Just make something! Making in a digital walled gardenDr Miles ParkSenior Lecturer, Industrial Design, UNSW Built Environment Room 2014, Red Centre West Wing UNSW AUSTRALIA | SYDNEY NSW 2052 | AUSTRALIA milesp@unsw.edu.au

Abstract: For a designer setting out to create awell-resolved three-dimensional product, making mock-ups, models or prototypes is an integral component ofthe design process. However, for many designstudents, making is an often-overlooked andmarginalised activity. This paper draws upon existingpractices and new initiatives from the IndustrialDesign Program at the University of New South Wales(UNSW), Australia. It highlights circumstances ineducational settings that have resulted in a declinein the making of models and prototypes. Given thatmaking is a valued and necessary activity in thedesign process, this paper asserts the importance ofmaking models and prototypes, outlines factors thatcontribute to this decline and offers remedies thatmay reverse it. Moreover, it discusses how low-cost3D printing and allied digital making technologiescan offer students a means to engage with making andto break free from designing exclusively in a digital‘walled garden’.

Keywords: student making; models and prototypes; desktop 3D printing

1. IntroductionDuring a public discussion at London’s Design Museum in 2014, industrial designer Jonathan Ive, Chief Design Officer of Apple, Inc., lamented the absence of making skills among many designers he interviewed. In a widely reported quote, he said:

“So many of the designers that we interview don't know how to make stuff, because workshops in design schools are expensive and computers are cheaper. That's just tragic, that you can spend four years of your life studying the design of three dimensional objects and not make one." (Winston, 2014)

Many other design professionals and design educators would agree with these sentiments and advocate the importance of making (Hallgrimsson, 2012; Hudson, 2008; Loy & Canning, 3013).Another outspoken designer on this matter is Hartmut Esslinger,who founded Frog Design during the early 1980s. He is also responsible for many of Apple’s early iconic products and established their widely imitated ‘Snow White’ design language.

“When you prototype something and simulate, you get much better decisions for the next step. And if you don’t have that, you go through with it and you have to just wait on what’s coming out. I did models. I love to make models. I think that’s one of the methods people don’t understand. Okay, it’s naughty. You get dirty. But it’s the best way to do it”. (Frog, 2013)

Models and prototypes are particularly important for industrialdesigners creating three-dimensional products for manufacture. They enable design ideas to be communicated to others and offerthe design team an effective means to explore, refine and validate design decisions through iteration.Even low-fidelity models and prototypes are highly valued and can be vital to resolve functional, ergonomic and user interaction. However, in educational settings and for many design students, any sort of making is an often-overlooked and marginalised activity in the design process. Students are now making fewer models and the use of existing (traditional) workshop facilities is in decline.This is despite the importance of making emphasised throughout the four-year undergraduate Industrial Design Program at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). The program has long maintained strong industry links and employs many practising designers as tutors. They often contribute to studio courses organised around design projects that emulate commercial design

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Just make something! Making in a digital walled garden

practices. Studio courses are sequenced each semester, commencing with foundational design studios in year one to advanced project research and a major design project in the final year. During year one design studios, students are introduced to a suite of manual design skills, including basic workshop tuition and hand sketching and technical drawing. In the latter half of their first year they are also introduced to3D Computer Aided Design (CAD).

1.1 Models or prototypes For simplicity and to avoid overlapping and sometimes conflicting definitions, the terms ‘models’ and ‘prototypes’ are used interchangeably in this paper. Hallgrimsson offers a useful explanation for this practice.

“The terms physical prototype and model can be used interchangeably to describe a preliminary three-dimensional representation of a product, service, or system. In recent years the use of the word ‘prototype’ has become favoured as it is more encompassing.” (Hallgrimsson, 2012, p.6)

A prototype or model is a three-dimensional artefact that expresses various attributes of an evolving or finalised design. It is the result of making practices that can occur in a variety of settings, from the desktop in the design studio utilising a variety of ready to hand materials, to mock up a model, to the computer lab where a computer file can instruct amachine to print or cut a design model, and the model workshop where a much wider variety of materials and model making processes can be undertaken.

1.2 Research methodologyThis research draws upon selected literature that positions therole of making within the design process. This literature is used as a foundation for expressing design process methods as widely practiced in both design industry and many educational settings. A comparative model of design activities, notably sketching and prototyping is expanded to incorporate elements

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of digital design methods, to explore, in particular, CAD and 3D printing, to explain the qualities these brings to the design process.

2. Why making is importantFor any designer undertaking the design of three-dimensional objects, making models or prototypes is an important, if not a necessary activity (Hallgrimsson, 2012; Terstiege, 2009). It isalmost inconceivable not to make any models or prototypes of a design prior to its mass production. To neglect this step wouldbe a high-risk strategy that would inevitably result in an unpredictable outcome. Likewise, few design educators would disagree that physical making in some form during a design process is a fundamental activity. To a greater or lesser degree, design education often echoes this view (Loy & Canning,2013).For a generation of industrial designers trained during the 1980s and 1990s, firms such as Seymour Powell, Frog and IDEO represented the pinnacle of industrial design commercial practice, with their realistic and refined appearance models embodying the culmination of their design process. Prominently displayed in the popular design magazines of the time (ID, FORM, Axis, Design-UK), images of these models were used as trophies to display a firm’s capabilities and enhance its reputation. Additionally and just as importantly, appearance models were used as a central feature during client presentations and subsequent deliberations about form, ergonomics, production and functional matters. With the decline of print publication and the advent of ubiquitous computing, the need to produce realistic appearance models has become less acute.1 Is now possible, using affordable software, to create highly detailed images that can be indistinguishable from a photograph of a physical object.

1 With the exception of the vehicle design industry, which often maintains the tradition of making full-scale, clay appearance models.

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Just make something! Making in a digital walled garden

Additionally, computer models can be used for simulation to analyse various design performance criteria, such as mould flowand finite element analysis.However, making has not been entirely displaced by computer modelling and it remains just as vital today for three-dimensional design as it did before computer software became available, although its importance is often emphasised elsewhere within the design process. Models and prototypes are particularly useful during the early stages of a design project. Low-fidelity mock-ups and prototypes allow a richer exploratory and learning process, not just to shape an evolvingdesign concept but also to help define the design journey itself.

2.1 Making in the design processMaking models and prototypes is highly valued at any stage in the design process (Hallgrimsson, 2012) starting at the very beginning of a project, when it may enable design opportunitiesto be identified. Promoted by the firm IDEO (Moggridge, 2007) and subsequently adopted by other firms, activities described as co-design, participatory designs, and design thinking can embed various forms of low-fidelity making. In such settings, the making of ‘quick and dirty’ prototypes can start a conversation in the expectation of discovering new insights. These circumstances can offer a richer and more engaging experience for all participants and expand the repertoire beyond scribbles on whiteboards and a plastering of coloured post-it notes.For many designers, making is often a process of iteration (thinking – sketching – making – reflecting), to test and validate design decisions. If sketching is ‘thinking out aloud’, then making is ‘building to think’ (Brown, 2009). For UK industrial design team Pearson Lloyd, the ‘craft of industrial design’ is the interchange between CAD and handcrafted prototypes to resolve aesthetics and engineering tothe point where it is difficult to know which is the motivatingfactor (Hudson, 2008). This seamless interchange between the

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physical and the virtual demonstrates how designers iterate using distinctly different design activities. Sketching, CAD and making models and prototypes are mutually supportive but possess different attributes. Sketching typically precedes making models and prototypes, thanks to its immediacy and disposability. But very low-fidelity mock-ups that are also quick and temporary can follow soon after. Buxton (2007) offersa useful comparison of these. He compares and contrasts the attributes of sketching and prototyping (making) within a design process. What is evident from this comparison is that sketching is expansive and explorative in nature, while prototyping confirms, validates and legitimises a design direction. Developing Buxton’s comparison of sketching and prototyping, the following diagram incorporates additional CAD attributes into the model.

Table 1. Comparison of sketching, prototyping and CAD attributes (based on Buxton, 2007, p. 140)

Sketching Prototyping CADEvocative Didactic InformSuggest Describe SpecifyExplore Refine DetermineQuestion Answer ReportPropose Test InstructProvoke Resolve Document

Tentative Specific AbsoluteNoncommittal Depiction Define

These new attributes attempt to capture the unique qualities the digital environment brings to a design process.

3. Why students don’t make enough models

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Just make something! Making in a digital walled garden

Given the importance that designers and design educators attachto making as an intrinsic activity for any three-dimensional design project, why are so many young designers not making models or prototypes? Students often get stuck gathering information as a substitute for doing any design work (Cross, 2011). Obviously, it takes a much greater effort to make something than to trawl the Internet for inspiration or create a sketch. However, many students are also not sketching nearly enough. Unless making or sketching is specified as a required task, the default go-to tool for many students is the computer.This is not helped by circumstances that many institutions facein regard to workshop facilities. Access and availability to these facilities are among the factors that can contribute to students’ success with making models and prototypes. In addition, there are many other indirect societal and technological barriers and disincentives to making. This includes modern society’s general disconnectedness with the origins of objects and the processes by which they are made. Where once childhood activities involved open-ended creative construction toys (such as Lego bricks and Meccano) and plasticmoulded-part model kits (such as Airfix and Revell), children now play digital games and use more prescriptive construction kits. In many developed nations, manufacturing has been in decline and has moved offshore to low-cost territories. Meanwhile, many products are not only increasingly complex but also often designed to be non-repairable. These factors can further alienate students from the fundamental interconnectedness of designing, making and production (Frayling, 2011). The table below summarises a range of contributing factors that impact upon the quality of student models and prototypes.

Table 2. Factors contributing to a decline in making

Digitaldisplacement

3D computer rendering reduces the need for certain types of prototypes

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Digital walled garden – reliance upon computer tools throughout thedesign process

Time investment – computer models can be quicker to make than a physical prototype

Workshopaccessibility

Increasing health and safety training obligations

Cost constraints limiting staff and resources

User pay system for consumables and training

Making knowledgeand currency

Training emphasis on safe workshoppractices and not on model making skills and techniques

External influenceson making

proficiencies

Product complexity and the design of short-lifespan, non-repairable products preclude repair or tinkering

Digital-based childhood activities, such as gaming, have displaced construction and kit-based hobbies that develop making proficiencies

Distance from production: many manufacturing sectors have moved offshore to low-cost territories

Declining exposure to household DIY, tinkering and repairing practices, accelerated by increasing urbanisation and lack of home workshop spaces

3.1 Digital displacementFor industrial designers, the capabilities of digital technologies and computer software are liberating. They offer the designer a powerful suite of interconnected tools that enable an efficient and effective workflow to create, develop and produce a design in a distributed, globalised economy. Tools such as CAD, 3D rendering, vector graphic and image manipulation software permeate most stages of the design

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Just make something! Making in a digital walled garden

process and dominate in many. Students are particularly enthusiastic about digital technologies as a central hub for their design practice, from concept development and technical documentation to final presentation renderings, which are contained, managed and delivered in a virtual environment. Thiswalled garden of digital design can lead to a displacement of other important design activities, notably the analogue skills such as sketching and making prototypes. In such circumstances,design decisions that cannot satisfactorily be explored in a virtual environment remain untested, unverified and speculative. For example, a concept design of a handheld product presented as a computer rendering or CAD drawing will only yield a limited amount of information about form, product use and ergonomics. Moreover, creating a concept design in CAD will inevitably take longer than producing multiple concept sketches. Time and effort invested in what might produce a poordesign constitute inefficient and poor practice. While studentswill continue to provide models when prescribed for an assessment task, only a few will make developmental models and prototypes as part of their design process. Even for final yearindustrial design students, making low-fidelity ‘sketch’ prototypes is often discounted as a waste of time. With ubiquitous computer ownership and proficiency in CAD and other design software tools, many students default towards designing exclusively in a digital environment.

Figure 1 Student low-fidelity sketch developmental models and prototypes.

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3.2 Workshop accessibilityDuring the last decade, opportunities for students to access and use faculty workshop facilities have contracted, for a number of reasons. The cost of providing and running these facilities is increasing, as are the demands placed on technical staff to meet workplace safety regulatory and compliance obligations. Greater emphasis is now placed on safety training, rather than providing support and tuition on making techniques and processes. Equipment such as metal lathes, milling machines and welding equipment, which are deemed higher risk, are now quarantined from student use and used only in exceptional circumstances. Even tools once familiar in many households, such as cordless drills, chisels, heat guns and soldering irons, are also subject to use restrictions. This precautionary approach does indeed make for a safer workplace, but at the expense of limiting the very activities these spaces are meant to provide. Academic design research is also impacted, with some electing to outsource or use external workshop facilities. The absurdity of maintaining an empty workshop so to be the safest workshop almost seems plausible. Thankfully, many institutions, including the facultyat UNSW, have explored and implemented solutions to tackle underuse of these expensive but important facilities.

4. Reconnecting with making While computer-based design practices are a significant contributor to the decline of student making skills over the last decade, they also provide a solution. The recent explosionof affordable and accessible digital making technologies and allied online services offer a means for students to re-engage with making. Although digital technologies such as laser cutting and 3D printing have been available for over two decades, it is only in recent years that they have become widely available, thanks to a dramatic increase in the availability of low-cost digital technologies that have evolvedout of the maker movement (Anderson, 2012). The maker movement

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Just make something! Making in a digital walled garden

represents a distributed community of craftspeople, tinkerers, hackers, hobbyists, designers, inventors and start-up enterprises (Hagel et al., 2014). They embrace new opportunities offered by an evolving ecosystem of affordable and enabling digital technologies, such as low-cost desktop 3D printing, to create new markets and assist with production and distribution.

4.1 Low-cost desktop 3D printingFor design students, low-cost 3D printing now offers an accessible means to create prototypes and parts and thereby bypass certain workshop processes. Increasingly, students are purchasing their own 3D printers. These are typically filament deposition modelling (FDM) machines that print in PLA or ABS plastics and now cost less than $1000 USD. Such printers are equally at home in an office environment as in a workshop. The print quality from these machines is usually lower than that available from the faculty’s existing high-end machines, but their low cost makes up for this shortcoming. They have the versatility to produce low-cost parts quickly and cleanly on demand, displacing the need for a range of traditional workshopequipment such the metal lathe, milling machine and drill press.

UNSW Faculty has not neglected the opportunities that low-cost desktop 3D printing and allied digital technologies can offer. In 2015, an expanded ‘FabLab’ facility was opened for faculty students and researchers. The facility consists of numerous FDM3D printers, laser cutters and a desktop CNC mill, with technical support. Once students have been inducted into the facility, they are able to directly access the machines. Duringthe six months commencing March 2015, there were 3385 visits tothe new facility, compared to only 1171 visits to the previously existing much larger workshop lab that consists of woodworking shop, metal shop and spray finishing and bench fabrication spaces.

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In addition, the University has also recently opened an innovation centre that includes an open-access, collaborative workspace. This includes a light duty workshop maker space withlaser and 3D printing facilities, supported by design-trained technical staff. The centre aims to be a catalyst for innovation by enabling collaboration across the university. Their motto ‘Find a better way’ (MCIC 2015) expresses an aspiration to encourage innovation that includes the making of mock-ups, test-rigs and prototypes. Various student societies have taken advantage of the space. For instance, the Create Society runs weekly events for any student on topics such as Arduino programming, introduction to 3D printing and 3D CAD.

4.2 Digital making in the design studioIndustrial design studio courses at UNSW encourage students to make models and prototypes throughout any given design project,in addition to prescribed assessment tasks that may include making. For example, final year studio projects require students to fabricate a high-fidelity appearance model for their final assessment. This model also becomes a centrepiece for their graduation exhibition. The more successful projects are usually those in which a student starts by making a sequence of test-rigs, developmental models and prototypes and continue to use them throughout the design process.

Figure 3. Student final year appearance models.

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Just make something! Making in a digital walled garden

The making process typically commences with the creation of a series of simple card or foam models, which ideally enable the student to make informed decisions to determine a preferred concept direction. Increasing availability and access to a low-cost desktop 3D printer now means that students can complement this early-stage making with 3D printing. The degree to which they can do so is highly dependent upon their CAD skills and knowledge, so the technique is best encouraged for students in the latter years of their studies. Once CAD has been mastered, a 3D print can reproduce a defined and complex geometry that may be difficult to make in foam or card without great care andskill. The precision that 3D printing can offer is not without problems. It can lead a designer to invest excessive time and effort into a speculative design when a better result would be achieved by quicker albeit less accurate techniques. However, 3D printing can overcome the general resistance to making amongstudents by offering them a means of directly creating physicalmodels or parts.Figure 4. Student 3D printed models and prototypes.

[picture TBA]

4. Conclusion Making is a fundamental activity in designing a three-dimensional product. Along with sketching, models and prototypes still underpin Industrial design practices, despite the ubiquity of computer-based design. For design students, theimpact of computing has been profound. Many will design exclusively in a digital environment and have little empathy for or experience of traditional making methods. This often results in the poor use or even avoidance of making models and prototypes.With the dramatic reduction in the cost of 3D printers, individual student ownership of such a printer is now feasible.Low-cost 3D printed models can be produced on demand at any

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stage of the design process, no matter how crude or unresolved.3D printing and other digital making technologies can close thegap between physical and the virtual. They enable digital creations to be printed and encourage design iteration through making. Low-cost 3D printing and allied technologies now enabledesign students to reconnect with making and to break out from a digital walled garden. If you want a good idea, have a lot of ideas. If you want to know which ideas are better than others – just make something, even if you print it.

5. ReferencesAnderson, C. (2012). Makers: The next industrial revolution. Crown Business, New York.

Brown, T. (2009). Change by Design: How design thinking transforms organizations and Inspires innovation, HarperBusiness.

Buxton, B. (2007). Sketching user experiences: Getting the design right and theright design. Focal Press.

Cross, N. (2011). Design thinking: Understanding how designers think and work. Berg Publishers.

Frayling, C. (2011). We must all turn to the crafts, in D. Charny (ed.), The power of making (pp. 29-33). Victoria and AlbertPublishing, London.

Frog (2013). Hartmut Esslinger: Advice for designers, https://vimeo.com/59679411 (Accessed 2 November 2015).

Hagel, J., Seely Brown, J., and Kulasooriya, D. (2014). A movement in the making. Deloitte University Press.

Hallgrimsson, B. (2012). Prototyping and modelmaking for product design.Laurence King Publishing.

Hudson, J. (2008). Process: 50 product designs from concept to manufacture.Laurence King Publishing.

Terstiege, G. (2009). The making of design. Birkhauser, Basel.Loy, J., and Canning, S. (2013). Reconnecting through digital making, IDEN Journal, 2, pp. 12-21.

Lawson, B. (1997). How designers think: The design process demystified. Architectural Press.

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MCIC (2015). About us, there is always a better way, http://www.mcic.unsw.edu.au/content/about-us , (Accessed 2 November 2015).

Moggridge, B. (2007). Designing interactions. The MIT Press.Rams, D. (2005). Dieter Rams: Less but better. Jo Klatt Design + DesignVerlag.

Winston, A. (2014). Design education is tragic say Jonathan Ive, dezeen magazine, http://tinyurl.com/qg7zdwa, Thursday, November 13th, 2014 (Accessed 2 November 2015).

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