Evolving Approaches
Metaball Design: Man and Technology are Hybrid
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alessandra Paganelli
This research was conducted within a theoretical design class that aimed at investigating various design issues of our time. In particular the aim is to analyze what kind of relationships are establish between man and technology in a context, where technological innovation has led to globalization, distorting the paradigms that characterized the last historical context (industrial age), thus taking the name of the post-industrial era. The methodology of this work consists in starting from the analysis of the case study of Andrea Boscolo, with the project named Metaball Table, and then continuing to deal with all the issues that are among the four protagonists: the designer in an era where everyone design, the prosumer as an active part of the design, the extraordinary product, and the customizable process. Then we describe how the quality of the project is changing, the way of working and the role of the designer in contemporary society and how it is changing the role of the consumer in relation to them; up to the conclusion in affirming to find ourselves in a hybrid context, better expressed by the technical-scientific definition of the "Metaball" in the digital world. Through analogy, the relationship between man and technology is defined by an influence, positive or negative, without one dominating the other.
Computational by Design: Tools for a Better Contextualized Material Culture
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Viktor Malakuczi
Recently, both social life and work activities are increasingly carried out in online contexts, composed of bits and pixels, which are light, cheap, and easy to modify, so digital products are often tailored to user preferences, sometimes even automatically. Computational design might bring a similar “malleability” to the physical context: on-demand digital manufacturing can produce personalized objects, while avoiding environmentally harmful over-production and unsellable stocks. Digitally “tailor-made” products also promote a proactive attitude to the material culture, potentially involving the users’ creative capabilities in a personalization (or co-design) process. This kind of involvement seems a natural extension of industrial mass customization, as well as the growing culture of Fablabs, Makers or “open source” communities, which helped to democratize digital fabrication technologies. On average, however, the everyday environment is still dominated by mass manufactured goods. This contribution presents a way of exploring product categories where personalization and digital manufacturing can make sense. To do so, a series of case studies helped to identify six personalization principles, which can have an either mechanical or cognitive nature. A structured attempt to apply these principles to existing product categories can help discovering new design opportunities of (computationally) personalisable products, so a novel concept design method is proposed, to be practiced through a specific design tool: Computational Concept Canvas. The presented method and tool promote a “computational BY design” approach, which uses computation as a tool to shift the material culture towards a better fit to the physical-social-cultural context of each user.
Bridging Boundaries: Challenges to Integrated Collaboration in Design-driven Innovation
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Anders Warell
This paper presents a pilot study of the collaborative interaction between industrial design and engineering design in a significant product development project at a major Swedish vehicle manufacturer. Since industrial and engineering design have different approaches to product development, they require careful integration to reach their full potential, to reach project goals, and to ensure the innovative capability of the company. The objective of the research was to identify factors and suggest practices which support successful integration and nurture design-led innovation processes. In the study, six industrial designers at managerial and operative levels were interviewed. It was found that the industrial design department developed multiple strategies in order to mitigate disagreements and conflicts of interest in the collaboration. Firstly, designers developed long-term, inter-personal relationships with key engineering designers and property-owners, who were critical for meeting design related objectives. Secondly, the design department instigated studio visits, where project members were invited to experience and review physical and tangible prototypes, constructed to represent the current status of the project in terms of product design resolution. Furthermore, the study suggested that the different ways to specify the design was a source of conflict, which could not be resolved by creating shared understandings of needs and objectives. Therefore, as a third strategy, the design department addressed top management to make design decisions of strategic importance for the project. The study suggests that communication practices, creation of shared goals, and the use of ‘boundary objects’ support interdisciplinary collaboration. Future studies will explore these factors further.
