keynote by David Gross and Jeff Beaver of Zazzle, together with James Johnson of Avery Dennison. Zazzle and Avery have recently launched a collaborative effort, the first example of which allows consumers to customise and order ring binders in a minimum quantity of one. In this instance Zazzle is acting as a ‘gateway’ to Avery’s manufacturing capabilities, with Avery producing the custom binders at their own facilities. James Johnson described clearly some of the challenges involved in setting up a mass customisation enterprise inside a business which has always excelled at mass production – Avery had already tried it’s own MC initiative before collaborating with Zazzle, but three days after the partnership launched there were 60 times the number of user-created designs than Avery had attracted in a year.

Looking back at my report on 2007’s MCP conference, I can see that I was somewhat disparaging of Zazzle, who I compared unfavourably to Ponoko and Threadless. Following this presentation I was much more impressed by what Zazzle has achieved and how fast they are advancing the benchmark of what consumers expect when customising products. For example, Zazzle has invested in body mapping capabilities more commonly used for special effects in the film industry, this allows custom clothing to be presented in a much more realistic way, with designs mapped onto folds in the fabric. And within the Zazzle system, users can open their own stores, setting their own prices for products and (in some cases) running a full time business by customising, and allowing others to customise, their designs.

Vintage Player by the3rdbase, printed on Heather Grey American Apparel T-shirt. The custom graphic maps over the folds of the fabric (click for larger image)

The first session I attended focussed on mass customisation in the shoe and footwear industries. The first paper, by Sergio Dulio, presented the case of Pakerson shoes, a traditional Italian shoemaker which has introduced a concept it calls Tailor Made – made-to-measure footwear based on a system of mass customisation which is largely invisible to the customer. At its first concept store in St. Petersburg, customers have their feet scanned and a computer model is generated of each foot. The customer is then able to choose from a menu of styles and see exactly how the shoes would look, the shoes are then handmade from a ‘library’ of existing lasts and patterns, and delivered in four weeks.

Next Matt Head and Andre Salles presented two papers, both concerning the Elite to High Street (E2HS) project at Loughborough University. This is a major research project running across the University’s Innovative Manufacturing and Construction Research Centre, the Sports Technology Institute and the Department of Design and Technology where Matt and Andre (and myself) are based. Matt’s paper presented his work with focus groups to establish exactly which aspects of a running shoe consumers are interested in customising, whereas Andre’s presentation detailed his research in understanding which anthropometric foot measurements need to be taken and how to evaluate discomfort, performance and injury risk. But since Matt has been promising for a while now to write a piece for this blog, I won’t go into these presentations too much, and hopefully it will give him a kick up the arse to do something

From the Elite to High Street (E2HS) project © Loughborough University)

Following Andre’s presentation, I left mid-session to rush up eight floors in order to catch Kate Herd’s presentation. Kate is researching the consumer customisation experience, the tangible and intangible elements from the point at which the customer decides to engage in the purchase of a customised product to the point at which the product is delivered, and beyond. The problem of course, is that this experience takes place over many weeks and at times which are ‘personal’ to the consumer: it’s not something which can be easily researched in a ‘laboratory’ environment. And simply asking people about their experiences doesn’t work either – memories are subjective and can be coloured by what the subject thinks the researcher wants to hear, or how they wish to represent themselves. To overcome these difficulties, Kate’s research has incorporated the use of ‘design probes’, a method which encourages users to self-document their actions and emotions in order to give insights into their opinions and feelings.

Freitag packaging, from Kate Herd’s Flickr set PhD in Mass Customisation

One of the key factors in using design probes is that they themselves have to be designed. Since the research subjects are documenting their experiences alone, without direct input from the researcher, the probes need to encourage the user in certain directions, to record information that is valuable and ignore what is superfluous, even when the subjects themselves do not know what is valuable and what is not. Kate revealed how, in a pilot study subjects had been encouraged to keep a diary, but the entries were often repetitive or simply said “nothing has happened”. In the revised study participants were given more specific instructions such as “Capture it”, “Describe it” or “Tell me stuff” together with tools such as a dictaphone, a digital camera and printer , sticker books etc. Whilst the study is still ongoing, it seems to be revealing some interesting insights into the way that consumers perceive brands which offer mass customised products.

A “Who did I tell map” from the pilot study, from Kate Herd’s Flickr set “Design Probes”

The revised design probe, from Kate Herd’s Flickr set “Design Probes”

After lunch Frank Piller presented a keynote speech. Frank’s presentations are always full of interesting anecdotes, one of my favourites this time concerned Adidas, who he has worked with extensively. Regarding miAdidas, the company’s venture into mass customised sports shoes, Frank recounted how Adidas have come to realise that people don’t go to miAdidas to improve their shoes, they go there to improve themselves (since a better fitting shoe will improve its owners performance). And so Adidas have introduced miCoach, a customisable coaching system intended to better improve your training.

Adidas miCoach © Adidas (click for larger image)

After the keynote I attended the Co-Creation and Open Innovation session. First to present was Martijn Pater, whose paper discussed some of the work of Fronteer Strategy, an Amsterdam based consultancy specialising in the facilitation of co-creation initiatives. Fronteer Strategy very much believes in Eric von Hippel’s notion of lead users as the key generators amongst consumers of innovative solutions, and their five guiding principles are to 1. Inspire Participation, 2. Select the Very Best (People and Ideas), 3. Connect Creative Minds, 4. Share Results, and 5. Continue Development.

The next presentation, by JanWillem Hoftijzer, was particularly interesting for me. JanWillem’s research is in a similar area to mine, looking at which products or product features consumers are most interested to customise and co-design, and then attempting to understand how consumers might be enabled to engage in that co-design. I’m hoping that we might be able to work more closely in future.

The final presentation of the session, by Katharina Braun, detailed her work looking at the Threadless community, and the ways in which advice and feedback affect the submitted designs. Katharina’s research has some interesting findings, specifically that the number of number of comments and degree of engagement are a predictor of the design’s success (regardless of the quality of the feedback, ie whether it is positive or negative). After the presentation I asked whether it was known if designs are successful because they change according to comments (ie respond to the market) or whether designs that are good to begin with attract the most comments. Right now it seems the research cannot answer that question, but it’s something Katharina plans to address.

In the final session I attended, the standout presentation was by Jouni Lyly-Yrjänäinen who entertainingly recounted his frustrations in trying to get hold of 12 black Teema dinner services from the Finnish Housewares company Iittala. When he first approached Iittala he was told the minimum order was 600 for a custom colour, though many other people had also asked for black. Unfortunately Iittala had no way of recording the level of demand – everyone who enquired was told the minimum order was 600. A couple of years later, when Iittala did release the Teema range in black, they didn’t include some plates in the range. And despite complaining and making personal contact with Iittala’s customer service manager, when the plates were released as a ‘limited time offer only’, Jouni only found out by accident. Luckily this frustration seems to have been fruitful – Iittala are now working with Tampere University of Technology where Jouni is based, and the Teema range is available in full, in black!

The Mass Customisation and Personalisation conference here in Helsinki marks a couple of milestones for me. Firstly it means I’m a couple of years into the PhD, my progress in which is probably best characterised as ‘fitful’. At times it’s been racing ahead, but in the last few months it’s taken a back seat due to my professional workload. Secondly it’s the first conference where I’ve given a paper, but more about that in a later post. These next few entries are really a personal overview and reflection on the conference and some of the points raised.

The opening welcome was given by Matti Alahuhta, who I guess was technically my boss at one point at Nokia, and is now CEO of Kone. He gave a brief presentation of the ways in which Kone lifts can be customised, but disappointingly it wasn’t much more than a corporate gloss-over. He showed a few slides comparing Kone’s relatively ‘industrial’ products of just a few years ago to current products which show much more evidence of an ‘interior design’ approach, and I would have been interested to learn what this meant for the way the company and its designers worked.

The opening keynote speech was given by Joe Pine, who of course introduced a lot of people to the concept of Mass Customisation in his 1993 book. I had been looking forward to his presentation, because his speech at the previous MCPC in Boston had been one of the highlights of my conference. But to a large extent this was just a repeat of what was presented two years ago. I spoke to a few people who hadn’t been in Boston who thought the presentation was really interesting, but personally I felt a bit cheated.

The first sessions of the conference began just before lunch, and I presented in the ‘Success Stories: Mass Customization in Practice’ session. I was a bit surprised to be in this session – calling my work a success story is a bit premature! – but it seemed to go down well  and certainly raised some interest judging by the number of comments and questions I got during the rest of the conference. Also presenting in the same session was Gregor Jawecki of Hyve AG, who showed the competition which Swarovski recently ran, inviting users to submit jewellery designs. The competition ran in two parts – in one section users were able to use a configuration tool and build designs from pre-existing chains, pendants and gems; whereas an alternative section allowed users to upload freely created designs. 1790 participants created 3180 designs, of which 2200 were configured and 980 freely designed. What I found interesting was that the freely submitted designs were judged by a jury of ‘experts’, whereas the configured designs were judged by the competition community – this obviously suggests a prejudice on the part of the organisers as to what constitutes ‘real’ design (as does the difference in prizes for the two competitions). It would be interesting to know why Swarovski opted for the jury system – was it because they didn’t trust the community to identify the best designs, or instead that they thought ‘real’ designers would be put off submitting if their work was judged by interested amateurs rather than industry professionals? Whatever the reason, by placing configured designs so closely next to freely created designs, the competition clearly highlights the limitations of configurators in terms of the freedom they allow the user, and in that sense my own presentation fitted quite nicely into the session.

1st prize in the ‘Basic Passion’ category of freely uploaded designs © Isabelle Lopes France

1st and 2nd prizes in the ‘Configured Designs’ category © Mehmet Genc and Mônica Maués

Following lunch, Bruce Kasanoff presented a keynote speech on the theme of ‘The Emerging Personalization Economy’. Kasanoff, who runs the Now Possible blog, believes that in eight years the world’s economy will be driven by personalization, and he used a number of examples from the fields of education, healthcare and security to reinforce this belief.

To be honest the Monday afternoon sessions didn’t have that much to interest me. The standout presentation, which I attended almost by accident, was by Fabrice Alizon, who talked about the Model T Ford as one of the first examples of mass customisation. This is a somewhat provocative assertion, since Henry Ford and the Model T are generally thought of as the paradigm of mass manufacture. But as Alizon explained, the Model T underwent so many modifications throughout its life that it is almost impossible to attribute any one model to any one year. Around 5% of Model T’s were customised, i.e. modified versions of the standard offerings, and for much of its life the Model T was available in a range of colours other than black. This isn’t to say that Ford itself mass customised products – it had a number of models based on a standard platform – but by also selling that product platform (chassis, engine and drivetrain) as a stand-alone item, it allowed customers or third party body shops to create the customised vehicle. In many ways, this is close to the way I imagine user-designed products might be realised in future – a manufacturer sells a core product and the consumer prints out a ’shell’, either one that has been self-designed or a design bought from someone else. It was kind of interesting to realise that one of the ways I’ve been envisaging the future of product design and manufacture was actually pioneered by henry Ford almost 100 years ago. Alizon’s full paper is available here (subscription required).

The Model T product platform, Clymer, F. (1955), Henry’s Wonderful Model T, Bonaza Books, NY

Customised Model T’s. All images © Model T Ford Club of America

“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?

I recently got back from a trip to New York, having been there during ICFF and all the design week activities surrounding it. I was somewhat surprised at how little rapid manufactured furniture there was within the main show (unless you count laser cutting, which was impossible to avoid and demonstrated little that wasn’t being done five years ago), but outside .MGX was again showing it’s new collection at Moss, this year entitled E-volution. I should say straight off that the curation of this exhibition isn’t particularly clear: some of the pieces on display are from previous collections, and not everything in the new collection is on show. Nonetheless, it occurred to me whilst walking round that the designers and pieces involved fall into three distinct categories of the exploration of design for rapid manufacture.

.MGX by Materialise © Moss

It’s worth making clear at this point that when I say ‘design’ I mean the kind of design that .MGX promote and specialise in. The kind of design that’s sometimes called “Design with a capital D”; the kind of design which non-designers usually associate with the word and which some designers dislike because they feel it misrepresents what design ‘really’ is. This is design whose reason for existence is spectacle, whose aim is to make people take notice through initial observation rather than through extended use. Normally I would say there’s too much of this kind of design, and much of it is rubbish. But Materialise has a clear objective, which is to push the boundaries of rapid manufacturing and showcase what the technologies are capable of. If the result is more designers and manufacturers understanding what RM technologies can achieve, then that’s a good thing.

.MGX by Materialise © Moss

The first category is best termed Design as an Exploration of Production. This category is the largest in terms of the number of .MGX products it contains, and is made up of products whose central interest is an exploration of what rapid manufacturing technologies can produce, which conventional technologies cannot. It is typified by complex detailing on both the interior and exterior of the product, geometries which would be impossible to achieve were any form of tooling required.

Fugu vase by Hani Rashid © .MGX

Many .MGX lights fall into this category. Being able to design and manufacture an internal space of great complexity allows the designer to play with the way in which light escapes from a volume, as well as the shadows it creates.

Tulip lamp by Peter Jansen © .MGX

A further branch of the Design as an Exploration of Production category continues the idea of manufacturing what would conventionally be ‘impossible’ forms, but reduces the complexity to much purer geometries. Bathsheba Grossman has worked with Jiri Evenhuis to up date an earlier version of the Torus lamp, in which two simple donut forms interconect. Another example from Freedom of Creation (of which Evenhuis is a partner,) though not produced through .MGX and thus not on show, the Rollercoaster bowl.

Rollercoaster bowl by Janne Kyttänen © Freedom of Creation

The second category is what I call Design as an Exploration of Craft. The main use of rapid manufacturing in this category is as an enabler of actually getting an object produced, an object which would otherwise be too expensive, or require too high a level of expertise, to be manufactured. It doesn’t necessarily mean that only one object is ever produced, more that, even if the production volume never rises above one, the design is still a success. In many ways, it’s possible to see more evidence of this kind of design in past .MGX products than in the newest collection – it seems the ability to create one-off pieces is no longer the wonder it once was. The Damned lampshade by Luc Merx is from 2007, but was on show at Moss, and exemplifies this category.

The Damned Lampshade by Luc Merx © .MGX

The lampshade clearly refers to classical images of the fall of the damned, such as those of Gustav Doré in Dante’s Divine Comedy. It’s about as far removed from what’s usually considered to be ‘good design’ as it’s possible to get, and it’s difficult to imagine it would ever have been made if rapid manufacturing did not exist. Merx refers to the complexity of 18th Century carved ivory furniture as an influence, a craft which is highly skilled and nowadays virtually obsolete (not to mention, largely illegal). The .MGX website describes how selective laser sintering technology allows this intricacy of form, but this lampshade is not an exploration of that intricacy. Rather it takes the capability for granted, and uses it to explore a very personal vision of the designer. In a similar way, though more whimsically perhaps, Dan Yeffet’s Forbidden Fruit bowl is a take on original sin, as well as a pre-emptor of Shapeways Creator service.

Forbidden Fruit bowl by Dan Yeffet © .MGX

The final category I have termed Design as an Exploration of Design. Here the end product may display traits from either of the first two categories, however the most important thing is the way the designer uses the capabilities of rapid manufacturing to explore new ways of designing. I have written previously about Assa Ashuach’s AI stool, on show at Moss, and the way it was designed using a kind of ‘reverse’ finite element analysis to determine where the stool should be rigid and where it should flex in order to create the minimum possible volume of material. In one sense it can be argued that the designer didn’t design the AI stool, Assuach designed the process, and the process designed the stool.

AI stool © Assa Ashuach

A similar notion, i.e. a design process in which the designer does not control the final outcome of the design, is apparent in the Root chair by Sulan Kolatan and William MacDonald. Based on traditional Asian furniture in which tree roots are shaped to create individually unique pieces of furniture, each Root chair is digitally ‘grown’ within variable parameters. There is little information in the show about exactly how this is done, but this investigation of an ‘evolving’ family of forms is something also being explored by Lars Spuybroek’s MyLight (included in the show at Moss), as well as Lionel Theodore Dean of Future Factories.

Root chair by Sulan Kolatan and William MacDonald © .MGX

As well as the Torus lamp with Jiri Evenhuis, Bathsheba Grossman is also showing the Gyroid lamp. Grossman is well known as an early exponent of rapid manufacturing technologies which she uses to make mathematical sculptures. Her background as both a mathematician and artist lead to the creation of sculptural forms driven by equation and geometry in which the personality of the designer determines the meta-design but is strangely removed from the symmetrical, repeating details. According to .MGX

In nature, the gyroid is found when two immiscible fluids are forced to occupy the same space. These fluids interpenetrate but do not dissolve together. The same is true for the Gyroid.MGX which divides the 3D space it occupies into two regions. These regions are identical, interlocking, and yet remain completely distinct from each other.

Gyroid lamp by Bathsheba Grossman © .MGX

These three design explorations encapsulate the types of creativity rapid manufacturing is facilitating amongst some designers today. They don’t just relate to the work produced by Materialse .MGX, they are also able to accommodate, for example, Front’s Sketch Furniture and Future Factories Ghost chair. In time new areas can open up, but if you can think of examples today which don’t fit, I’d be interestd to hear.

If you’re into the design of mobile phones, or high-end watches, there’s a good chance you will have read about Ulysse Nardin’s launch of a ‘hybrid’ cell phone recently. Developed in partnership with SCI Innovations, the Chairman is aimed at the luxury end of the market currently inhabited by Vertu and a few smaller industry players. Unlike those manufacturers however, Ulysse Nardin has a huge amount of experience and brand heritage, and is widely respected for it’s ability to combine traditional watchmaking skills with technological advancements (Ulysse Nardin has been granted more patents in mechanical watchmaking than any other manufacturer). This product represents a significant milestone for Ulysse Nardin – not only is it the first digital product they have made, it is also the first time they have partnered with another company. It is also significant for me personally, given that the industrial design of the product was carried out by my consultancy, Matt Sinclair Design.

Ulysse Nardin Chairman in rose gold © Ulysse Nardin / SCI Innovations

Although the product has been publicly launched, there are a number of issues which remain confidential. Pricing, availability and delivery schedules are commercially sensitive for example, and a number of features are the subject of ongoing patent application processes. If you are interested to know more about the product your first point of information should be through this contact page. However in this post I will try to give an overview of the design and highlight the most significant aspects. I also intend to incorporate this project into my PhD thesis, and in  later posts I will go into more detail about the design process, and explain why this inclusion is relevant and justified.

Rotor detail © Ulysse Nardin / SCI Innovations

Without doubt one of the most striking elements of the design, and the one which has attracted most attention, is the rotor on the back of the phone. This feature has been a requirement from the very first briefing document, and to a certain extent has driven the design of the whole product. Such rotors, which automatically wind a spring to power a watch, are a visible feature of all Ulysse Nardin watches. By requiring such an intricate and highly engineered component to be incorporated into the phone – a component which so clearly alludes to the brand’s heritage – a benchmark for the design and quality of the whole product was clearly set. The design and construction of the phone, whether viewed as a whole or by looking at individual features, had to meet the same exacting standards that Ulysse Nardin apply to all their products.

Reverse view of the rose gold version © Ulysse Nardin / SCI Innovations

The inclusion of the rotor, which was specially designed to charge a supplementary battery rather than wind a watch spring, also highlights another key philosophy behind the design and specification of the phone. In today’s mobile phone market, the ‘top end’ is almost exclusively involved in a race to add technological complexity. This is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but it often takes place with little thought as to the actual benefits to the customer. A product which has been bought because it is at the cutting edge also dates quickly, as soon as a slightly better model is launched in fact. Rather than try to compete in this race, the Chairman phone innovates in an entirely new way. In this respect it is similar to Ulysse Nardin watches such as the Perpetual Calendars – the only mechanical watches to allow simultaneously synchronised adjustments of the minutes, hours, day and year indicators. Being the first mobile phone manufacturer to add a mechanical charging device not only indicates a new approach to thinking about the design of such products, it also creates a striking feature around which subsequent phones, and an underlying brand language, can be based.

Ulysse Nardin GMT ± Perpetual © Ulysse Nardin

In the early conceptual phase of the design, it soon became clear that, for a number of reasons, the best way to think about the mechanical construction of the phone was likely to be by designing a modular product. This was not a particularly ingenious insight: a modular approach lends itself to smaller production runs because the gains achieved by integrated approaches are typically only realised with the economies of scale offered by mass manufacturing techniques. However a modular construction would offer much more than just a default way to progress. Firstly, a further key criteria for the design was that the product should be customisable, as this would allow for product variants and limited editions – an important tool in the luxury goods market. Modularity allows parts to be interchanged, for example a gold cover on one variant can be replaced by a steel cover on another. Furthermore, such modularity allows customisation decisions to be made later, meaning they can be more responsive to customer requests, since they are not dependent on tooling schedules or economics. And finally, modularity enables another important aspect of the experience of owning the product – the offer of a guarantee to repair the phone, no matter how it is damaged. By utilising a modular construction, the Chairman can be disassembled and parts repaired or replaced, in a way that is generally impossible, or simply uneconomic, with conventionally manufactured products.

Limited Edition in carbon fibre and steel, based on the Ulysse Nardin Diver Perpetual © Ulysse Nardin / SCI Innovations

A mobile phone is in many ways a very different product to a watch, even if both have been designed as luxury items – it uses digital rather than mechanical technologies, it belongs to a relatively immature industry rather than one which has evolved over centuries, it is perceived as a tool of everyday use rather than an item to be brought out only on special occasions etc. Nonetheless, it was important to come up with a design and develop a design language which would complement Ulysse Nardin’s existing products, without creating a pastiche of styling cues. To help achieve this I analysed a significant number of Ulysse Nardin watches, grouping them into categories of my own making, and noting the similarities and differences. One particular insight which informed all the concepting work was that, compared to other brands, Ulysse Nardin watches appear less ’severe’ and less ‘machined’. They are often more detailed and decorated than the plain, stark surfaces of competitors. Edges are more rounded, and metal surfaces are generally more polished (ie glossy). My impression was that although these are undoubtedly ‘masculine’ products, they are not being purchased by customers who feel the need to assert their masculinity.

Ulysse Nardin Chairman in rose gold and steel © Ulysse Nardin / SCI Innovations

As well as arriving at some broad guidelines which would help direct the design of the product, a list of features and details was also collated which would help the phone sit more comfortably within the Ulysse Nardin design language. The intention here was not necessarily to incorporate all these details into the design, but rather to gain a sensitivity to some of the clues which would identify a particular design as a Ulysse Nardin product:

Individually numbered products.
Visible screws on the rear.
Discrete (ie individual) buttons rather than grouped buttons. This implies smaller buttons with space around, rather than larger buttons whose edges touch.
Buttons should be prominent from the surface of the product, rather than flush with the surface.
Micro textures and patterns under the glass. Could also be replicated on the rear of the product.
Place emphasis on the thickness of the product, rather than the width or length.
Analogue dials to display information such as date or timezone
Colours: silver, gold, black, Ulysse Nardin blue. Red for emphasis.
Possible materials: gold, rose gold, stainless steel, platinum, titanium, rhodium, palladium, carbon fibre, zirconium dioxide (or similar ceramic), sapphire crystal, leather…

Ulysse Nardin Chairman in rose gold © Ulysse Nardin / SCI Innovations

In all, this project has been a fantastic experience for me. It has given me the opportunity to work with materials and production techniques which previous, mainstream consumer electronics projects have not allowed, and it has taught me  a huge amount about the expectation of quality which the watchmaking industry accepts without question. Of course, I can’t consider my work done until products are in the hands of customers, and even then I expect to be receiving feedback which could inform the design of subsequent products. But right now, it’s extremely satisfying to know how well the Chairman has been received by both client and customers, and simply to be able to tell people about something I’ve been itching to show but have had to keep secret.

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.